National Pizza Day - Seafood vegetable pasta spelt pizza with lemon zest

Two slices of yummy healthy pizza

Inspired by National Pizza Day, I made spelt pizza with leftover vegetable & seafood pasta today and it blew my mind.  Third time was the charm as is often the case when I cook.

Yesterday's vegetable and seafood pasta

Pizza Base
I've experimented with this pizza base recipe by Chef John and I quite like it. I use 1/3 of all ingredients since it is just for me. It is enough for one meal plus leftovers for lunch. I usually need alot more flour to make it have that dough like consistency and not be too wet.

A few weeks ago I made a mushroom & pineapple pizza

For today's pizza, I rolled it out onto baking paper so I don't need too much oil and had lots of flour so it wouldn't stick.

I added finely processed raw carrot to the dough before rolling it out plus a sprinkle of cornmeal and a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil before it went into the oven. I forgot to crank it up so I started on 180 degrees celcius then switched it up to 200. I cook the base until it looks pretty cooked before adding sauce and toppings. Today that was about 30 minutes.

Pizza Sauce 
So today's masterpiece had a passatta with crushed garlic and olive oil pizza sauce prepared about 30 minutes before the base was ready.

Pizza Toppings
Then I threw leftover pasta on top which was heavy on vegetables and light on pasta - gluten free wholemeal penne, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, chestnut mushrooms with heinz tomato cuppa soup (I was in a rush yesterday!).

I also added mozarella, parmesan cheese, chilli powder, seafood mix, dried oregano, fresh rosemary, fresh sage and lemon zest. I drizzled extra olive oil 20 minutes later because I forgot to do it earlier. About 30 to 40 minutes total cooking time then out of the oven. I added some fresh parsley, rocket and salt.

Pizza just out from the oven

The Taste Test
The crust was a bit thicker than I like but it was so tasty - the carrot and cornmeal definitely made a difference.

The only downside is how long it takes to make the base as I rested the dough for the suggested 3.5 hours and used a pyrex bowl to cover it rather than a teatowel. The base was so fresh and worth the wait.

The occasional hint of lemon zest was delicious. It was healthy and I was so proud of it that I had to blog about it so that I can try to make it again.

Leftover pizza the next day 

Secret flavour boosters:

• Lemon zest,
• Fresh rocket, 
• Fleur de sel camargue salt, 
• Fresh herbs like rosemary, sage and parsley, 
• Carrot in the dough and cornmeal on the top,
• Organic ingredients where possible,
• Good quality extra virgin olive oil before cooking the base and also on top of all of your toppings, and
• Your favourite toppings. 

If you've never made pizza from scratch, I recommend you try it. I've tried it nearly a dozen times and practice does make almost perfect!

These are some other recipes I checked out today to figure out how I would add the carrot and lemon zest:

• Carrot Pizza
• Tomato Lemon Zest Pizza