Homemade vegan pizza

I used to LOVE pizza. After going dairy free the end of January 2012 I went pretty much cold turkey. My theory was, and possibly still is, that I'd rather eat foods that don't rely on dairy as a main ingredient rather than eat something that isn't as good as I remember it from my dairypaloozza days.

I looked back in facebook and on March 4, 2012, I did try a frozen dairy free pizza that I was not impressed enough with to buy again. (That and I've been also avoiding tomatoes and yeast.)

Here's what I said at the time:

Not too bad! The "cheeze" is a bit soggy and not chewy, but you definitely get the pizza flavor with the crust, tomato sauce, ect.

Almost exactly one year later (on March 2, 2013) I decided to try making my own homemade pizza and stick as closely to my food restrictions as possible. (Avoiding yeast, nightshade veggies and sugar.)

I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I forgot. Next time. Because, the good news is, there will be a next time. Yay! Also, thanks to my handsome husband who told me to just make it for myself and he'd eat what I was eating. (He did add some real cheese on top after it was done cooking.) That really helped because I didn't want to cross contaminate and it's a lot of work to make one homemade pizza, much less two and for only two people it's not really necessary.

I started with this no yeast pizza dough from cooks.com. (Not my favorite site, but it was the recipe that I found that fit what I wanted.)

2 1/2 cups flour (I did about half whole wheat)
2 3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp. oil
3/4 to 1 cup water

Mix dry ingredients. Add water and oil slowly. Stir until it forms a ball. If dough is stiff, add more water.

Knead on floured surface 3-4 minutes until it is soft, not sticky.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 25 minutes.

Sauce:

Maybe half a cup tomato sauce
stretch it with olive oil
oregano
red pepper flakes
raw honey for sweetness

toppings:

asparagus
black olives
red onion
fresh chopped garlic
Dayia "cheddar cheese"

I added chopped fresh cilantro on top after it came out of the oven.

Review: I loved it and Chad liked it too. He liked the crust, especially. I thought it was a bit hard--possibly because I over kneaded it and probably because of the whole wheat flour. I think next time I will do our own individual mini pizzas so I can put only Dayia on mine and real cheese on his. The only problem is, we only have one pizza stone. I can probably do one in a glass dish.

Also, I think I should try taco pizza. Spread the crust with refried beans instead of tomato sauce, top with "cheese." Bake and then top with chopped lettuce, olives, onion, ect. The refried beans mixture could be done many ways, including with ground beef or ground turkey or adding other ingredients into the refried beans, such as black beans, corn or brown rice.

As far as eating healthy goes, this is a treat. It's much healthier than ordering pizza or buying frozen pizza, but Dayia cheese does contain yeast and there was some tomato in the sauce. Maybe next time I will make mine with no sauce and just drizzle it with olive oil post baking? It's worth a try.