Torfurky Pizza!

There's a small locally owned grocery store in our neighborhood that constantly surprises me with random organic and vegan groceries.  For example, the other day I was delighted to discover a few varieties of Tofurky pizza in the freezer section.

I thought I'd try the Tofurky Italian sausage with fire-roasted veggies first.  They also had a cheese pizza and a "pepperoni"version.  I raced home and snapped a few pictures before baking it in the oven for dinner.  Unfortunately I didn't trake any photos of the baked version. 

YUM!  Although I don't often buy frozen prepackaged meals, this was a nice treat, and I'm looking forward to trying the other kinds of Tofurky pizzas.

Tossed Pizza - Oh Mia!

This month's Daring Baker's challenge was a hand-tossed pizza crust from “The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread” by Peter Reinhart.  I've made many a pizza crusts, but never had I attempted to hand toss them.  And now I know why.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I totally suck at it.  I have a new found admiration for the guys in the Italian pizzaria down the street who toss thier dough and end up with perfectly circular pizza pies.

                  BEFORE                                              AFTER

After I tossed the dough in the air it looked more like one of the Hawaiian islands than a pizza!  I even tried singing "when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore"  in a really bad Italian accent but it didn't help at all.  But once my pizza was cooked it didn't look so bad, and it tasted really good.

I made a pesto sauce and then topped it with freshly roasted garlic, artichoke hearts, tomatoes and mushrooms.  I added some fresh ground pepper right before I chowed down becuase pepper is yummy on just about everything and this is no exception.  Yes, the dough takes 2 days to make, but it's worth it.  The recipe yields six crusts, so I put the extra dough in the freezer so I wouldn't overdose on pizza.  You'll see how those ones turn out over the next few weeks.

I tried to cut and paste the recipe here twice, and both times my internet window crashed :(  But if you come across “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart, give the “Pizza Napoletana” recipe a try.

Not Just Another Pizza

What can I say?  Pizza has got to be one of my favorite foods.  Before I turned vegan, pizza was the one thing holding me back because of my weakness for cheese.  I have gladly overcome that obstacle, and have found many, many ways to enjoy herbivorous pizzas.  (Is herbivorous a word?  I hope so...but you know what I mean, right?)

I cheated on the crust by using naan bread.   When I'm cooking for one, it's the perfect size for an individual pizza and gives me more time to spend with the baby than if I made the dough from scrach.

I made this pizza in two phases: first I sliced up some tomato, onion, and orange bell pepper and placed it over a layer of tomato sauce.  I broke up a slice of tofutti and placed the pieces over the veggies. (This was purely for texture, not taste!)  After baking the pizza I added some fresh scallions, cilantro and half of a creamy ripe avocado.  The cold-meets hot fusion was really tasty and the flavour of the tofutti was (thankfully) masked by all of the other ingredients.

For those who aren't sure about eating a pizza without cheese, I would suggest trying avocado as an alternative because of its smooth creamy texture and mild flavour.

And now that I've already eaten the pizza I'm wondering why I didnt think to sprinkle some nutritional yeast on it.  Ohh, that would have been divine...