Monday, March 31, 2008

Pizza anyone?

Tonight I decided on pizza. So simple yet so satisfying. I had yet to try the pizza recipe in Dreena Burton's Eat Drink Be Vegan so the final answer was easy. Making pizza from scratch can be time consuming, Dreena calls for a pre-made pizza crust for her pizza focusing more on the topping & sauce.

I wanted to make it entirely from scratch so first order of business, get that pizza dough going. If you do not have a bread machine, I very highly recommend one. Making dough by hand is a great skill to have but a bread machine helps when time is tight but you don't want to compromise with someone/something else's bread.
Lex picked one up for me from a resale/reuse place in town called Recycle North for $10. It's in perfect condition and makes perfect bread every time. This little baby is actually rather large as it will hold up to a 2lb loaf but they do come in smaller sizes. For things like dinner rolls and tonight's pizza dough there is a dough setting which will mix, knead, & rise your dough so you'll just need to take the dough and form it to your needs. So I popped my pizza dough ingredients into the pan of the machine (I used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance) and 1.5 hrs later the dough was ready. While the machine did it's magic I could prep the sauce and other toppings and run through a few dishes.

The sauce for this pizza is super yum. A slightly spicy peanut sauce, very simple to throw together. Spread your dough on the pan, top, place in preheated oven and we get:

4 comments:

Mara said...

Looks delicious, and I envy the breadmaker slightly-- although there are few things more theraputic than taking out all one's anger on a lump of helpless bread dough.

Only question-- what do you do for cheese? Skip it entirely? Use some kind of non-dairy "cheese"?

Bex said...

Skip the cheese. It weighs down your dough dude. But yeah, I have tried a few veggie cheeses and they are ok but in the end you can taste everything else much better without cheese covering it up.

I do like making bread by hand as well but this worked out well for multitasking when you want to be lazy. :)

MEL said...

What's the recipe for the peanut sauce? It looks like you also have asparagus, chick peas and pineapple on the pizza. Is that right? Looks good! I want to try and replicate it in my own kitchen. I may end up using a premade crust, since I don't really know how to make my own!

Bex said...

I can't pass on the peanut sauce recipe exactly because it is from someone else's published book but if you stick to something basic like peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, coconut milk, maybe hot pepper (classic thai flavors) you should end up with something nice.

Toppings were chickpeas, red bell pepper, pineapple, green onions, mung bean sprouts.

I would definitely suggest checking out Eat Drink and Be Vegan I haven't had a bad meal from it yet.