Sausage & Vegetable Deep-Dish Pizza

This is the pizza recipe that I made to go along with the pizza dough from my previous post. Contrary to my previous belief, pizza is actually not that hard to make from scratch with the help of modern technology (for me, specifically, this help came from my food processor's dough blender attachment). So try this out and enjoy - Corey really liked it!

Recipe Notes

The cooking times were very different for this recipe in my oven (much shorter), so I would watch both the crust and the pizza carefully while it cooks. I don't like mushrooms so I left them out and added more zucchini. I think that green bell peppers would be great to mix in as well.

Nutritional Information (Per serving - 6 servings)
434 calories - 12.8 g. fat - 24.6 g. protein - 3.9 g. fiber

Ingredients

• 2 c. chopped zucchini
• 1/4 c. chopped onion
• 8 oz. package mushrooms, sliced (I substituted additional zucchini)
• 1/4 c. white wine
• 1/8 tsp. black pepper
• 2 c. fat free pasta sauce (I used Ragu Light Pasta Sauce with Tomato & Basil)
• 8 oz. hot Italian turkey sausage (I used Jenni-O's)
• 1 recipe Pizza Dough
• 1-1/2 c. shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

1. To prepare sauce, heat a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray and add zucchini, onion, and mushrooms to pan.

2. Saute 7 minutes or until lightly browned and soft.

3. Add wine and pepper, cooking 1 minute or until liquid almost evaporates.

4. Stir in pasta sauce. Remove from heat and cool.

5. Remove casings from sausage. Cook sausage in large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat or until browned, stirring to crumble.

6. Drain and add to sauce.

7. Prepare one recipe of pizza dough. Turn dough into a 13x9 inch baking pan greased with cooking spray. Gently press dough into pan and up the sides of the pan. Lightly spray the surface of the dough with cooking spray as well.

8. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand for 5 minutes. Remove plastic wrap and discard.

9. Spoon sauce mixture into crust. Bake on the bottom rack at 475 degrees for 20 minutes or until crust is browned. Remove from the oven.

10. Sprinkle both cheeses evenly over the top of the sauce. Bake on the middle rack for an additional 15 minutes or until crust is golden and cheese melts. (Watch in your oven - mine didn't take this long!)

11. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack. Cut into six squares and serve.