A bit of a delay due to moving back into school and all that, but here I am with the first of not one, but two posts!

First, some pizza! Okay, so all I did for this one was chop up the veggies and grate the “cheese”, but it came out so well! I think I finally mastered using my new pizza stone. The trick was making the dough the right thickness (I’d say a bit less than 1/4 an inch?) and putting the toppings on BEFORE putting the dough on the stone, otherwise it cooks as you’re assembling it and gets too crispy. Obviously, you can just bake this on a regular floured metal pan, but I highly recommend a pizza stone if you will make pizza frequently. While sort of a bitch to clean if you burn stuff on it, it’s pretty awesome.

Anyway, for the crust, we used this recipe off allrecipes.com and it’s come out the best of any I’ve tried so far. Although, this may only be because I actually figured out how to use my pizza stone. Here it is:

Vegan Pizza

Easy vegan pizza crust.
Print Recipe
Prep Time 15 mins
Cook Time 20 mins
Total Time 35 mins
Servings 2

Ingredients
  

  • 1 cup warm water 110F/45C
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Instructions
 

  • Stir water, sugar and yeast together until dissolved.
  • Add the olive oil and the salt.
  • Stir in the flour until well blended. Let dough rest for 10 minutes.
  • Pat dough into pan or on to a pizza stone using fingers dipped in olive oil. If desired sprinkle basil, thyme or other seasonings on crust.
  • Top with your favorite pizza toppings and bake for 15 to 20 minutes in a preheated 425 degree oven.

I put homemade pesto made from farm share goods (fresh basil, nutritional yeast, olive oil, garlic and salt, add some almonds or pecans for a bit of pzazz and rev that in a food processor), diced tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini and grated Follow Your Heart Mozzarella cheese. I was too hungry/lazy to broil it for the 1-2 minutes it would take to thoroughly melt the cheese, but it was delicious anyway.

For some variations, you can make bruschetta to top your pizza by dicing a bunch of tomatoes, some onion and combining it with basil, salt, garlic and olive oil. I’ve made pizza topped with the cashew ricotta cheese from Veganomicon also and it was fabulous. Alternatively, you can go with plain sauce and veggies.