Vegan Margherita pizza experiments

One of our favourite things for Friday dinner is pizza using this Fast track sourdough pizza dough.  We've been cutting back on dairy lately so I did some experiments with vegan margherita pizza using this dough.  We tried Biocheese from the supermarket and home made cashew cream.

Before I got so busy, I made my own pizza sauce but lately haven't had time and been buying pizza sauce.  It comes in a squirty bottle so I amuse myself by drawing pictures with it (let's not talk about whether we eat anything that has a face!).  Both pizzas used this sauce.

First, we tried some Pizza Shreds by Biocheese.  I really like Biocheese and was interested to see they are now marketing cheese specifically for pizza.

The cheese looked like dairy cheese when uncooked but when cooked it looked like it was still uncooked.  I have found that this is quite typical of vegan cheeses.

The Biocheese tasted quite good on the pizza, albeit slightly dry.  However what I disliked was checking the ingredients.  The main ingredients seem to be water, coconut oil, starch and modified starch.  When I want to find a substitute for cheese I want it to have some nutrients as well as the taste and texture.  This cheese is high in fat but has no protein and I suspect no calcium.  This was disappointing.

Enter the more old school home made cashew cream.  This is similar to the vegan mozzarella that I have made previously.  However the cashew cream is simpler (just blend, no cooking required) and probably packed with more nuts.  It certainly had a lot more nutrients than Biocheese.  Lots of protein, some calcium (not the most calcium loaded of nuts), good fats and lots of vitamins and minerals.

And the taste and texture?  Well a cashew sauce like this is the opposite of Biocheese.  When it goes on the pizza it looks melted and when it is cooked it looks melted.  It lacks a little of the fatty cheesy texture of Biocheese, it has better cover and tasted pretty cheesy.  And I mean cheesy when you want a good substitute, rather than cheesy that would fool a cheese lover!

So this experiment has made me favour the cashew cream above Biocheese.  It is not always quite as convenient to make your own (as my note on pizza sauce will demonstrate above) but I find this cashew cream pretty quick to whip up in a high speed blender and keeps well in the fridge for a week or two.  So while not all of our pizzas are being dairy free, I would like to experiment more with this pizza sauce and different toppings. I will keep you updated!

Meanwhile you can see some of my experiments with vegan pizza toppings on my list of pizza toppings that I have tried.