I may have a new favorite pizza: Roasted Vegetable White Pizza

I hate throwing away food. I spend my hard-earned money on it and it's just so wasteful. I especially hate to throw away beautiful produce. Since I was sick last week and didn't cook much, I had some vegetables that were sitting in the crisper drawer needing to be used. But I have been craving pizza for about 2 weeks (even some of the time while I was lying on the couch half awake). How could I balance the two? Here's what I came up with...

Roasted Vegetable White Pizza (Makes One 10-12" pizza)


Vegetable Mixture:

1 medium zucchini, cut lengthwise then cut in half-moon slices
1 small orange bell pepper, cut in half rings
1 small onion, cut in half-moon slices and layers separated
4-5 cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp olive oil

Toss all of the ingredients above on a rimmed baking sheet and roast in a preheated oven at 400F for 15 minutes. This is 5-10 minutes less time than I would normally roast vegetables because they will be cooked longer when put on the pizza.

Meanwhile, prepare the pizza crust. I veganized the gluten free pizza crust from easypizzacrusts.com. I actually don't have a kitchen stand mixer, so I mix it in my food processor with an s-blade and it works great.

Crust:

2/3 cup garfava flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
2 Tbsp almond meal
1 Tbsp gluten-free yeast
1 Tbsp xanthan gum
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
2/3 cup warm water
1 tsp.vegetable oil
1 tsp. vinegar

Add all dry ingredients together in a kitchen mixer or food processor and combine well. Stir in liquids while beating on medium speed. A stiff dough should form. Let the dough sit about 10 minutes to let the yeast work a little magic. You might not see much change in the size, but the finished product makes this worth the wait. Press/roll gluten free pizza crust dough onto a pizza pan lined with parchment paper. Prebake this crust for about 10 minutes at 350F.

"Pesto":
Drizzle crust with olive oil (about 2 tsp), then brush it evenly across crust.
Top with fresh parsley (about 3 Tbsp, chopped), dried oregano and ground rosemary. It would probably even be better to use all fresh herbs, but this is what I had around.
Sprinkle almond meal (around 2 Tbsp) on top of the herbs.

Voila! Pesto without actually making pesto. If you like basil pesto, use basil in place of/in addition to the parsley...I just don't like the stuff.

Top "Pesto" with the roasted vegetable mixture. (I actually didn't quite use all of it and have a little leftover)

Put spoonfuls of pine nut cheese on top of vegetables. I used about 1/3 cup total. See information about pine nut cheese on my post about roasted vegetable salad.

Bake an additional 15 minutes until crust turns slightly brown on the bottom. At the very end, I like to brown the cheese by turning on the broiler. I don't move the pan up near the broiler (so it's about 7 inches away) and broil for 2-3 minutes. Be careful - it can go from perfect to burned in seconds!

Optional: Garnish with fresh scallions and serve with a salad of spinach, tomato and grated carrot.