Celebrate National Pizza Month and Vegetarian Day!

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{Today's both National Pizza Month and Vegetarian Day! To help you celebrate, we’ve got a guest blogger! Our Leisure Arts Food Editor, Celia Harkey, is offering up a free recipe for vegetarian pizza that fits both categories!}National Pizza Month sounds like a tasty occasion to celebrate, but my suspicions are most people celebrate pizza every month! So combine pizza with World Vegetarian Day, and I have a recipe that will fit the bill. This unique pizza recipe includes made-from-scratch dough and pairs tangy Granny Smith apples with the creamy texture and nutty flavor of Emmental, a cow’s milk Swiss cheese. So celebrate both holidays with a vegetarian pizza.If you have never made your own pizza crust, what are you waiting for? With this recipe, kneading to develop gluten (which gives the dough structure) is done using a heavy duty mixer with a dough hook attachment. If you don’t have this type of mixer, then combine the ingredients, as directed, and knead by hand. It will form slightly sticky dough, so I will share an easy way to work with the dough and not add too much additional flour (that could make dough tough). Dampen your countertop and then press a 24-inch piece of plastic wrap onto the damp countertop. Lightly sprinkle the plastic wrap with flour. Transfer the dough from the mixing bowl to the plastic wrap. Continue to follow directions in the recipe below.Our recipe calls for a pizza paddle (also called a pizza peel) to transfer the dough and a baking stone for your oven. Baking on a hot baking stone really does result in a crisp crust. If you don’t have either of these, don’t worry! I made the pizza by pressing each ball of dough onto a pizza pan. Then, I baked them on the lowest rack in my oven for longer than the 4 to 5 minutes called for, watching for the golden brown edges on the crust.As a cook, you have no doubt learned that sometimes you have all the ingredients and equipment called for in a recipe and sometimes you don’t. Or, sometimes the ingredients don’t fit into your lifestyle, especially if you are a vegetarian. This is where creativity comes into play. In the case of our pizza, you can change it up by adding finely shredded carrots, substituting pears for apples, changing the type of cheese, or adding some tahini spread on the crust. As a vegetarian, I know many of you are very resourceful when it comes to non-meat ingredients, so try some new combinations of ingredients on your pizza. Enjoy!PIZZA WITH GREEN APPLE & EMMENTAL SWISS CHEESEMakes 3 PizzasPreparation time: 20 minutes
Chilling time: 2 hour
Baking time: 4–5 minutesINGREDIENTS
Pizza Dough
1-1⁄3 cups water
1 oz. fresh yeast or 1-1⁄2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3-1⁄2 cups organic white flour
2 teaspoons salt (see Editor’s Note)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oilTopping
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons cane sugar or brown sugar
4 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into thin slices
9 oz. Emmental Swiss cheese, cut into thin slices or shredded
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oilPREPARATION
1. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer with the dough hook attached, mix the water, yeast and flour at low speed for 3 minutes. With the machine running, add the salt, switch to medium speed and continue kneading for an additional 7 minutes.
2. On a floured surface, brush the dough with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and roll the dough into a ball.
3. Transfer the dough in a medium greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rest for 2 hours in the refrigerator.
4. Meanwhile, prepare the topping: Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
5. Add apples to saucepan and stir gently so the apples do not break. Reduce heat to low. Cook apples until almost tender.
6. Place a pizza stone on the bottom rack of the oven and preheat to 450°F.
7. Using a dough scraper or a knife, divide the dough into 3 equal pieces. Form each piece of dough into a ball.
8. Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll each ball of dough on a floured surface into a very thin circle, 10 inches in diameter. Carefully transfer dough to a floured pizza paddle.
9. Place 1-1⁄2 ounces Emmental cheese on each circle. Arrange cooked apples on top, starting at the edges and overlapping in a fan-like manner, finishing in the center. Top again with 1-1⁄2 ounces Emmental cheese.
10. Use the pizza paddle to carefully slip one pizza onto the stone and bake for 4-5 minutes, until crust edges are golden brown. Remove and bake the other pizzas.
11. Drizzle the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil on pizzas and serve immediately.Editor’s Note: My personal preference is less salt (about 1 teaspoon) in my pizza dough, especially if I would be adding toppings that had salt – prepared pizza sauce, olives, capers, and salty cheese.If you’re all about eating healthy, you might want to check out Avner Laskin’s Deliciously Healthy Baking cookbook (that I found this recipe)! It includes more than 80 taste good and good for you recipes for daily and special breads, morning pastries, cakes, and power cookies! Yum!

The Deliciously Healthy Baking eBook is also available now! In fact, take a look at the whole Leisure Arts Deliciously Healthy cookbook series!