Vegan Pizza Party

Who doesn't love vegan pizza?! I have only made it twice now, both times it was very tasty. The first time, we purchased the dough already made from Whole Foods. This time, I made it from scratch from this recipe. I used half whole wheat and half all purpose flour, and although it was tasted OK, did not rise as much as I would have liked. I am willing to give it another try though. This recipe makes enough dough to make two medium sized pizzas, in case you are cooking with a non-vegan friend (ah hem, Mom, Phil!) who wants to add a little cheese to their pizza.

So, I made the dough, then got to work on some pesto to use instead of regular tomato sauce.

Here's my pesto recipe:

First, combine the following in the food processor
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 cloves garlic
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Large pinch salt
Small pinch pepper

Then add
Two heaping cups of fresh basil leaves

Keep the food processor running, and pour olive oil in through the feed tube until it is the consistency you want.

We brushed the pesto on to the pizzas, leaving room for a crust. To mine I then added some tofu-ricotta, basically pressed and crumbled tofu mixed with garlic, basil, lemon juice and nutritional yeast. I also thew some olives on top, and sun dried tomatoes in the last five minutes of cooking (they burn otherwise, I found out the first time).

The final product was quite a tasty pizza, that had a good amount of protein but not the fat of the usual cheese-laden kind. In the words of Oprah, "love that!"