Pizza

Pizza has been a bit of a conundrum for me. As with most low sat fat versions of dishes, inevitably there must be some compromise on flavours and textures but there are certain factors that make a pizza a pizza and not cheese and tomato on bread, and colour, texture and flavour all play a vital role. The trick is to find a balance and this is a matter of trial and error, and keeping a watchful eye for new products and thinking of innovative ways of using them and making substitutions.

For pizzas without bacon, sausage of various kinds or ham, Dominos pizza made with ‘Delight’ cheese is probably lower in saturated fat that anything you can make yourself, at (for a large margherita) 16g of sat fat for a weight of 1.1kg (8g for a ½ pizza portion or 1.5g/100g). What a shame that there seems no way for regular punters to buy this cheese. If anyone finds one, let me know!

Using 4 slices of Morrisons mozzarella and a jusrol pizza base+sauce, I can get sat fat down to just over 18g of for a weight of 730g (just over 9g for a ½ pizza portion or 2.5g/100g – and then have a salad as well, as this is 1/3 smaller than Dominos large size).

As soon as you want meat on your pizza as well though, Dominos sat fat levels rocket (even with Delight) and you can easily make a lower sat fat version.

Dominos pepperoni passion (with Delight) comes in at nearly 49g of sat fat for a weight of about 1.2kg (24g for a ½ pizza portion or 4.1%) compared to the recipe below which comes in at just under 24g of sat fat for a weight of 810g (just under 12g for a ½ pizza portion or 2.9g/100g – and then have a salad as well). That’s a gram-for-gram saving of 27% and a portion-for-portion saving of 51%, but still not an everyday meal!

~Jusrol pizza base+sauce
~1 84g pack of Deli24 Cheese & Pepperoni snacks (unrolled, with pepperoni cut into 5-6cm squares and cheese chopped into rounds)
~Oregano
~3 slices of Morrisons mozzarella

Adding a good slug of olive oil will increase the numbers a bit, but won’t do you any harm, and the additional ‘oiliness’ fools you into thinking it has come out of the cheese and meat. Feel free to add veg too (for me, it usually thinly sliced peppers, onions, mushrooms, sliced olives, jalapenos or whatever), or anchovies.

Sainsbury be-good-to-yourself bacon has 1g/100g of sat fat, so a pizza with bacon rather than pepperoni would be a healthier option, but sometimes only pepperoni will do!

If I’m doing a mixed pizza (different toppings in different parts), I will often use dabs of vegan pesto as one of my toppings. As this contains no cheese, the sat fats in it are from nuts and/or pine nuts. I’m only really concerned with managing sat fats from animal sources (including dairy) so it is probably no worse for me than vegetable toppings.

NB reduced fat mozzarellas are available, but I’ve not seen these in pre-sliced packs and I really do think that pre-slicing facilitates ‘portion control’ (as you can separate the pack out into groups of 3 or 4 slices, freeze them and defrost as necessary) and that even the limited ‘stringiness’ of Morrisons pre-sliced mozzarella (which is lower fat than e.g. Sainsbury’s, but is not billed as “reduced” or “low” fat) is more conducive to the whole experience of eating a pizza than using a “reduced” or “low” fat version that will be a bit rubbery.