Pizza for Grown-Ups

Recently I made pizza for the G, the Blessings and I again.  I used my typical pizza crust from my Quick Veggie Pizza recipe. I divided the dough in five balls, as usual, but this time for mine and G's pizzas, I decided to go for toppings that the sweet Blessings would not find appealing at all.  Not only could we indulge in spicy goodness, but it also assured us that our leftovers would be untouched by grubby, greedy littler hands.  I usually have a variety of toppings for us all to choose from, but I decided to pull out red onions and jalapenos, which I knew only G and I would have.  Whereas the Blessings top their own crusts, G just trusts my topping instincts to have me make his own.  He was delighted with the finished product.   With onions and hot peppers, at least in our home, this is definitely pizza for grown-ups!

Here's a shot of Pizza for Grown-Ups still on the baking pan after coming out of the oven.

A close up of all those delicious goodies.

Pizza for Grown-Ups

Ingredients:

Crust:

2 pkgs. or 1 and 1/2 Tbs. of active dry yeast
2 cups of warm water
4 cups of flour
1 and 1/2 Tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. salt
1 and 1/2 Tbs. vegan or raw sugar

Grown-Up Toppings:

We used:
Organic pizza sauce
Daiya cheddar shreds
Daiya mozzarella shreds
Red onion, chopped coarsely
Sliced black olives
Mushrooms, sliced
Artichoke hearts, chopped coarsely
Pickled jalapenos, chopped small
Vegan pepperoni slices

Directions:

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Let rest for ten minutes. Combine the remaining crust ingredients in a large bowl, along with the yeast mixture, and mix well. Cover bowl with a damp towel, and let rise for 30 minutes. Punch dough down and divide into five sections. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. On a floured surface, roll out one section of dough to about the size of a plate. Pick up and gently toss with your hands, until it's at least one and a half times its original size. Put on your baking sheet or pizza pan, and load with toppings. Bake for 20 minutes. While baking, make your next pizza. I can bake two pizzas at a time side by side; a bit of one baking sheet rests on the edge of the other, but it doesn't affect the end result. Remove from oven and let rest for five minutes before slicing. So good and easy! Feeds five hungry vegans or two vegan grown-ups and kid-friendly toppings for the rest of the gang.

GT Express Pizzas

So, I'm going to start out by saying that this is not an endorsement of the GT Express kitchen gadget. But, since it is a gadget that we use frequently in our home, especially the children, it seemed appropriate to post a meal using it. Just to note, we have the original, old GT Express, not the newer RediSetGo. I was going to order the new one for Mother's Day per G's prompting, but ended up dealing with a nightmare of a recording that kept insisting I needed every other product and trip and magazine available to man, which caused me to cancel my order. So, I love my old version but cannot vouch for the new one. Anyway, I love this thing (we actually have two) because the Blessings can make wraps, burritos and grilled cheese sandwiches without using the stove or oven.

We got small recipe books with our order several years ago, and I've been having fun trying to veganize them. I use that term loosely because it's not so much veganizing, as it is completely revamping a recipe. This latest one is my version of their pizzas, which turned out just great. I used my pizza dough recipe again, and with that recipe, we made sixteen mini pizzas: plenty for dinner and lunch the next day! Everyone got to have just the type of pizza they wanted. I'm not sure if there's something similar on the market, but it's a great way to make small dishes. The only drawback is with a family of five, one of us has to wait for our meal since there's only four wells (read: me). See below for a tasty recipe!

GT Express Pizza

The size of the pizza dough ball you'll need for each pizza, about a palm-full

Two pizzas in their wells (with a touch of flour on the sides)

GT Express Pizzas

Ingredients:

Pizza dough, my recipe (click on link)
Various fillings - we used:
Organic pizza sauce
Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet, cheddar cheese style, finely grated
Gimme Lean Sausage, made into little meatballs and sauteed
Black olives, sliced into thirds
Fresh pineapple, diced small
Artichoke hearts, quartered and canned in water, sliced in half lengthwise
Mushrooms, halved and sliced

Directions:

Follow the recipe on making the dough, including the resting period. Plug in the GT Expresses. Take healthy-sized handfulls of dough, filling up your palm, and on a floured surface, roll slightly out a bit larger than the size of the well. Place in heated well, and spread a small amount of sauce and toppings on each pizza. Once both wells have dough and toppings, shut the lid and time for ten minutes. Comes out perfectly. Makes approximately sixteen mini pizzas, plenty for five hungry vegans for a couple of meals.

Quick Veggie Pizza

This was my first time making pizza dough from scratch, and I really liked it! I found a recipe on allrecipes, changed it slightly and doubled it for my family. Even though it uses yeast, the rising time is only thirty minutes, which was fantastic for a weeknight meal. The only flour my recipe uses is all purpose, and I thought the crust came out great. The dough was incredibly soft to work with and a cinch to roll out. The girls really wanted to see if I could toss the dough, so I did, and to my amazement, it stretched out amazingly. The dough stayed uniformly round when I rolled it, but changed into interesting shapes when I tossed it three or four times. So, that was a fun twist. Some shapes fit on my pizza pan, and some had to be baked on a large cookie sheet. I thought by doubling the dough recipe that I'd have just enough for five mini pizzas, but instead, I ended up with five full-size pizzas, yum! It was the tossing that did it. After the short rise time, the dough already had a sourdough-y fragrance, and I found that very appealing. One thing I will do differently next time is to not make all the crusts ahead of time: even with plenty of flour in between layers of uncooked crusts, they all stuck together, and I had to re-roll and start over. But, it was so quick, it wasn't that big of a deal. There is sugar in this recipe, and some sort of sweetener in all the recipes I searched, so I just decided to put it in. I think I'll give it a try without the sweetener next time, and see if there's a marked difference. With the simplicity of ingredients and the quickness of the meal, I can definitely see me making homemade pizza frequently in our home!

A close-up of Quick Veggie Pizza

What my dough looked like after rolling.

How big it got after a few tosses!

Its fun, quirky shape straight from the oven! What was fun for the Blessings, is that everyone's pizza had a unique shape.

Quick Veggie Pizza

Ingredients:

Crust:

2 pkgs. or 1 and 1/2 Tbs. of active dry yeast
2 cups of warm water
4 cups of flour
1 and 1/2 Tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. salt
1 and 1/2 Tbs. vegan or raw sugar

Your Favorite Veggie Toppings:

We used:
Organic pizza sauce
Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet cheese, cheddar style, finely shredded
Tomatoes, halved and sliced
Can of black olives, sliced in thirds
Dino kale, stripped from stems and torn or coarsely chopped
Mushrooms, sliced

Directions:

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Let rest for ten minutes. Combine the remaining crust ingredients in a large bowl, along with the yeast mixture, and mix well. Cover bowl with a damp towel, and let rise for 30 minutes. Punch dough down and divide into five sections. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. On a floured surface, roll out one section of dough to about the size of a plate. Pick up and gently toss with your hands, until it's at least one and a half times its original size. Put on your baking sheet or pizza pan, and load with toppings. Bake for 20 minutes. While baking, make your next pizza. (I did not try to bake more than one pizza at a time because I thought they may stay undercooked, and I wanted this first time to be a success. However, I may do that the next time I make these to test my theory.) Remove from oven and let rest for five minutes before slicing. So good and easy! Feeds five hungry vegans, with leftovers for lunch the next day!

Sourdough Soy Pizza: My very first post!

Welcome! I'm glad you found me. Tonight, I made a meal that was a special request from my oldest blessing: Sourdough Soy Pizza. When I was a teenager, I loved the Stouffer's frozen pizzas on sourdough bread, so last year I decided to veganize it. I really don't know what took me so long.

Sourdough Soy Pizza

Ingredients:

1 large loaf of extra sourdough bread (I used Colombo)
Your favorite pizza sauce, either homemade or store-bought (I used Cento)
Your favorite pizza toppings --
We used: VeganGourmet Cheese, Mozzarella Style
Fresh button mushrooms, sliced
Canned whole olives that I sliced
Marinated artichoke hearts
Gimme Lean Sausage Style, cubed and fried lightly

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and position rack second from top. Slice loaf into four equal sections and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Spread the amount of sauce you want on your pizza. I let my children top their own to their liking. Add vegan cheese, if you are using. Add the rest of your toppings. Bake for ten minutes to begin heating and combining the ingredients. Turn on the top broiler and carefully broil for three to five minutes to melt the vegan cheese, if using. Remove any of the pizzas that do not have cheese on them at this time. Careful not to burn your bread. For garnish, I used a fresh sprig of parsley from our garden. Feeds five hungry vegans, with me sharing with my youngest blessing.