One of the foods I miss is pizza. Crisp yeasty crust, intense tomato flavor in the sauce, gooey melty cheese on top are all favorites. A few days ago I decided to try Pamela's brand pizza dough mix and see how it worked out. I bought Daiya shredded non-dairy mozzarella for the topping and made up some fresh tomato sauce using grape tomatoes from my waning tomato plants. I also cooked up some onion, fresh garlic, ground turkey and herbs for topping.
Following the directions on the packet, I mixed up the dough and let it sit for a couple of hours to let the yeast grow. Spreading the dough on parchment with my fingers wasn't too difficult and baking the crusts for 8-10 minutes until lightly golden was also OK, although the crust on the pizza stone at the top of the oven (recommended by Pamela's) didn't crisp up at all and the one on a sheet pan at the bottom of the oven did, so that's the one I ended up eating.
Over the baked crust I spread some of the cooked down tomatoes, then added some of the remaining cooked down tomatoes to the topping mixture, then sort of sprinkled that topping over the crust. A light distribution of the cheese seemed a good idea since I had no idea if it would taste OK.
The finished pizza tasted pretty good, although the texture of the crust was not chewy but sort of dry and the cheese was just OK, not really good. It did taste like pizza and I ate the leftover piece the next morning for breakfast so you know that I had been wanting pizza for quite a while. If only somebody could create fake cheese that was as delicious as real cheese. In the meantime I'll probably only have pizza when the craving really gets intense.
No recipe for this, but there are some photos.
First shows pizza with smeared cooked down tomatoes, plus topping and cheese over partially baked crust.
Then we have the baked pizza, with the crust still pretty light colored, but the dark corn meal shows that something cooked. I used cornmeal under the crust when I formed it, which was suggested as a good method on the pizza crust package.
Finally we have the slices. You can see that the cheese didn't really melt. Some of the shreds sort of shrank a little when they got hot. Still they tasted kinda like cheese.
Yeah, for pizza, Daiya is your best bet - just for fun we taste test vegan cheeses, and most of them are for dip or crackers, I find - nothing I'd eat on a pizza really. It's so odd how we develop cravings for pizza when we can do without other foods.
ReplyDeleteWell, it looks good....
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about the cheese though. Even some of the actual so-called mozzarella (some supermarket brands) don't really work correctly - they're not stringy when they melt; they just puddle. But that's not really any consolation for you, is it?
I'm glad that the final version tasted okay, even if it wasn't quite correct.
Have you seen this? http://quantumvegan.com/2015/01/12/experimenting-with-vegan-cheese/