Best Healthy Pizza Recipe

It’s loaded with veggies and sprinkled with Parmesan, with a tangy bold red sauce and a thin crust. Yes, this is the BEST healthy pizza you’ll find.

People often ask us, what’s your favorite thing to cook? And if you know us, you won’t be surprised by the answer. PIZZA. After our honeymoon in Italy, Alex and I have spent the last ten years honing the absolute best way to make homemade artisan pizza. In fact, we’ve gotten a little nerdy about it. We’ve figured out how to make the best crust, sauce, and a to-die-for margherita pizza. We can do taco pizza and classic cheese pizza. But what about if you want something…a little lighter? We were posed with a challenge: Can you make a healthy pizza recipe? Oh, can we ever. Here’s everything about how to do it.

What makes a healthy pizza?

So you want to make a healthy pizza? First, let’s talk about what makes an unhealthy pizza. One slice of Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza is 300 calories. That pizza is loaded with gooey cheese, meat, and has a carb-loaded crust. So: want a healthy, fresh homemade alternative? Here are the features of this pizza that makes it healthy:

Homemade thin crust: This pizza uses our easy thin crust pizza dough. It’s made with simple ingredients (flour, olive oil, water) and because it’s thin, it has significantly less calories than a fluffy crust.
Super flavorful pizza sauce: Red sauce brings big flavor without big calories. This one is our easy pizza sauce, a fan-favorite recipe that takes only 5 minutes and tastes like Italy. (Really.)
Limited cheese. This healthy pizza has only 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese. It’s just enough to bring in a savory flavor, but there’s so much flavor in the veggies and sauce you don’t need to load on cheese. (For a vegan pizza, head to Our Best Vegan Pizza.)
Lots of veggies. Healthy isn’t just about calories: it’s about vitamins and nutrients. This pizza is topped with peppers that are loaded with vitamin C, and leafy green nutrient-dense arugula.

How many calories? One slice of this healthy pizza recipe is 96 calories. That’s about 1/3 the calories of a delivery pizza. Even better, it’s got the added vitamins and nutrients of fresh, colorful veggies. Dinnertime win!

Tips for making the best healthy pizza

How to make this best healthy pizza recipe? We’ve got a few tips for the best ever pizza that’s fresh and healthy.

Use a pizza stone. This is our number 1 tip for homemade pizza recipes: use a pizza stone! It’s what makes the crust perfectly crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Pizza stones are inexpensive and last for years; here’s the pizza stone we recommend.
Pizza peels are handy. To get the pizza onto that hot stone, a pizza peel is helpful! It’s a paddle that throws the dough onto that blazing hot surface. Our favorites are this aluminum pizza peel or super pizza peel.
Accessorize with salad & fruit. To keep this healthy pizza part of a healthy meal: accessorize it with salad and fruit! Our Favorite Chopped Salad, Best Kale Salad, or Wedge Salad would go well here. Or just go with veggies and Healthy Ranch. A great “dessert” would be green apple slices and our chocolate hummus.

Video: How to make pizza dough

The most technique-driven part of making pizza is making homemade dough. Because learning to make something like dough requires actually showing you, we’ve made a video to show the dough-making process. Here are a few tips about the dough to remember when making it: then watch the video above to see it in action:

Make the dough 1 hour before serving OR make in advance. Making the dough takes only 15 minutes of hands on time. Then it rests for 45 minutes to proof before it’s ready to stretch. If you don’t have 1 hour before serving, you can make it up to 3 days in advance and refrigerate.
Thin crust pizza dough is easy to shape: roll it! This pizza dough is easier to shape than our Pizza Dough Master Recipe because you roll it out with a rolling pin! This crust is easy to make: see the video above.
Use Tipo 00 flour if you can find it. Our favorite flour for making pizza dough is what the Italians use: it’s called Tipo 00 and it makes the crust light and fluffy. You can find at it some grocery stores or online here.

This recipe is…

Vegetarian. For vegan, go to our Best Vegan Pizza.