Almost Raw Mediterranean Pizza

This is based off mediterranean-style pita sandwiches a fellow intern and I used to make at Vegan House for “family dinners,” except we would also make Fantastic Foods falafel (that stuff is actually really good!) for our sandwiches and a side of frozen french fries with Vegenaise. Mmm, good times.

Anyway, the pizza: Baked the dough on the stone by itself, then spread on some homemade hummus and topped it with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, and olives. I would’ve garnished it with parsley except the herbs I have growing on my windowsill aren’t big enough to use yet! I then realized that if not for the dough, this pizza would totally be raw, if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Pizza Friday: Wheatball Pizza

This post contains many firsts! It was my first time cooking from Vegan on the Cheap, which just came in the mail a few days ago and I made 2 recipes from, my first time using the shredding blade on my food processor (which was fun, and I only did because I had the food processor out already but would not use if I hadn’t), my first time putting carrots in marinara sauce, and of course my first time making a “meatball” pizza.

The pizza was inspired by this delicious looking one posted on the PPK forums. The original purpose of my pizza was to see how it would taste with Veganomicon beanballs, but then I saw the wheatballs in VOTC and was eager to try them. I also made the marinara sauce from VOTC instead of Vegan With a Vengeance‘s pizza sauce.

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Belated Buffalo Tofu Pizza

As you were probably able to tell from the links I posted yesterday, I tried my hand at buffalo tofu pizza again. This time I was successful in not flipping it upside down in the oven! I was very proud of myself.

Square pizza! Because pizza bakes so much better on a stone (like, infinitely better this time than on the cookie sheet I used last week) and my little stone is the perfect size for a little rectangular pizza.

I made the buffalo tofu from this post, and used the marinade/sauce as the sauce for my pizza. I then put the tofu on and topped it off with a mixture of Teese and Daiya. I made some “blue cheese dressing” from this recipe and plopped some spoonfuls of that on top, something I hadn’t done last time I tried making this pizza.

The pizza overall was really good! It could’ve been a little hotter (I even added some Sriracha to the sauce to make it hotter), but that could have been due to the really cheap hot sauce I used (erm, Tops store brand). The blue cheese dressing I made was alright, though strangely some bites seemed to have more tang than others.

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Pizza Friday…?

Nope, sorry, it’s going to have to be Pizza Saturday this week.

Someone* forgot to remove the pizza dough from the freezer this morning, so it’s still defrosting and rising its second time.

I can, however, give you some hints on said pizza: mer, mer, and mer.

*okay fine, I admit it! It was me! It’s all my fault!

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It’s Pizza Friday, #1: The Great “Cheese” Debate

Last weekend I made a batch of pizza dough from Vegan With a Vengeance, split it into four, and froze it. The recipe makes enough dough for 2 pizzas, so the idea was to make a different half-sized pizza each Friday during MoFo.

For week 1, I decided to do my own taste test of the two top vegan cheeses on the US market: Teese and Daiya. I split the dough up yet again to make 3 tiny rectangular pizzas: one for the Teese, one for the Daiya, and one for a blend of the two.

Right out of the oven!

I made my own pizza sauce (also from VWAV) and topped each one with 2 slices of Yves pepperoni… keeping it to one side so I could taste the cheese in all its glory as well as with toppings.

CHEESE #1: TEESE VEGAN CHEESE

Price: $5.59 at Healthy Alternatives for 10 oz.

Stretch:
Very slight. Before I started eating it I tore it in half to see how it stretched and saw some strings of cheesiness, but as it cooled off it did not stretch as much.

Taste:
good, but chemical-y. Not as sweet tasting as the Daiya

Look/Feel:
Before baking, Teese has a very slimy consistency. However, baking dried it up a bit and it had a nicer look and feel when it came out. Very smooth.

CHEESE #2: DAIYA VEGAN CHEESE

Price: $5.59 at Healthy Alternatives for 8 oz

Stretch:
More so than Teese, and stays stretchy for a wider temperature range than does Teese

Taste:
sweet, junk food-y

Look/Feel:
Before baking, Daiya seems dry and crumbly. But don’t let this fool you, because when it melts it gets nice and gooey and you can see a layer of grease on top… just like I remember Domino’s pizza having.

PIZZA #3: HALF & HALF

I thought that this would be the best out of the three, because each cheese brings something a little different to the table both consistency- and taste-wise. However, the first thing I thought when I bit into it was that it tasted like feet. So hey, at least you don’t have to go out and buy two different kinds of cheeses to get the best finished product… you’re better off using just one or the other.

OVERVIEW
The Daiya is easier to use than Teese, because it is already conveniently shredded and bagged. The Teese comes in a somewhat hard-to-open tube and is a bit of a pain to shred since it is so soft right out of the package. But maybe you don’t want your cheese to be shredded, in which case use Teese because you can slice it up for, say, a fancy-looking white pizza or bruschetta.

I didn’t get a good amount of cheese on the Teese pizza, because I figured that the bigger shreds would spread out more when it baked and they didn’t. That made it a little harder for me to judge the Teese than the Daiya. I prefer the Daiya overall, though both cheeses are really good and I’ve known omnis to love pizza with either. Vegan cheese has come a long way in the past few years.

I still have some of each left over, so stay tuned for the next few days as I test them to see how they compare in other recipes!

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