I love pizza because it is so simple to make and the choice of toppings is only limited by your imagination. When I turned vegan, I tried various vegan cheeses for my pizzas, with more or less success. In general, I have to say that I am not a big fan of the vegan cheeses available on the market. Fortunately, after a few months, once the cheese addiction wears off, you discover you don't really miss cheese any more (which once seemed impossible;) and so you don't need any substitutes.
The most important factor for a successful pizza is top quality, fresh ingredients. I make the pizza dough in my bread machine. For many years now I have only been using dark flour for baking breads and I have to say it works very well for pizza dough as well. The recipe is very simple, for two pizzas I use: 350 grams of flour, 200 ml of water, 2-3 tbsp of olive oil, a pack of dry yeast, a tsp of salt. As for the tomato sauce, the best is obviously made of chopped fresh tomatoes, with onions, garlic and fresh or dried herbs. However, if you don't have fresh tomatoes, good quality canned ones will do. I mix it with some minced garlic, salt, pepper, fresh or dried herbs (most often basil, rosemary, thyme or oregano) and spices (paprika and chili, for example).
As for the toppings, you can really just choose your favourite veggies. Today I grilled an eggplant, zucchini, some onions, red, yellow and orange peppers. You wash and slice all the veggies and put them for at least half an hour in a marinade made of olive oil and your choice of other oils, vinegars and spices/herbs. I have quite a choice of different oils, vinegars, herbs and spices, I think this is one of the basics of great vegan cooking. So I just mix them freely trying new combinations each time.
After marinating, I grill the vegetables on a grill pan. I have to say they are so delicious that I could just eat them all before actually making the pizza ;) In the meantime I bake the pizza bottoms, so that once all the other ingredients are ready, I top the pizza bottoms with them and put the pizzas back in the oven for just about 5-10 minutes. In addition to the grilled veggies, I also added some cherry tomatoes, artichokes and capers. Today's pizza was really fantastic!
