Good Vegan Pizza (recipes, grocery brands & pizzerias)

Everyone loves pizza! And if you buy or make ready-made dough (simpler than you’d think), it’s just a case of adding tomato passata, some veggies and optional vegan cheese or meats. They are quick to cook too.

This Mediterranean pizza (The Simple Veganista) is topped with artichoke hearts, olives, red onion, tomato, chickpeas and fresh basil.

Keep fresh dough away from children and pets. Don’t give leftover pizza crust to pets, garden birds or wildfowl (could choke, and salt is toxic)

Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets (many foods are unsafe near animal friends). Bin allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives) and citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps, as acids could harm compost creatures. It’s okay to put them in food waste bins (made into biogas).

For tinned foods, fully remove lids (put inside) or pop ring-pulls back over holes (and pinch tops closed) before recycling, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.

Why choose vegan pizza?

England is a country of around 67 million people. This means that although most people eat meat (though the amount of people who don’t is growing rapidly), there is simply not enough land for everyone to eat free-range meat, from animals that graze outside and have access to cosy indoors barns,

This means that most meats sold in England are either raised in factory farms here, or imported (for instance, most factory-farmed Danish bacon is imported to the UK for supermarkets).

So it’s not ‘harming traditional farmers’ to try faux meats, because people who eat meat will support them anyway by eating free-range meat. But for everyone else, then it’s good to discover some good vegan alternatives. And these are not just animal-kind, but cholesterol-free and not linked to cancers, like many processed meats (bacon is an obvious example, due to nitrates produced when cooked).

The Northern Dough Co (pizza dough with no palm oil)

To avoid palm oil, you can make your own pizza dough (also gluten-free). Or combine self-rising flour and dairy-free Greek yoghurt, for 2-ingredient dough.

Or use The Northern Dough Co ready-made pizza doughs, which you can find in freezer aisles in grocery stores. Or their ready-made vegan pizza dough balls.

Recycle packaging at supermarket bins, if kerbside does not recycle.

Then just top your pizza base with tomato sauce, herbs, minced garlic, herbs, salt and black pepper. With sliced veggies (red onion, mushrooms, red pepper, pitted olives), sprinkled with vegan grated cheese and Moving Mountains vegan sausage, and some fresh basil or spinach leaves.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, watching it doesn’t burn. Cool and eat!

Tasty toppings for your vegan pizza

• BBQ vegan pizza, with BBQ sauce, red onion, sweetcorn, and vegan chick’n.
• Hawaiian twist: pineapple chunks, vegan ham, spring onion.
• Veggie supreme: mushrooms, peppers, red onion, olives, spinach.
• White pizza, with garlic oil, spinach, and mushrooms, no tomato sauce.
• You can buy vegan deli slices from Tofoo (organic and made in Yorkshire).

You can make vegan mozzarella or buy it (Kinda Co is a good brand – a hybrid of mozzarella and Greek halloumi). Tyne Chease has recently created the first vegan liquid mozzarella, made with just five ingredients.

A few simple vegan pizza recipes

This skillet pizza (The Simple Veganista) is a wonderful idea, as you don’t need an oven or a pizza oven!  It’s covered in balsamic tomato sauce and lots of veggies and ‘baked’ in your pan on the hob. How simple is that?

These mini white pizzas (The Simple Veganista) are great to make for one or two people. Instead of pizza dough, they are made on naan bread (most brands contain milk or palm oil) so you could sub with plain pitta bread.

One Planet Vegan Pizzas (these are amazing!)

One Planet Pizza was founded by a father and son, and offers low-carbon footprint vegan pizzas that taste as  good as any from the big take-aways. They are generous in size and bake from frozen in 15 to 20 minutes.

This crowdfunded pizza brand was started in a Norwich garage, and are now made in the Netherlands (and sold across Europe). The son has even appeared on TV, judging plant-based cheeses! Find them in independent stores and supermarkets (ASDA, Morrisons and Boots). Flavours (all on a sourdough base) include:

• Margherita (tomato and vegan cheese)
• Tex-Mex (red onion, sweetcorn, peppers and vegan cheese)
• Peppernomi (secret sauce, smoked vegan pepperoni & vegan cheese)
• Hawaiian (tomato sauce, vegan cheese, vegan bacon and pineapple). Italians don’t class pineapple as pizza, but who cares, if it saves animals?

Whole Creations offers a ‘sheesy’ pizza with char-grilled peppers and courgettes and marinated cherry tomatoes drizzled with basil dressing. It also offers a cauliflower pizza crust (to add your own toppings) and a vegan cheesy garlic bread.

Purezza Pizzeria (Brighton, London, Manchester)

Purezza (London, Brighton, Manchester) is an award-winning vegan pizzeria that launched around 10 years ago, founded by an Italian who uses mostly local organic ingredients and no palm oil (outlets are furnished with reclaimed materials, run on green energy and even the loos have recycled bathroom tissue!

The range includes pizzas topped with their own cashew mozzarella (sold wholesale to other restaurants) includes Quattro formaggi (4 vegan cheeses!), Fungi pizza (with truffle oil) and Plant-based salami pizza.

CauliBox makes reusable pizza takeaway boxes that can be washed and returned to companies to save money and reduce waste packaging. This is far better than takeaway boxes that often leave those plastic sauce pots everywhere next morning, where people litter the night before.