Veggie Pizza

One of my favorite pizzas is the veggie pizza at Davanni's in Minnesota.  In college, Davanni's was pretty much gourmet food for me.  I was poor.  Wicked poor.  I remember that at one point, I started doing some private tutoring.  And I called my dad and asked him if I could use my money from it for spending money rather than putting it towards tuition.  He agreed.

So, I made $30 every two weeks for the 2 hours of math tutoring.  I had to walk to the house and it was a REALLY scary walk.  I held pepper spray in my hand, in my coat pocket...finger on the trigger.  It was the good stuff that turns the bad guys face blue, so that it is easy to find him.  But I didn't have a choice.  

Anyways, the beauty of Davanni's is that our school had a deal with them and we could use our flex bucks there!  Talk about a dream come true.  I wasn't exactly a fan of the cafeteria.  I ate from the salad bar pretty much exclusively.  I was also going through a semi-vegetarian phase.

This veggie pizza from Davanni's was everything I needed.  The thing that makes this veggie pizza unique is that it has both black and green olives on it.  So delicious!  Everything is raw before baking the pizza, but since it is all sliced very thin, it works.  My version is pretty close.  

I was in a hurry when I made this tonight because I had some stuff going on.  I didn't have time to let the dough relax so I couldn't get it as thin as I would have liked.  But it was still yummmmmmy.  See how funny it looks:

Veggie Pizza

1 pizza crust (I used 1/2 of this recipe)

1/2 cup of tomato/pizza sauce

2 large baby bella mushrooms, very thinly sliced

5-10 green olives, sliced

5-10 black olives, sliced

1/4 green pepper, diced

1/4 red pepper, diced

some thin slices of red onion

1-2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese

1 tbsp olive oil

Place pizza stone in oven and preheat oven and pizza stone to 500 degrees F.

Roll/stretch out pizza dough on a pizza peel (or parchment paper) dusted with corn meal. Slide dough onto pizza stone in oven and cook for about 2 minutes. Precooking the crust makes it much easier to slide pizza into oven after toppings are on. Remove from oven using pizza peel.

Top pizza. First, coat with tomato sauce. Top with all the veggies in the order they are listed above. Cover everything with shredded mozzarella cheese. Brush crust with olive oil.

Slide pizza back onto pizza stone and cook for about 10 minutes or until cheese and crust are golden brown.

(Servings: 4, Prep time: 30 min., Cook time: 12 min., Difficulty: Easy)

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