Raw pizza

You might be saying to yourself, "raw pizza..gross," as images of soggy dough covered by cold sauce and topped with shredded uncooked mozarrella cheese float through your head. But no, this recipe wasn't invented to perpetuate the chipmunk-inspired "raw food" fad. Ovens and elevated cooking temperatures are actually required. In fact, I am calling this a "raw" pizza only because the recipe doesn't ask you to bake the pizza with the various toppings and cheese on top. Instead, you bake your crust, load it up with soft cheese(s), veggies, and herbs and wha-la! You eat it as is. No further baking required. I am a fan of this idea because of the resultant food textures. You have (in theory, at least) a crisp dough and crust, topped with a subtle and soft cheese, and then with herbs and flavorful and crunchy greens and veggies. Yum.

It is perhaps unfortunate that today I had one of those strange moments of ill-conceived inspiration during which I said to myself something along the lines of the following: "Hmm I have a great idea. How about I substitute a different ingredient for everything that is actually listed in the original recipe and hope for the best?" Well I wouldn't exactly call my product the best, but it was good and more than anything else I'd say that my raw pizza pointed to the potential awesomeness that might result if one actually, say, followed the instructions that the recipe provides.

By this point I know that you are gripping your seat and wondering what on earth i did to change around this recipe. Well, please, allow me tell you. Firstly, I changed the flour. The recipe calls for 1.5 cups of all purpose flour. Instead, I mixed together 0.5 cup buckwheat flour, 0.5 cup pastry flour, and 0.5 cup whole wheat flour. Secondly, the recipe calls for 0.25 cup butter. In my attempts to cook a bit more on the healthy side (and despite my proclaimed love for butter that we discussed previously) I substituted 1/4 cup of olive oil for the butter. Third, the recipe calls for rolling sesame seeds into the dough before it is baked. I simply skipped this step completely. Finally, I completely changed the vegetable topping, sauteing spinach and onion with olive oil and lemon juice and spreading on top of ricotta and goat cheeses instead of layering thin slices of zucchini.

I do think that this recipe has a lot of flexibility to adjust, alter and substitute. While I was happy with the flavor of the dough I was disappointed that it was not more crisp. Perhaps next time I will have to return to my use of butter. All in all though I was pleased with this recipe and I definitely plan to revisit it in the future.

In any case the original can be found here, on the Chocolate and Zucchini site.