There’s an age-old debate that rages in households and cafeterias all over the world – is pizza good or bad for you?
On one hand, one could argue that it is indeed a health food – it contains vegetables (tomato sauce), dairy (cheese), bread (crust) and often meat. On the other hand, one could argue that all those things are bad for you – after all, does Tom Brady do tomatoes (nightshades) or dairy?
It’s all about perspective, we suppose.
That’s why for this installment of Go Try It, we wanted to come up with a way to appease both sides of the debate – those who think pizza is junk food and those who think it’s a vital staple of a balanced, nutritious diet. (For the record, we’re on the side that thinks it’s just fantastic.)
And by appease, we mean we wanted to try our hand at making our own pizza at home that would be tasty and satisfying to all people, regardless of whether they view the famous food as a health benefit or an escape from health food.
Our first stop was the Concord Food Co-op. The co-op is all about the natural, wholesome, healthy ingredients, so it was a natural place to start.
We first browsed for sauce. While we didn’t find anything specifically labeled as pizza sauce, there was a good selection of pasta sauces, and since tomato sauce is just tomato sauce to us, we figured a jar of Field Day organic roasted garlic pasta sauce would do the trick.
Next was a search for cheese. As far as shredded, melty cheese goes, the options were fairly limited at the co-op, but we were able to grab a bag of Organic Valley shredded organic mozzarella cheese.
For toppings, we wanted to keep it simple, so we found a pack of Applegate Naturals uncured turkey pepperoni.
The co-op doesn’t carry fresh pizza dough, so we went down to Market Basket on Storrs Street to see what they had. To our surprise, there was quite a selection there, and one type immediately caught our eye: beer.
The dough is made with beer instead of water. This is the part that should please those who don’t care for organic and all-natural pizzas.
After trying to toss the pizza dough like they do in real pizza shops – and failing – we ended up just working the dough out on a cookie sheet to make it as even as possible. Once that was settled, we spooned on some sauce, sprinkled a healthy portion of cheese and added as much pepperoni as we could fit.
The bag the dough came in said to cook it at 475 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, but since our crust was a little thicker, we left it in for a good 15 minutes.
When it came out, it was a wonder to behold. Sure, there were three pretty huge bubbles, but it looked rustic and borderline fancy.
We cut it into quarters and went to town. This pizza was excellent. It felt healthier than we expected, and, somewhat sadly, the crust didn’t taste like beer. That said, it was still very good and didn’t take anything away from the experience. The sauce may have been the best part, as that garlic gave a nice little zip. The turkey pepperoni was slightly less satisfying than the real deal, but it worked well in this context.
Next time you get a craving, try whipping up your own pie at home.
