Over the past few months my friends and I have been running fractals in Guild Wars 2 on a pretty regular basis. I’ve always enjoyed fractals and wanted to get to the current level cap prior to the expansion. It has been quite a journey and we are now able to run a daily level 50 fractal! During the fractal progression, the character I was playing with changed a few times to adjust for the group. Because of this and the fact I don’t have a lot of money I still don’t have a character in full ascended armor. After a few weeks of figuring out our group composition I started running on my elementalist primarily. She is currently walking around with just enough agony resistance to run at level 50 (as long as it isn’t underwater). My current goals with fractals is to get lucky one day and have the fractal tonic drop. I really want it, more so than any of the fractal weapons. A few weeks back Arenanet announced their plans for fractals in the Heart of Thorns expansion. Right now it is the thing I’m looking forward to the most. I can’t wait to start working on that legendary back piece and running fractals beyond level 50.
In my group, one of my friends runs a condition engineer. Her character does not benefit from the plate of steak and asparagus as much as the others in the group. She needs something to increase her condition damage and its duration. Her go-to-food is the fancy veggie pizza. To recreate that pizza would be extremely expensive in the real world. The price of truffles has kept them far away from my kitchen. So we will downgrade slightly from the fancy to the super veggie pizza. This recipe is for the vegetable loving crowd. The pizza is covered in so many different vegetables and I love it. The pizza dough does take a bit of preplanning. You need to start your dough a day in advance. Beyond that the recipe is relatively easy. Also feel free to change up the toppings since this dough goes well with all kinds of pizzas. But if you want to be authentic to the super veggie pizza in Guild Wars 2, you’ll want to closely follow the ingredients list. Keep in mind I like my pizza to be pretty vegetable heavy, so feel free to reduce the amounts if you want.
Required Equipment: stand mixer with dough hook attachment, bowls, pizza baking sheet
Ingredients:
Dough (This recipe makes 2 large pizzas):
690 grams bread flour
9 grams active dry yeast
15 grams sugar
10 grams salt
8 grams garlic powder
455 grams water
15 grams olive oil
Nonstick spray (or additional olive oil)
Toppings for Super Veggie Pizza:
3 baby portobello mushrooms, sliced
4 cremini mushrooms, sliced
3 shallots, sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced
cooked spinach
1 eggplant, sliced ¼ inch thick
1 (14 oz) can artichoke hearts, halved
mozzarella cheese
pizza sauce
dried oregano
dried basil
You have to prepare the dough the full day beforehand. Place the flour, yeast, sugar, salt and garlic powder in the bowl of a stand mixer. In a small bowl, combine the water and olive oil. Pour the liquid into the bowl of the stand mixer.
Place the bowl in the stand mixer and mix on low with a dough hook until all the ingredients just come together. When it has formed into a ball, increase the speed of the mixer to medium and knead in the machine for five minutes.
Lightly flour your countertop and place the kneaded dough there. Smooth the dough into a ball.
Spray a large bowl with nonstick spray (or rub with olive oil). Place the dough ball into the bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator for 18-24 hours.
The next day remove the dough from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before you start to prepare your pizza. Punch the dough down and place it onto a lightly floured countertop. Form a ball and cut in half. Each of these halves will be one large pizza. Take each of the halfs and form into small balls. Cover with a clean towel and let it rest for a half hour.
While the dough is resting take the time to cook some of your vegetables. Place a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add the sliced mushrooms and shallots. Cook until they have slightly browned.
After the mushrooms, cook the spinach. Lastly, place the slices of eggplant in the pan and cook those for 4 minutes on each side (until slightly browned).
Preheat your oven to 475℉. After you have prepped all of your vegetables it is time to form each half of the dough. Once again make sure your countertop is lightly floured. Pound one ball of dough into a disk shape.
Continue to stretch the dough into a disk shape. If you do not feel comfortable with this next step feel free to use a rolling pin to stretch the dough. One issue with the rolling pin is you won’t get the nice outer lip in the pizza for the crust. The best way to continue stretching the dough is to lightly pull the dough. This video helped me understand how to spread dough without a rolling pin.
After your dough is to the size you would like place it on a baking tray. First, spread some pizza sauce. Add as much as you like, this is your pizza after all! Next, sprinkle with oregano and basil to give the sauce that extra flavoring.
Place a layer of cheese. Follow this with the mushroom and shallots. I place my toppings in this order because I’ve found that placing vegetables directly onto the sauce creates too much liquid between your pizza and cheese. Cheese first will help prevent a slippery pizza topping!
After that, add a little bit of cheese followed by a layer of cooked spinach.
Follow that up with the bell peppers and again a small amount of cheese. Finally add the eggplant and artichoke.
Place the pizza in the oven and bake for ten minutes. Turn the pizza and then bake for another 5 minutes or until the crust has browned nicely.
After the pizza has cooked, remove it from the oven and allow it to rest for at least 5 minutes. I know, it smells wonderful and you want to dive in, but if you cut it too early the toppings may slide off. It will also be too hot and you’ll burn your mouth. I’ve made this mistake TOO many times.
