When I talk to someone about vegan pizza, I often get this question: what’s about cheese? Luckily I do not miss cheese. I always top my pizzas with a lot of vegetables (see my pizza crust recipe with zucchini here) and frequently change the sauce, choosing between tomato sauce, creamy tofu sauce and pesto sauce. It’s very delicious! And although there are now a variety of vegan cheeses available on the market, I rarely buy any. Yet, I do enjoy using a little nutritional yeast for some savory and cheesy taste
In this pizza recipe, I uses as the crust garlic flat bread. To prepare the flat bread I used buckwheat flour. Buckwheat flour has no gluten. As I commented in the gluten-free brownie recipe post (see recipe here), I have no problem consuming gluten, but I’m very curious to try other types of flours. Buckwheat flour is made from the seed of a plant from same family as rhubarb (known as Polygonaceae) and actually has nothing to do with true wheat, which is from the Poaceae family.
Buckwheat flour is rich in fibers. It also contains a powerful flavonoid called rutin. In this article on The Huffington Post buckwheat is considered one of “the healthiest foods you’re not eating”! This grain is very popular in Japan, where it is used to make a type of noodle called soba. In the Polish and Russian cuisine the buckwheat grain is used to make a type of porridge. Actually, I use this grain a lot in my breakfast to prepare a kind of porridge with cinnamon or cacao and topped with berries. Delicious!
When preparing this flat bread, I added some garlic. As a topping on the pizza I used homemade vegan pesto sauce, grilled mushrooms and zucchini, and fresh tomatoes. I also sprinkled nutritional yeast on the top before serving!
- - Garlic flat bread
- 2 cups (240 ml) of buckwheat flour (if you wish, you can substitute the buckwheat with wheat flour or rice flour)
- 1 envelope (7 grams) of yeast
- 2 cloves of crushed garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup (240 ml) warm water
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- - Pesto sauce
- 1 full cup of basil leaves
- ½ cup olive oil
- 1-2 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons pine nuts or shelled almonds
- ½ teaspoon of salt
- - Garlic flat bread
- In a bowl, add water, yeast, salt, sugar, olive oil and garlic. Mix everything very well and slowly add the buckwheat flour. Stir until it loosens from the bottom of the bowl. If necessary, add more flour. Knead a little and let it rise for about 20 minutes.
- Divide the dough into four parts (or more if you want smaller breads). In a floured bench, roll them in form of discs, very thin, but not too much so they do not break. Heat a pan on the stove and place the breads on the pan and bake for about 3-4 minutes, until they puff up and you see some golden brown spots. Turn them, and cook on the other side.
- - Pesto sauce
- Combine all the ingredients in the blender and blend till the mixture is creamy.
- - Pizza assembly
- Put a layer of pesto on the flat bread and then add the vegetables you want. If you prefer you can put them a little in the oven to warm up. Serve with nutritional yeast.
- This recipe yields four small (individuals) pizzas of 15 cm in diameter
