Can pizza be healthy?

When you think about pizza, you probably think about a company who will bring a tasty meal right to your door but also the fat that seeps from the crust and meat which cannot be good for you.

Pizza is a traditional Italian dish which was made with a thin crust, topped with tomatoes, cheese and olive oil. However, over the years the American take on the pizza with double meat, shortening laden bases and cheese stuffed crusts.

As I mentioned earlier, tomatoes have a number of anti-cancer chemicals in them including lycopene, and a traditional margherita pizza contains a double dose of them. Plenty in the sauce and tomatoes as a topping as well.

An interesting study conducted in Milan, Italy between 1995 and 1999 found that men were 40% less likely to suffer a heart attack if they ate pizza once a week, but once again this is the Italian style pizza.

Having read all this I decided to try my hand at making my own pizza. I’ve done this before and it has ended in disaster. Today’s effort was much better, firstly buying a pizza stone made a huge difference, giving the crust an extra crispiness. Making the dough in my breadmaker, an appliance which has been out of action for about four years, was also a great success giving me a light fluffy dough, the foundation of a good pizza.

Pizza sauce is something which you’ll find on many supermarket shelves, but that’s just not the way I like to do things. Instead I got a couple of cans of tomato products, after checking the ingredients, and mixed them with some garlic and herbs, leaving them to simmer for 30 minutes.

The end result? My margherita pizza was fantastic, and while there are a few tweaks I need to make to my technique, I think this is one meal which will be promoted to the regular rotation.

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