Ultimate Veggie Pizza
This vegetarian pizza recipe will delight vegetarians and carnivores alike. It’s fresh and full of flavor, featuring cherry tomatoes, artichoke, bell pepper, olives, red onion and some hidden (and optional) baby spinach. You’ll find a base of rich tomato sauce and golden, bubbling mozzarella underneath, of course. The trick with loaded veggie pizzas, as many pizza shops seem to forget, is that they require a few extra minutes in the oven to develop full flavor and structure. Don’t stop baking until the cheese is deeply golden in spots. Otherwise, you might end up with floppy pizza that doesn’t live up to its true potential.
Start with my easy whole wheat pizza dough, and this recipe is ready in about 45 minutes, start to finish. This vegetable pizza is quicker and healthier than delivery!
This pizza starts with a base of my whole wheat pizza dough. As an alternative, use one pound of store-bought pizza dough, which you can divide by two to follow my recipe exactly (or just make one large pizza—that also works with store-bought dough).
Then we’ll add the following. This recipe is truly very flexible—you can skip any of them if you don’t like ’em or don’t have ’em. Use more of one for less of another. Easy!
Ingredients:
- 1 batch easy whole wheat pizza dough or 1 pound store-bought pizza dough
- 1 cup pizza sauce or marinara
- 2 cups baby spinach
- 2 to 3 cups (8 to 12 ounces) shredded low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese
- ½ cup jarred or canned artichoke, cut into 1” pieces
- ½ cup fresh red or orange bell pepper, cut into narrow 2″ strips
- ½ cup red onion, cut into thin wedges
- ½ cup halved cherry tomatoes
- ½ cup pitted Kalamata olives, halved lengthwise
- ½ cup sliced almonds (optional)
- Optional garnishes: Fresh basil (small leaves or torn), red pepper flakes and/or finely grated Parmesan cheese