Coriander Pesto Vegetable Pizza with Multi-grain Pizza Base for Home Baker's Challenge

Home Baker's Group, a group of Home Baker's having fun and learning to bake. Every month a host will give her choice of bake and bakers from this group will bake the posted recipe within a month, between 10th -12th of each month we will post our tried recipes in our respective blogs.

For the Month of April, Divya Prakash of Divya's Culinary journey, suggested baking Pizza. We were given 4 different recipes. I chose to bake the Pesto Pizza with veggie topping.

The Joy of Baking something from scratch, it is unexplainable!!! When it turns out so good and everybody @ home enjoys it with oohh and ahh!!! Then all the sweat and toil in the Kitchen, Vanishes into thin air!!!! Loved this Challenge totally. Loved Experimenting with the base and the sauce. Thanks for a lovely challenge.

I Chose to make the base with Multi-grain Atta and since i didn't have time to get basil, i made coriander pesto inspired from Sanjeeta's Lite Bite.

Ingredients

For the Base

2 Cups Multi-grain Atta/Flour

1 Cup Wholemeal Flour

1 packet Instant yeast (2.5 tsp)

1 tablespoon Sugar

1 teaspoon Salt

1.5 Cups Warm Water

3 tablespoon Olive Oil + Some more for coating the bowl

For Stuffing

1 Capsicum, thinly sliced

1 Onion, Chopped

1 Medium tomato, deseeded, Chopped

½ teaspoon Oregano

½ teaspoon Rosemary

½ teaspoon Red Chili Powder

1 Cup Shredded Mozzarella cheese

For Coriander Pesto : Recipe Inspired from Sanjeeta's Lite Bite

1 Bunch of Fresh Coriander leaves/Cilantro

handful of Walnuts

2 green chilies

4-5 Garlic Cloves

¼ Cup Olive Oil

Method

Preparing the Dough

Take the Flours, yeast, sugar and salt in a Large Bowl. Whisk well to mix. Add Warm Water to this mixture and start kneading the dough. Add Olive Oil as and when required and make a Smooth dough.
The temperature of water is more important while working with yeast. Hot water might kill the yeast and Cold water too does the same. How i determine whether it is in correct temperature? I pour a teaspoon of water on my wrist, it must be warm enough, but shouldn't scald the skin. The Temperature on the thermometer must read (95-110F).

After making the smooth dough, oil it well and the bowl, cover with a kitchen towel and keep it in a warm place to proof. I kept it in my Oven, with the light on. Let it sit this way for an hour. Since i was using Multi-grain Atta, i kept it for 1.5 hours.
After the said time, it will be doubled in size. Punch down the dough, to release the air inside, and fold it inside from all the sides and keep the folded side down and let it rest in a warm place for another 30 minutes.

Making Coriander Pesto

Wash and Chop the Coriander leaves, Keep the stalks, just remove the roots, if any.
Take all the ingredients into the mixer, except the olive oil.
Grind the ingredients to a paste and at the end add olive oil and run it again for a second for it all to combine well.
Transfer it to another bowl.

Preparing the Stuffing

Wash Capsicum and Tomato. Chop them thin.
Chop the Onion thin,
Take everything in a bowl, add the oregano, Rosemary and red chili powder and Toss it well.
I did this for the flavors to infuse well with the veggies also. Keep it aside until use.
You can skip this step and add the veggies straight to the Pizza separately as topping and the herbs also can be added separately.

Making the Pizza

After the second rise, Take the dough out on a kneading platform/Kitchen Counter top.
Preheat the Oven to 220C.
Knead for 5 minutes and Weigh the dough. My dough weighed 900 gms. So i divided the dough into 3 parts each weighing 300 gms.

Take one portion of the dough out and keep other two portions covered.
I don't have a pizza stone, so used my Pyrex pan (20 cm) for baking the pizza. Grease the pan with a teaspoon of olive oil and sprinkle little cornmeal/Sooji.
Take the dough and spread it on the Pan using your hands. Or else you can also roll it out using a Chapati Roller.
The base will be thick, if you want a thinner base, then stretch it more. Wanted to try the Good Thick-Crust pizza first. Poke the Pizza-base with Fork allover to avoid puffing-up while baking.
Bake the pizza base for 12 minutes. Since i was using Multi-grain base, so i blind-baked the base first.
After the blind bake, take it out. Spread 2 tablespoon of Pesto generously over the top. Sprinkle little red chili powder.
Next Spread 3- 4 tablespoon of Veggies marinating in the spices. Top it with generous amount of Shredded Mozzarella Cheese on top of the veggies.
Preheat the oven to 200C and bake it for 15-18 minutes until the cheese melts.Let it sit in the hot oven for a minute, then take it out.
Let it cool for 2-3 minutes. Slice it up and Serve with Tomato Sauce.

Verdict/Notes

Since it was a Multi-grain base, we didn't feel like having junk food.
If you want you make it using All Purpose Flour too, then that case, you will need only one Cup of water.
The Pizza Dough can be refrigerated for 3 days maximum. If you are planning to make the pizza within that time, then Roll out the base and Freeze them in Freezer Bags.