Flat Bread Pizza with Ricotta & Summer Vegetables

I went to school in Central Vermont where finding a chain restaurant can be extremely difficult (much to my delight!), instead you find these wonderful independently owned restaurants with the most fresh and wonderful foods. One of my all time favorites places was an hour away, over a dirt road mountain pass that always had my brakes screaming for a reprieve by the bottom of the mountain. American Flatbread is an all organic operation that is only open to the public on the weekends and let me tell you - it is worth the sometimes two hour wait to get a pie! At their Waitsfield, VT location they have two large fire pits on the farm that you can sit at with your glass of wine and enjoy nature while you wait for your table. The only problem with American Flatbread is that they are in Vermont and I am in Maryland and because of that I am going to try to make my own American Flatbread inspired pizza!

Now I just needed a great flat bread dough recipe. Conveniently a cousin of mine and her husband are running a video cooking show called Natural Fusion Videos, where they are teaching you their recipes while demonstrating them and one of the first videos I watched was on how to make your own flat bread pizza. The recipe below is for half of the dough they call for (original recipe makes enough for 2 - 14" pizzas approximately ). Please feel free to check out their site as well for new ideas and demonstrations, they are just getting started but already have a great handful of tasty videos up.

Flat Bread Pizza with Ricotta & Summer Vegetables: Serves 3-4

1C Flour
1/2tsp Salt
1-1/2tsp Baking Powder
1-1/2tsp Vegetable Shortening
1/3C Milk
1C Mozzarella (I am using part skim)
1/2C Ricotta
2tsp Olive Oil
2-3 Large Onions - Thinly Sliced
8oz Fresh Spinach
1 Zucchini - Sliced
1C Tomato Sauce
1TB Fresh Basil (or 1tsp dried)
1 Garlic Clove - Minced
Salt & Pepper

Place olive oil and onions with some salt in pepper in a large saute pan over medium heat and caramelize the onions for 30 minutes until they turn a nice deep golden brown, add the zucchini to the pan with some salt and pepper and cook with the onions for an additional 10 minutes .

While the vegetables are cooking we can make our dough. In a bowl use an electric mixer and mix flour, salt, baking powder, vegetable shortening and milk until the dough has fully incorporated all ingredients and pulled away from the bowl. Remove the dough to a floured surface and with a rolling pin roll it out, then fold the edges in towards the center and roll it out again. Repeat this step once more, then move your dough to a pizza pan and stretch to fit the shape of your pan (make sure to grease the pan). The folding and rolling method is something I learned on Natural Fusion which helps to make clean edges on the pizza instead of rough ones.

Now lets make our sauce. Mix together tomato sauce, basil, garlic and some salt and pepper and place in a small sauce pot and bring to a low simmer and let it cook for 5 minutes.

Now for the fun part! Time to assemble. Remove the sauce from the heat and spread evenly over the dough (I only used 1/2C of the sauce but I don't like a lot of sauce on my pizza). Next place the spinach down, I know it looks like a lot but trust me it will wilt down virtually paper thin. Add the ricotta cheese in little dollops all over followed by the mozzarella, ending with the caramelized vegetables on top. Place in a 480° oven for 15 minutes. Remove, slice into 8 slices and enjoy!

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WW:11 Points Plus / serving @ 3 slices
7 Points Plus / serving @ 2 slices
4 Points Plus / serving @ 1 slice