Emma earned enough stickers on her reward chart to see Toy Story 3 yesterday. When we were walking from the parking garage to the theater, we passed by a pizza place and the smell was heavenly! Matt kept trying to tempt me with the most non-vegan pizzas he could think of– pepperoni, Hawaiian– but now it’s a mental thing. I don’t think I could ever go back to eating meat again. He’s vegetarian, by the way, so it’s not like he would have eaten those pizzas either. He just doesn’t think my vegan pizzas at home are the same as pizza parlor non-vegan pizzas.

So last night after the movie, I was making my menu and shopping list for the week and couldn’t resist trying to prove him wrong. My vegan pizzas are delicious and taste just like their non-vegan counterparts. At least I think they do, but it has been about 9 years since I’ve had real meat– even longer for him. Tonight was our pizza night and I ended up making 4 different kinds:

Plain cheese (for the kid).

Hawaiian – topped with Yves brand vegan Canadian bacon and pineapple.

Veggie – topped with broccoli, black olive and red onion.

Pepperoni (Yves brand) and black olive.

I made the dough from scratch in my bread machine, using the recipe that came in the booklet that accompanied it.  The only change I made was to double the recipe (since it’s not baking in the machine, I figured it would be okay to do that) and I didn’t pre-bake the crust, as the recipe instructs.  All of the pizzas are topped with a jarred marinara sauce and a mix of cheddar and mozzarella Daiya vegan cheese.  All were delicious, but my favorite was the pepperoni and black olive.  Matt preferred the veggie and commented that the faux meats just aren’t the same as the real thing.  He’s wrong, by the way. 

Since there’s no real recipe to this, I’ve made a list of pizza tips I’ve learned along the way:

• Vegan cheese is not like dairy cheese.  When topping your pizza, go easy on the cheese.  It will spread out while baking and the less you have, the better.  To give you an example, I didn’t even use half the bag of cheddar Daiya and I only used about 3/4 of the bag of the mozzarella for all 4 pizzas. Also, if you’re using Daiya that has been frozen, you’ll want to let it thaw first.
• If you’re topping your pizza with anything watery– vegetables, pineapple, etc– put the veggies on before topping with the cheese.  The water from the vegetables will mix with the cheese and make it too runny and weird.  You may notice some of the weirdness in the photo above of the Hawaiian pizza since I put the pineapple on top of the cheese.  It just works better to put the watery stuff underneath the cheese.
• With Daiya, you can bake your pizza at around 400 – 425 degrees and be okay.  With any other kind of vegan cheese (the FYH brand, for example), you’ll need to bake your pizza at a much higher temperature to get the cheese to melt.
• Once you remove your pizza from the oven, let it sit for a few minutes for the cheese to solidify a bit.  Otherwise, a lot of it will slide off when cut into it.

That’s all the tips I can think of.  Anyone else have any to add?