Cheese and Chicken Pizza

A broken tooth, a broken computer; my third week of Vegan Mofo did not go so well. I am going to try to get back into it, but we shall see how it goes...

Anyway, after last week's success with "Better Than Ricotta", I had a bit extra that I thought to use as pizza sauce. It was okay, but the texture turned a bit chalky, so it probably needed to be mixed with some Nuttelex to make it more creamy.

Warning: This pizza dough should be left for an hour or so to rise (you can cheat with 45 minutes) so make sure you know this before you think to make it as a quick dinner. That said, the dough is very easy to make, and is probably the best pizza dough I have made at home.


Ingredients for the dough:

• 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 1/3 cups warm water
• 3 1/2 cups AP flour
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• large pinch of salt

First, dissolve the yeast in a large mixing bowl with the warm water. Let it sit for about 10 minutes. Blitz the flour and salt in a food processor (all my instructions will include the use of a food processor, but can certainly be mixed by hand as well), using the dough hook. Add the oil to the yeasty water and slowly dirzzle these wet ingredients into the food processor, while on low speed. Mix until just mixed and a dough has started to form.

Pull out the dough and hand-knead for about 3 minutes, until it is smooth and elastic. Shape into a ball and put aside in an oil-coated mixing bowl. Cover with platic wrap and set aside to rise for 40 minutes to an hour.

Spray your baking sheet(s) with oil and dust with cornflour or all-purpose flour. Cut the dough in half and shape into whatever shape it will allow you (I aimed for circles but that just didn't happen!)


My toppings included:

• a sauce of "Better Than Ricotta" mixed with fresh, chopped oregano (on one half)
• a sauce of ready-made pizza sauce (on the other half)
• roasted pumpkin
• Redwood Mozzarella Cheezly
• Redwood chicken-style pieces, previously cooked in a frypan then chopped
• sliced mushrooms
• diced tomato
• diced green capsicum
• finely diced red onion 

I put on all the ingredients bar the cheese, cooked the pizzas in a 250'C oven for about 10 minutes, then added the cheese and cooked some more until the crusts were clearly baked, and the cheese melted. Grind some salt and pepper over the top and it's ready to go!

Easy Pita Pizza

Today was such a nice day I couldn't be bothered spending heaps of time making dinner. I was even going to be so lazy as not to post anything when I'd planned to, but I decided that I have time, in between cocktail-drinking and karaoke-practicing, to do a quick post. (For my next karaoke outing I'm trying to decide between four Heart songs. If you have a suggestion as to the best Heart song for a karaoke setting, I'd love to hear it...)

Anyway, this is the easiest pizza ever. The recipe goes: Pita bread + sauce from a bottle + toppings + oven. Nom! For my toppings, I went with roasted pumpkin (okay, so I'm not that lazy, I did roast the pumpkin myself...but I chose it from the supermarket based on it being the easiest piece to cut!), mushroom, semi-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, Sheese (blue and mozzarella) and some chopped rosemary from the garden. Oh, and some cracked pepper and sea salt on top.

Before and after shots: