Making the perfect Lo-Dough pizza doesn't mean you need to buy specific ingredients.

Many people are slaves to recipes. They will look down a list and either see ingredient after ingredient that sounds unfamiliar or unobtainable and give up before they've started, or they'll see it as a challenge to get their hands on exact amounts of every last ingredient and make the recipe instruction by instruction. 

The reality for most savoury recipes is this - there is no exact science. Baking is a different kettle of fish altogether and recipes need to be followed, but for most savoury dishes, recipes are just guides - missing a couple of ingredients here or there or making the odd swap won't make much difference. It may even improve on the original - that's how new ideas come about... 

Here at Lo-Dough, we have a few ingredients we commonly use on most of our pizzas - passata and mozzarella being obvious candidates. Below we are going to give you our favourite alternatives for these and a few other ingredients.

Making a Lo-Dough pizza is quick, easy and as you'll see below, endlessly adaptable! 

Passata

We would usually recommend passata or a good quality pizza sauce (Nowt Poncy's pizza sauce is always a favourite of ours) on the base of your pizza. But here are some alternatives:

• Tomato puree loosened with a little water
• Spreadable cheese/creme fraiche (to make a Bianca pizza)
  
  
  
• A red pepper puree
• A fresh tomato sauce (cook sweet tomatoes down in extra virgin olive oil with a hint of garlic and basil) or try our tinned tomato and pepper sauce
• Hummous
• Gravy
• Butternut squash puree

• Curry sauce
• Marmite

Grated mozzarella

Most of our pizzas call for grated mozzarella, but you could also try:

• Fresh mozzarella
• Cheddar, Emmental or any other good melting cheese
• Spinach and ricotta 

Fresh Herbs

Fresh herbs can be mixed and matched no problem. Basil is the classic fresh herb on pizza... but chopped parsley is nice and on some occasions, coriander can work too (our tikka and fajita pizzas are perfect examples here). Similarly, young thyme leaves will be nice... when they are still green and not too woody. Fresh oregano/marjoram is hard to come by, but if you can find it, use it! 

Dry Herbs

The classic dry herb for pizza is oregano. But you could use herbs de Provence, mixed Italian herbs, thyme, basil or marjoram. Play around. Spicentice's Italian rub is a great mixture of herbs and spices too!   

Meat and veg

When topping a pizza, just use what you have around. No pepperoni? Try chorizo or salami. No chicken? Swap for ham or just go veggie - your cheese is supplying plenty of protein anyway. Vegetables themselves can be mixed and matched as you like too - either sweat them off briefly before topping or cut them nice and finely to ensure they cook on top of your pizza. 

Lo-Dough

When making low-calorie, low-carb pizza, the one thing that can't be replaced is the Lo-Dough base. At just 39 calories and 2.2g of carbs per pizza base, there is nothing else like it and this really is the only key ingredient for incredible tasting low-calorie and low-carb pizza!