Who does vegan pizza bases?

[elettaria]

I have recently discovered the joy of making my own pizza. Not from scratch, I tried that once and it was a smidgen too joyous for me. But put assorted veg on a pizza base and I am a happy camper. Unfortunately, so far the only vegan pizza bases I have found are at Sainsburys. I can't stand shopping with them, they have various clever ways of

Comments

[tenlegspider]

I don't buy pizza bases (maybe they're better now, but the memory of them from when I was a kid puts me off), but in case you didn't know, dough freezes really well. If you're willing to make it yourself occasionally you could freeze a batch on trays and take them off and bag them once they're frozen.

[elettaria]

Yeah, the ME/CFS gets in the way there. My hands aren't good at things like kneading dough. The Sainsburys ones I've tried so far are perfectly nice, not that I've tried them from frozen yet, so if all else fails, I'll just have to buy the odd order from Sainsburys.

[elettaria]

Not as yet, I'm being lazy.

Sainsburys also empty things from your basket if you are inactive on the site for more than 15 min, unless you remember to keep hitting "save". They seem to have no idea of how people actually use the internet. And it's a pity, because they do nice vegan sausages, and now these pizza bases. I ordered two sets of two, in two different types of pizza base, and have frozen them, so that'll last me a while. Hopefully they will defrost well, I've never tried defrosting a pizza base. I've been vegan since about three months after I left home, so I never actually got into frozen pizza. Do you just shove them in the oven for longer?

[nelsolidarida]

I remember hearing that the napolina ones were vegan, although the packet gives no clues to this. ASDA are pretty bad for online shopping by most accounts.

[elettaria]

I found a review on ciao.co.uk by a vegan who's using them, but that doesn't mean they were necessarily right. "Mono and diglycerides of fatty acids" can mean anything, damn it. Oh well, I should see if I can dig out their contact details.

Going back to the wonderfulness of pizza, the thing that really surprised me is that even without fake cheese, and using slices of fresh tomato and general heaped veg rather than a tomato sauce, the topping stays on the pizza well enough not to fall everywhere when you eat it. Most convenient. I have some fake cheese put aside from the last Tesco order, although I'm not sure I'll necessarily use it with the next pizza. I rather like the fresh taste you get without it. Tofu might be nice, my local Chinese place sells that gorgeous Mabbo tofu. Has anyone tried tofu? Does it stay nice and moist when you put it on pizza, or does it harden? How about smoked tofu, if Real Foods are still delivering fridge stuff?

[showingup]

I don't know if this is of any use to you, but since discovering that farinata makes a great pizza base, that's exclusively what I use.

Equal parts gram flour and water (by volume: I use 1.5 US cups of each for a 12 inch pan) + a dash of salt and pepper + a tablespoonish of olive oil in a bowl, mix with a fork or whisk for a few seconds, then either use immediately or leave all day/overnight (if you leave it, it will thicken and get an airy texture).

I heat a cast iron pan and then brush olive oil on it, but there's no reason you can't use a frying pan or baking tray either hot or cold, pour in the batter and cook it for 10-12 minutes on 180c. Then I add the toppings.

The nice thing is that it's healthy, it's fast, it requires hardly any prep, and you can stir things into the batter as well as put things on top.

[elettaria]

It's more work than I'd want to put into a pizza, to be honest, but I am intrigued nonetheless. Doesn't it taste really gram-flour-ish? What about stirring things into the batter, do you make interesting pancakes?

I've found that two parts gram flour to one part cornflour, mixed up with soya milk, makes a perfect batter for French toast, where you can't taste the chickpeas at all.