Healthy Homemade Pizza (Making a Family Favorite Healthier)

Published: Oct 14, 2019 · Modified: Mar 22, 2026 by Leanne

Healthy Homemade Pizza is baked up thin and crispy with seasoned ground turkey, fresh mozzarella and lots of herbs and veggies. The recipe also includes tips and suggestions for making pizza healthier while still enjoying the comforts of a family favorite!

This post is sponsored by Dominion as part of the #foodloversunite campaign. As always, all opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that make Crumb Top Baking possible.

Overhead view of Healthy Homemade Pizza baked up in a cast iron skillet with a towel wrapped around handle and salad off to the side.

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As part of my continuing collaboration with Dominion, I was fortunate enough to have a follow-up appointment with Danielle, the in-store registered dietitian at my local Dominion store.

Shopping with the in-store registered dietitian at my local Dominion.

Danielle took me on a tour of my local Dominion store, where we discussed my nutritional goals and how we could make my family's favorite meal a little healthier.

Homemade pizza - a family favorite

It's probably no surprise that pizza is our family favorite. It is for many families.

We eat pizza multiple times a week. Most often, we're whipping up pita pizzas. They're easy to make and come together quickly, which is important on busy weeknights.

But on the weekends, we love to order pizza or make homemade pizza. And by 'homemade', I mean a boxed pizza kit.

For years, I've been trying to make my pizzas a little healthier by going with a whole wheat crust and opting for lots of veggie toppings. But this usually meant my husband and I were making (or ordering) two separate pizzas.

During my visit with Danielle, we discussed ways to make a healthier pizza that both my husband and I would enjoy but wouldn't make us feel like we were sacrificing the taste and comfort of our family favorite.

Luckily, my husband and I enjoy grocery shopping together and cooking up a storm in the kitchen. And being food lovers, we were both excited about the challenge of making our family favorite a little healthier. So, last weekend we headed to Dominion, which is our go-to for fresh, local produce, and picked up everything we needed to make this healthy homemade pizza!

Photo collage of my grocery cart with ingredients to make Healthy Homemade Pizza.

How to make homemade pizza healthier

Crust: Opt for whole wheat or whole grain, and where possible, go for a thin crust. If you're not filling up on crust, you have more room to fill up on veggies.
Sauce: There can be a lot of sodium in store-bought pizza sauce. I sometimes make a homemade marinara or use a simple no-salt added tomato sauce and add my own seasonings.
Seasonings: Forego the salt and opt for fresh or dried herbs such as oregano, basil or parsley. Fresh garlic is also a flavorful option. As for spices, you can heat things up with ground chipotle peppers, smoked paprika or crushed red pepper flakes.
Veggie toppings: Load up your pizza! Veggies can be a contentious topic for families with picky eaters. So, find those 2-3 vegetables that all of your family members enjoy and pile them on your pizza. While I'm sticking to the basics in this recipe, you can be as creative as you want with your veggie toppings.

Overhead view of ingredients to make Healthy Homemade Pizza arranged on a white surface.

Protein: Go for leaner meats such as ground turkey or chicken instead of ground beef, sausage or bacon. If this is a tough sell with your family, try mixing ground turkey or chicken with ground beef or sausage. Going half and half can be a good way to ease your family into leaner meats.
Healthy fats: Sprinkling hemp hearts on top of your pizza sauce is also a great way to add some healthy fats (Omegas 3 and 6) and protein to your pizza without affecting the taste.
Cheese: For a lot of people, cheese is the most important pizza topping. I don't mind light cheeses, but if this is too much of a sacrifice for you or your family, go with full fat cheese. Just use less of it and grate it so it goes further. Fresh mozzarella has a lower sodium content than regular mozzarella so keep that in mind when selecting your cheese.
Balance your plate: Instead of eating 3-4 slices of pizza and calling that your meal (which is usually what we do!), try eating only 1-2 smaller slices and pairing it with a side salad. An easy way to whip up a side salad is to buy pre-washed greens and top them with the leftover veggies from your pizza toppings.

Collage of four photos demonstrating how Healthy Homemade Pizza is assembled in a cast iron skillet.

Ingredients

So, with the above tips in mind, here's what you'll need to make this homemade pizza:

Whole wheat pizza dough
No-salt added tomato sauce
Hemp seeds
Nutritional yeast
Fresh basil and oregano
Garlic cloves
Seasoned ground turkey crumbles
Red and green peppers
Red onion
Tomato
Fresh mozzarella
Crushed red pepper flakes

Overhead view of Healthy Homemade Pizza assembled in a cast iron skillet and ready for the oven.

Key recipe tips

I like making this pizza in a cast iron skillet because it creates an extra crispy crust. If you plan to use one, make sure it's a 12-inch skillet. If it's smaller, your crust will not turn out thin. Alternatively, you can just use a standard sized 12-inch pizza pan.
This recipe calls for one pound of ground turkey because that's the size of a standard package. While the pizza only requires one cup of seasoned ground turkey, I like to cook the entire package and freeze the leftovers for future pizzas.
When it comes to adding tomatoes to pizza go for less juicy varieties that hold up well to slicing such as beefsteak tomatoes. Juicier tomatoes will make your pizza toppings watery.
If you don't have fresh herbs, you can use dried. Just reduce the amount to one-third as dried herbs are usually more potent than fresh.