Purely Pedestrian: Vegetable Party Pizzette

Pizzettes are small pizzas that are great to be served as a starter in parties especially if you are cooking for a larger crowd. Pizzettes can be prepared in advance and popped into the oven just before the party without requiring you to stand over the stove at that time. Two or three different combinations can be made and these pizzettes may be the most liked snack of the evening. Make these when you have children over and they will enjoy it, additionally you will be able to control the quality of ingredients that go into it.

At home I rarely order pizza, since my husband doesn't have cheese and hence pizza is out of the question. I made some pizzettes without cheese specifically for him, hopefully, he has this home-made pizza.

Ingredients for pizza base

Maida / All purpose flour - 2 cups (I used half wheat flour and half maida)

Yeast - 1 tsp

Sugar - 1 tsp

Salt - 1 tsp

Olive oil - 2 tbsp

Warm 1/4 cup water and add the sugar and yeast and mix and keep aside for 10 minutes.

Sift the two flours and add into a bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour and add the salt and yeast mix and knead to a soft dough. Add 1 tablespoon to the dough and knead again. Take another bowl, apply the reserved oil and place the dough in it.

The dough

Cover with a wet muslin cloth or towel and keep the bowl in a warm place for the dough to rise. Keep for an hour or two till the dough rises to double its size.

The Dough doubled in size

Ingredients for toppings

Tomato sauce - 1 cup

Cheese - preferably mozzarella. I used a mix of cheddar and mozzarella.

Vegetarian options like - tomato, onion, bell peppers, broccoli, olives, jalapeno, etc.

Non Vegetarian options like - chicken, chicken salami, etc.

The combinations I used was - tomato-onion-bell pepper; onion-broccoli; onion-tomato. In the past, I had combined cooked chicken pieces alongwith onion, pepper and tomato.

Grate the cheese. Chop the ingredients and combine 2 or 3 ingredients to make a few combinations and keep aside.

My tray of toppings

Procedure to make the pizzetes

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Pat the dough down and divide it into two equal sized balls. Grease the baking tray with olive oil. Take one ball of dough and using your fingers pat into a big round pizza of 1/4 inch thickness. You can make one huge pizza of this size if you want or use a round cookie cutter to cut out small pizzettes. Brush the top with olive oil and lay them on the tray leaving about 1 inch space between each pizzette. Spoon a little tomato sauce on each pizzette and spread it to cover the top completely.

Tomato sauce topped pizzettes

Top with any combination of ingredients and then top that with some grated cheese. Do the same with all the pizzettes. Put the tray into the oven and bake till done.