Tonight I was on duty for cooking, and pizza was on the
menu. I have been trying to watch my food intake in order to lose some weight,
so I wondered if I could significantly reduce the joules of a homemade pizza
and still have it taste good and fill me up.
I figured that the easy way to reduce the energy would be to
have a very thin base and cut down on the cheese. To keep up the flavour I
included some reduced fat hot salami. See the table below for its energy
effect. To make it filling I used more mushroom, capsicum and onion than might
normally be seen on an Italian style pizza.
Ingredients
and kilojoules
|
Mass (grams)
|
kJ
|
Base
|
150
|
1120
|
Sauce
|
25
|
65
|
Mushroom
|
40
|
40
|
Capsicum
|
63
|
63
|
Ham
|
24
|
200
|
Mozzarella
|
50
|
650
|
Hot
Salami
|
20
|
200
|
Red
Onion
|
20
|
80
|
Total
|
392
|
2418
|
|
I made the base with flour, water, yeast, a tad of salt and sugar, milk
and a little olive oil. I made enough for 3 pizzas, 150 grams for mine, and 2
lots of 300 grams for the family pizzas. With some research I totalled up
1120kJ for my 150 gram base.
I was able to roll the base out enough to almost cover my standard sized
dish. Leggo’s pizza sauce was used. As can be seen from the table, of the
toppings the ham and the salami were the next highest energy source after the
cheese. I guess what I take from this is that a lot of vegetables can be used
without significantly increasing the energy but I need to go easy with the
meats. I think that 50gms of Mozzarella cheese is about as low as you can go
and still call it a pizza. I was surprised that the Mozzarella had a lower
energy count than the “light” tasty cheese that I was considering as an alternative.
I did not use olive oil or seasoning, figuring that there would be
enough of these flavours provided by the processed meat. On removing the pizza
from the oven I found it to be still reasonably “moist”, the moistness being
provided by the vegetables rather than oily products that I more typically use
as toppings. (Extra cheese, pepperoni, olive oil.) I found the eating to be
very satisfying. There was plenty of flavour; it was reasonably filling and
contained less than 600 calories. It did an excellent job as my main meal for the day.
