Seriously Green Pizza with Whole Wheat Quinoa Crust

Is this pretty or what? This is before the pizza is baked. See baked pizza below.

I make my own pizza all the time. It's gotten so that whenever I eat a commercial pizza I'm very disappointed. Home made pizza is so much better! I do tend to get into a rut because it's quicker to make when you're on automatic pilot. Believe me when I tell you that with just a little preplanning you can make pizza even on a work night. All you have to do is know what you're going to make, prepare a refrigerator dough ahead of time and preheat your oven to 500 degrees as soon as you get home.

This weekend I made my usual crust but went outside the box for a different sauce and toppings. I had a bunch of spinach from last Saturday's Farmer Market and needed to use it up. I've been cooking from "Let Them Eat Vegan" cookbook so I looked up "spinach" to see what ideas I could get. There was a Spinach Cashew Green Sauce that used 2 CUPS of packed, fresh spinach. Excellent! Then I figured I'd use the what was left of the spinach in a quick sauté of veggies for the top.

Here is an adapted crust recipe from "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day." This book should be part of your cookbook collection. You can have great bread without spending all day fussing around. I make this dough so often I know it by heart.

Whole Wheat Quinoa Pizza Crust
1-3/4 cups unbleached, unbromated flour
1-1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
2 TB wheat gluten flour
1-1/2 tsp kosher salt
2-1/4 tsp instant or active dry yeast
15 oz. tepid water

Directions
Make this at least one day ahead. It keeps for about 10-14 days so you can make pizza to your heart's content. Get out a big bowl and dump in all the ingredients in the order listed. Mix until combined and cover with foil and let sit for several hours until it rises (doubles). Put it in the fridge for when you want to make a pizza. That's it!

A very, very green sauce. 

Spinach Cashew Green Sauce
This sauce would be lovely over some pasta too. I found it a nice change from my usual white sauce that I put on my pizzas.

Ingredients
1-1/4 cup soaked, raw cashews
2 TB fresh lemon juice
3 garlic cloves, crushed or minced
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 cups fresh spinach, packed
2 TB virgin olive oil
fresh ground pepper, to taste

Directions
Add all to food processor and process until smooth. Spread on pizza before baking.

Pizza Topping
Ingredients
2 tsp avocado oil
6 mushrooms, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup or so of fresh spinach
1 head of broccoli, finely chopped
salt, pepper and wine to taste

Directions
Add oil and mushrooms to sauté pan and cook until mushrooms begin to release moisture. Add rest of ingredients and splash a bit of wine into pan and cook until spinach is limp. Dump into strainer to cool and drain.

Assemble Pizza
Hopefully you have had a pizza stone in the oven, preheating at 500 degrees for about an hour. Lightly flour a surface and take about a grapefruit sized piece of dough from your dough stash. Lightly flour and form into a ball and roll out into pizza shape. Place on a piece of parchment on a pizza peel. Lightly scrunch up the edges. Spoon the green sauce on the dough and spread to edges. I like to add some chopped sun-dried tomatoes to the top of the base. Add the cooked veggies and anything else such as kalamata olives. Slide pizza into oven on top of pizza stone and bake for 6 minutes; carefully slide parchment paper out from underneath pizza and cook for about 7-8 minutes longer.

Baked Seriously Green Pizza!