My First Vegan Pizza From Scratch (not so good)

I have been falling very far behind in documenting my experiments in cooking. These are not really experiments, I am following recipes, I've just never cooked or worked with half of this stuff. I try and stay confident but I know that most of the time, the first time I am making something new, like dough, I will probably do it wrong. I prepare myself for the fact that although I may follow the directions explicitly, the end result will probably not be so great. So far, I've been able to learn from these first experiences and make it correctly the second time around. This is why I usually cook the same things all of the time.

This is the FIRST time I have ever attempted to make dough or a pizza from scratch. I got the recipe out of Kim Barnouin's Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. I know it sounds weird but doing things like making dough make me nervous. It just seems like something you learn from your grandma and if you missed that boat than you should never attempt to make dough. I bought all of my ingredients, of course confused by all of the yeasts. I bought 2 small packets of something that said it was good with all flour including whole wheat. I got all of my ingredients together and went to work.

The recipe did not say anything about testing the yeast to see if it was active but the back of the yeast packet said to do this very thing. hmmm? I guess I should test the yeast? I prepared to test the yeast and realized I had no idea how to gauge the water temperature. I know if it was slightly warmer of colder the yeast would die. This stuff seemed pretty important. I tried to guess the water temp and waited for my yeast to bubble. By looking below you can obviously see that it didn't.

On to the next! I tested the next packet and made the water a little cooler. I waited for it to bubble.... SUCCESS!

If you want to know the truth, I have no pictures of my dough because I was panicking as I was kneading it and getting it settled so it could rise in the cooled oven. I'm not kidding, panicking lol. Once the dough was in the oven, I cut and prepared my veggies. I was making a pepper and onion pie. The kitchen smelled amazing while the veggies were sauteing.

Furthermore, I don't have any pictures of my dough "rising" because it didn't really rise. It got slightly bigger but definitely did not double in size. I googled this, and read that I could still eat the dough it would just be dense.





Here is my finished pizza! I forgot to mention that I was certainly not making sauce from scratch. I used Nature's Promise organic pasta sauce (so yummy). I bought Daiya brand mozzarella style vegan cheese. It was the only one that I could find, although I didn't really look that hard. I had read some reviews about this cheese,that it tasted more like a Parmesan and to use a small amount, which I did.

The end result was just okay. My dough wasn't bad but it was pretty dense. The cheese was not bad at first and then I really hated it. I would never use this cheese again. The veggies were great so I ended up scrapping the cheese off and just eating the dough, sauce, and veggies which was great.

When I started this whole vegan thing I never thought that I would keep it up after the 21 days. I set about changing my diet solely for health purposes and once I realized how great I felt I wanted to keep going. I never intended to be at the point where I was going to eat "fake cheese". I didn't want to eat all of the same junk I was eating but in a soy alternative form. I feel like that defeats the purpose of eating this way. That being said, there is always room for treats. This is why I waited so many weeks before even attempting to have a vegan replacement for any of my old favorites. There are several other vegan cheeses that I will try. Hopefully, my next dough/pizza attempt will be better!