Saturday, January 30, 2010

Pizza Night

I had a hankering for pizza. It would not go away, so not being one to deny myself, we had a pizza night last night. Now when I go out for pizza, I am often shocked at how much places charge for extra ingredients. This is the beauty of DIY pizza at home. You can add to your heart's content. For this pizza night we opted to make two smaller pizza's instead of one biggie. This way we could make two very different varieties.

Before I left for work, I mixed up the dough from Joanna Vaught's Potluck Mania Issue #1. We gave it two risings; one slow in the fridge and one faster in the slightly warm oven. I was hungry and not so patient. When I got home from work, Fred already had the dough rising in the oven. I'm pretty sure I didn't let it get a good second rising.

Next I selected my ingredients and got them all prepped. For the first pizza I decided to do a vegan version of on of my all time fav pregan versions: Mushroom, Sausage, and Onion. I sauteed the mushrooms in a touch of olive oil with just a little salt. Be careful not to overcook them, just saute until they are barely starting to get soft. The onions were carmelized by sauteeing slowly in olive oil with just a touch of sugar and salt until they were golden brown. I used browned Gimme Lean sausage because I had some left in the fridge. I toyed with the idea of using Julie Hasson's Italian sausages from the freezer, but was too hungry to wait to thaw them out. I used Joanna's no cook pizza sauce from the same 'zine as the dough. We love garlic, so of course we had to add extra minced garlic. So it went like this: dough rolled out as round as Fred could manage (this is no easy task we found), sauce, veggies and sausage evenly distributed. Top with Daiya cheese and sprinkle with oregano. Bake for 20 minutes at 450.


Our next little lovely was a Pesto Pizza. We started with Julie Hasson's Basil and Spinach Spread (pesto) which will be in her upcoming Vegan Diner cookbook. On top of that we layered lightly sauteed zucchini, beautiful campari tomatoes, roasted red peppers, Daiya Italian blend cheeze, then we sprinkled the top with kalmata olives. This was also baked for 20 minutes in a 450 degree oven. I honestly thought I would like the first pizza the best, but this one stole my heart. It was really tasty! One ingredient I meant to use on this one was arugula from our garden. Oops. Well, I have some leftover dough in the freezer. I see arugula/ricotta calzones in our future!!!


Fred was very happy to report that Heineken is indeed vegan!



As soon as I get the dough perfected, I think we should have a make your own pizza party!!! We'll let you know!

5 comments:

vegan.in.brighton said...

Oh yum, those pizzas look delicious, I love courgette on a pizza! I cannot wait to get my hands on some Daiya!

Veg-In-Training said...

Ladies, Daiya is pretty amazing. I'm not a huge faux cheeze fan, but this one is rpetty darn good.

They need to go international using you (Mihl) as the distributor!! How awesome would that be?

Anonymous said...

Yum! These look amazing! I haven't gotten to try daiya yet, but I really need to.

Anonymous said...

Those look so great. I've developed even more of a love of pizza than I used to have because I'm dating a guy who is literally obsessed and would eat them for every meal if he could.

I do have one question - in your post you said you had dough in the freezer. I've been told that pizza dough that is made with yeast doesn't work after being frozen. Is that true?

Veg-In-Training said...

I'm not sure, I haven't tried it from the freezer yet. The author says it can be frozen. I'll post once I try it.