Healthy Pizza Crust Ideas: Homemade and Easy

Homemade pizza crust is a great way to make a family-friendly and gourmet meal with just a little bit of work. Although traditional white pizza crusts are often not the healthiest options, there are a number of alternative crusts that you can use to make your pizzas more diet-friendly and healthier for the whole family.

Healthy Pizza Crust: Make Thin Crust or Flatbread Pizzas

To lower the amount of carbohydrates in your pizza, and increase the ratio of vegetables (like tomato sauce and toppings) to bread, one solution is to make thinner crust pizzas. Homemade pizza dough can be rolled thinner than usual, or even to just a tiny layer and made into a flatbread. One consideration to make is that although thin crust pizzas will cook through faster than thick crust, they should be pre-baked for a few minutes because they will need to develop a bit of a shell so they don't get soggy when you put the sauce on them.

If you aren't up for homemade crusts, but would still like to try flatbread pizzas, considering using pre-made flat breads such as pita bread or tortillas to make personal-size flatbread pizzas for the whole family. This is a great way for picky eaters to be able to choose their own sauces and toppings on their pizzas.

Healthy Pizza Crust: Use Whole Wheat Flour

Another option for making a pizza crust healthier is to use whole wheat flour instead of white flour. Most recipes can accommodate a substitution of at least half of the white flour for whole wheat, and if you want more, you can just adjust the liquid to keep the dough the proper consistency. Whole wheat flour will still make a nice, soft crust (assuming you use a leavening agent such as yeast in your dough), and it is a significantly healthier grain.

Healthy Pizza Crust: Yellow Squash or Zucchini Crust

Many people have heard of the idea of using spaghetti squash, which has an interior that is stringy and looks a lot like spaghetti, instead of real noodles when serving pasta. Few people know that along a similar line, you can make a great pizza crust using a squash base instead of flour.

To make a squash pizza crust, you will need to grate a lot of zucchini and squash and press as much water out of it as you can. Then mix it together into a bit of a dough with some egg, baking powder, and a little bit of flour to hold it together. It should be spread onto the pizza stone or pan in a layer less than an inch thick, and then the squash crust will need to be baked for at least 20 minutes before putting toppings on it and baking again.

Healthy Pizza Crust: Don't Spoil the Health

A quick caution is in order that the least healthy part of a pizza is often not the crust, but the cheese and toppings. In order to make your healthy crust pizza actually a fully healthy pizza, you should use low-fat cheese and toppings, which can still be combined into a delicious pizza.