If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen the healthy pizza road test I did a few weeks back. On three different nights, I tested three different healthy pizza recipes to see if A) “healthy pizza” is even a thing that exists, and B) if it comes anywhere close to being a viable alternative to my beloved delivery pizza.
I learned a lot and came out of it with two out of three recipes that I’d actually make again, so I wanted to put together a compilation to show you how it all went down. Watch the video above to see more!
Healthy Pizza Recipe #1: Greek Yogurt Pizza Dough
On night one, I followed this recipe from Mess For Less for two ingredient pizza dough. It’s low calorie, low fat, high in protein and extremely easy.
In a nutshell, you mix up the two-ingredient dough, roll it out into a crust, bake it on its own for five minutes, take it out and add toppings, and pop it back into the oven until your cheese is the desired level of meltiness. Pretty simple as far as make-at-home pizza is concerned.
This recipe was quick, yummy, and tasted for the most part like an actual pizza (well, more like a flatbread, but still very similar). Depending what you add as toppings, you can really keep this pizza on the healthy side.
When I make it again, I’ll spend some more time rolling out the dough to get it really thin so it cooks up nice and crispy, like a thin-crust pizza.
The Verdict: Hit! Recipe here
Healthy Pizza Recipe #2: Cauliflower Crust Pizza
This recipe is what gave me the idea for this whole healthy pizza experiment in the first place. I’ve been wanting to try making a cauliflower crust forever, but I had heard it’s very labor intensive, so I felt like I needed to document the experience.
There are tons of cauliflower crust pizza recipes out there; I followed this one from iFoodReal. While it wasn’t necessarily a difficult recipe, it was a process.
First you rice the cauliflower (which is the point in my life when I first learned “cauliflower rice” is just finely chopped cauliflower). Then you bake the cauliflower. Then you strain the cauliflower, then strain it some more, mix it with other ingredients, form it into a pie shape, bake it again, and FINALLY get something resembling a crust that you can add toppings to—then bake it some more once the toppings are on.
For all the steps involved, I will say this pizza turned out very yummy. I heard from a lot of people who said their homemade cauliflower crust fell apart or was too floppy to hold toppings, and mine had neither of those problems, so the recipe is obviously a good one. It just takes a while to make.
The Verdict: Hit! Recipe here
Healthy Pizza Recipe #3: Gluten Free Pizza Dough
Gluten free pizza seems to be something of a unicorn. Sure, you can eliminate eggs or cheese or meat from your pizza recipe, but making one without any of those things? I mean, can you even call what’s left a pizza? After trying this recipe, my vote is no.
I’m not gluten sensitive myself, so this was something I tried just for the heck of it, but it was a major bust. I used this recipe from the Simple Vegan Blog. Maybe it was my execution rather than the recipe that was off, but the result was a doughy, dirt-y, chalky mess that was hardly edible.
By the time I saw what the “crust” looked like, I didn’t even bother trying to use vegan cheese on it.
The Verdict: Miss
Two out of three isn’t bad as far as new recipes go, so I’m glad I decided to try this experiment and can fully endorse the first two healthy pizza options. I have to admit, though, on the last night of the week we ordered Dominos.
Do you have a healthy pizza recipe you swear by? I would LOVE to hear it.
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