Food Friday!!: Vegan Pizza

Welcome to another Food Friday!!

Today, I am going to give you the recipe to the first pizza I ever made. As I am allergic to dairy (as seen in my previous blog post), this recipe does not contain cheese on it and is therefore a vegan pizza.

This pizza was so good that my non-vegetarian/non-vegan family ate it! Honestly, each time I've made pizza, the vegan one just seems to vanish within seconds! I'm glad my family (including cousins, aunties and uncles) love it!

Let me know if you try the pizza!

Bon Appétit!

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Makes 2 "large" pizzas

Ingredients

Dough

• 3.5 cups of flour
• 1.25 teaspoons of yeast
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 1/5 teaspoon of salt
• 1 1/3 teaspoon of warm water

Sauce

• Passata
• 1 garlic clove (finely chopped)
• 0.5cm of ginger (finely chopped)
• Smoked paprika
• Oregano
• Black Pepper

Toppings

• Tomatoes (sliced into circles)
• White onions (sliced into circles then halved)
• Sweetcorn
• Mushrooms
• Fresh basil (finely chopped)
• Baby spinach (finely chopped)

Method

Dough

• In a bowl, pour the warm water over the yeast, stir it up a bit and leave to sit for about 5 minutes. Stir again once the time is up.
• In a mixing bowl, stir in all the dry ingredients and once the yeast has been activated (after 5 minutes), create a well down the centre of you mixture of dry ingredients and pour the yeast and water mixture into the well.
• Using a wooden spoon or spatula, stir the ingredients up until bits of dough starts forming then transfer these bits onto a clean, floured work top.
• Get some flour on your hands and mainly using the bottom of your palm and closed fists, knead the mixture until all the ingredients are well incorporated and a smooth dough has been formed.
• Rub some flour onto a clean knife and use this to divide the dough into equal halves then shape each half into a ball.
• Coat two clean bowls with flour and then rub some flour over each half of the dough then put one each bowl covering the bowls with cling film/plastic wrap.
• Place the bowls in a warm dark place (I usually put them in a cupboard) and let them sit for 2 hours. Avoid opening the cupboard, oven or wherever you place the bowls during this time.

Sauce (Preheat your oven to about 190 degrees celsius (374 degrees fahrenheit) while making this)

• Pour some passata into a saucepan followed by the garlic and ginger and cook them for about a minute.
• Add the spices, to taste, and stir well before turning off the heat on the saucepan and setting it aside.

Pizza

• If you have a pizza stone, place it in the oven to preheat for about 15 minutes. A pizza stone is not a necessity for this pizza, though.
• Scrape out one of the balls of dough onto a floured work top and sprinkle some flour on it.
• Knead the dough and form a ball again.
• Slap the dough a bit or hit it with the bottom of a closed fist to flatten out the ball a bit.
• Using your fingers, flatten out the dough even more and start trying to create a smaller version of the shape of the pizza by just poking the pizza with your fingers.
• Gently press two fingers round the pizza, near the edges to form an indentation of a circle in the dough (this will form the crust)
• Using your palms, stretch the pizza out a bit while turning it in a circle.
• Lift the pizza dough up onto closed fists and stretch out each side while turning the pizza round making each side as even as possible. Immediately transfer this onto a well floured completely flat baking tray/sheet or pizza peel. If you don't have a completely flat tray, just use the back of the tray.
• Shape the pizza some more of you feel the need to.

(If the dough keeps tearing or you find it hard to make the circular shape, just using a rolling pin and make a rectangular pizza. If you would like a nice crust, use your index and middle finger to make dents in the perimeter of the dough)

• Using a spoon, transfer some of the sauce onto the pizza dough and spread it out using the pack of a spoon and moving in circular motions, next, place your toppings on the pizza in whatever design you want.
• Pop the pizza in the oven (onto the pizza stone in the oven, if you preheated the stone) for 10-15 minutes.
• After 10 minutes rotate the pizza or the tray and let the pizza cook for another 10 minutes.
• Serve

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Hope you enjoyed this recipe!!