Whole-Wheat Crust Zucchini Pizza with Garlic and Fresh Basil

My lazy days have gone undercover today. We are to have a big storm around dinner time so I decided that today was the veggie pizza. I got this recipe on an AOL site called Kitchendaily. I probably started the pizza dough too early, but Jim was on a conference call in my office, so I had to do something quiet. The dough was very easy.
Ingredients:
1 ½ C whole wheat flour
1 ½ C unbleached all-purpose flour plus more for kneading
Fine sea salt
1 package active dry yeast
1C warm water (100-110 F)
½ t sugar
1/4C EVOO plus more for grill and drizzling
To make the dough:
1. I warmed the cup of water in the microwave and got it too hot. I cooled it down to 110 degrees and added the yeast to proof with the sugar in the bowl of my Kitchen Aid.
2. Meanwhile in a separate bowl, I combined the two flours. I did not put the salt in as yesterday on the Barefoot Contessa she was making pizza dough and she said adding the salt too soon impedes the yeast. She recommended combining most of the flour into the yeast mixture before adding the salt.
3. I proofed the yeast for about 10 minutes and added the oil to the yeast. I then mixed in most of the flour by hand and put it in the mixer with the dough hook. I kneaded it on the machine for 6 minutes adding very little additional flour. The dough was perfect.
4. I oiled a clean bowl and formed a ball turning it over in the oiled bowl. It is to rest in the bowl and rise for at least 90 minutes.
5. When ready to cook place a pizza stone in the middle of the oven and heat to 500 degrees. When the oven reaches the temperature, set the timer to 30 minutes to heat the stone.
Topping:
2 medium zucchini
Course sea salt
1(28 oz) can whole tomatoes in juice, juices drained
5 oz fresh mozzarella
1 small red onion
2 large garlic cloves
A large handful of fresh basil leaves
Chili pepper flakes (optional)
As I was looking at the ingredients I went he is going to hate another just veggie pizza, so I got out of the freezer some pork sausage that we buy in TN and I had left over sliced Mushrooms.
1. First open the canned tomatoes and drain in a colander. Next I cut up the garlic very thin, the onion on a mandolin very thin and one zucchini sliced lengthwise also on the mandolin.
2. Warm a grille pan and brush the zucchini with olive oil both sides. When the grille pan was hot I grilled the zucchini both sides. Next I cooked the sausage and then I cooked the mushrooms all in the same grille pan.
3. Roll out the dough into 4-10” rounds. Take the tomatoes out of the colander and one by one squeeze into a bowl. Add sea salt. Spread the tomatoes evenly on the 4 pizza rounds. Next sprinkle the sliced garlic and onions. My onion was rather large and Jim is not found of onion so I only used about a third on 3 of the pizzas. Next I divided the sausage and mushrooms on 3 of the pizzas. I sliced the mozzarella in my slicer and divided among the 4 pizzas, pinching it into smaller pieces. Take the grilled zucchini and place on the 4 pizzas. Drizzle with olive oil and coarse salt. So one pizza was true to the recipe.
4. Transfer each pizza to the stone and cook for 6 minutes each. I placed them on a plate on top of the stove to keep warm. Cut them all at once and served on the warm plates. I would call these personal pan pizzas. So it should serve 4-6. I ate ¾ of the all veggie pizza and we have ¾ of one pizza left.

Jim said without prompting, this is great pizza. I am not sure he would have been as happy without the meat. I had the pizza true to the recipe and I have to say this is the best crust and topping to date. The canned and drained tomatoes without being sauce made it a more white pizza. Both Jim and I hate what we call tomato yuck on our pizza. By the way, we got a small drizzle of rain, no big thunder storm.