Vegan Pizza: Deliciously Simple Plant-based Pizza to Make at Home

by Stefania Evangelista, Tim Barclay

Deliciously simple plant-based pizza to make at home

Purezza, founded in Brighton in 2015, was the first vegan pizzeria in the UK. Passionate about plantbased food, their aim was to make their menu superior to the traditional alternatives, revolutionising Italian food by using cruelty-free ingredients. As well as vegan pizzas, they offer soya-free, nut-free and gluten-free options.
Now you can enjoy their authentic tasting pizza with its soft and easily digestible sourdough crust at home. There are recipes for variety of seasonal toppings, including Vulcano - fried aubergines, green chilli peppers, baby sweetcorn, oven-roasted romano peppers, red onions and sriracha sauce - and Fumosa - smoked tofu, oven-roasted mushrooms, smoked beetroot carpaccio and BBQ sauce - as well as for vegan cheeses such as silken tofu ricotta, cashew and almond nut and brown rice mozzarella. In addition, there are recipes for gluten-free pasta dishes, sides and desserts.
Without a doubt, this is the closest you'll come to the quest for perfect vegan pizza.

Genres: Cookbooks

144 pages, Hardcover

Published February 4, 2020

Reviews

[Lanae · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really appreciate this book, though oddly not necessarily just for the pizza. This book is laid out very nicely. By breaking down the different parts of the pizza and also including full pizza recipes, they have made it very easy to use this book even if you don’t specifically want pizza. There’s a calzone recipe, but if you don’t like the toppings in the recipe? Go back to the toppings and pick one that does appeal to you. Use the sauces in things like pasta. Want some homemade cheese but not for pizza? Go straight to the cheese chapter. Also each recipe had icons near the name showing what allergens it is free of.

The only negative for me is personal preference and didn’t affect my star count. I prefer having a picture of each recipe right with it on the page(s) of the recipe. Instead only some recipes have pictures, generally not with the recipe and also not labeled.

Chapter 1 Dough

Recipes for dough include: whole-wheat dough, sourdough starter, gluten-free dough


Chapter 2 Sauce recipes:

San Mariano Plum Tomato and Basil sauce, Regular Tomato sauce, Marinara Sauce, Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, Butternut Squash Sauce, Yellow Cherry Tomato and Basil Sauce, Pea Sauce, Asparagus Sauce, Chickpea and Lemon Sauce, Red Cabbage Sauce.

Chapter 3 Cheese recipes:

Cashew Mozzarella, Grated Nut Parmesan, Almond Gorgonzola Cheese, Cashew and Walnut Pecorino, Almond Ricotta, Spreadable Cheese, Cashew Buffalo Mozzarella.

Chapter 4 Topping recipes:

Melanzane ”A Funghetto”, Caramelized Onions, Eggplant Meatballs, Eggplant Parmigiana, Funghi Trifolati, Smoked Beet Carpaccio, Roasted Potatoes, Stir-Fried Endive, Stir-Fried Broccoli Rabe, Pan-Fried Peppers, Salmon-style Fillet, Cannellini Sausages, Smoked Carrot Pancetta, Carrot Prosciutto, Tuna-style Plum Tomatoes.

Chapter 5 Dressings & Dips:

Chili Oil, Smokes Caramelize Beet Dip, Garlic Mayonnaise, Porcini and Mushroom Dip, Pesto, Tapenade.

Chapter 6 Pizza recipes:

Marinara Pizza
Margarita Pizza
Six Cheese Pizza
Four Seasons Pizza
Butternut Squash and Caroline Nero Pizza
Montanara Pizza
Asparagus, Baby Plum Tomato, and Pistachio Pizza
Broccoli Rabe and Sausage Pizza
Eggplant Parmigiana Pizza
Eggplant “Meatballs” Pizza
Mixed Mushroom and Sausage Pizza
Roasted Potato and Carrot Pancetta Pizza
Funghi Trifolati and Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto Pizza
Vegan Salmon and Yellow Tomato Pizza
Spinach and Ricotta Pizza
Chickpea, Lemon, and Mushroom Pizza
Asparagus, Cherry Tomato, and Parmesan Pizza
Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto and Zucchini Pizza
Red Cabbage, Grilled, Eggplant, and Shiitake Pizza
Chicory, Ricotta, Olive, and Caper Calzone
Pear, Gorgonzola, and Walnut Pizza
Carrot, Prosciutto, Cherry Tomato, and Arugula Pizza
Artichoke and Pecorino Pizza
Three Pepper Pizza
Gluten-Free Tuna-Style and Yellow Baby Tomato Focaccia


Chapter 7 Pasta Recipes

Cashew Nut and Lemon Linguine
Spaghetti with Sun-Dried tomatoes, capers, tapenade, and almonds
Penne Alla Norma
Beet and Prosecco Risotto
Tagliatelle with Wild Mushrooms and Asparagus Sauce
Lasagne with Mushroom Ragù and Béchamel

Chapter 8 Desserts

Gluten-free Tiramisù
Custard Cream Dough Balls
Banoffee Gelato
Chocolate Fingers

[Blake Fraina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember years ago, before I became I vegetarian, my husband and I purchased the Nobu cookbook. It had stunning photography that was so fun to look at and that's pretty much all we did with it. The restaurant caliber recipes were just too complicated and difficult for us to actually attempt at home. In my vast collection of cookbooks, there are definitely two types - the ones you cook from and those you thumb through for the pictures. The Purezza Vegan Pizza cookbook, unfortunately, falls into the latter category.

I started out by whipping up some of their whole wheat pizza dough, which came out fine. Then I followed their cashew mozzarella recipe and that's where things kind of went south. The recipe makes about one cup of faux cheese. I added all the ingredients to my Vitamix and, after the initial blend, everything was either spattered along the sides of the blender or sitting just below the blades. No matter how much scraping and stirring I did, I could not get this stuff to blend out smooth. It ended up looking like a weird, lumpy humous. Not to mention that the 1 tsp of salt required ended up making the "cheese" taste more like a salty cheddar or parmesan as opposed to creamy, mild mozzarella. After that rather epic fail, I was kind of turned off to the entire venture.

I will say that this cookbook has some amazing looking recipes (all gorgeously photographed), but a quick eyeball of most of them suggests they're just too complicated for me to bother with. Every topping (smoky carrot "pancetta," eggplant "meatballs") has to be painstakingly prepared before adding to the crust.

When I went to the UK in 2018, Purezza was one of the places I'd hoped to visit but we never made it out to Brighton, therefore I was stoked to get this book. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until my next trip to England so they can prepare their beautiful plant-based pizza for me, because I don't think I'll be making any myself.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a cookbook with recipes for vegan pizzas. For all of these recipes, the ingredients are commonly available, and there aren't a lot of ingredients in each recipe. Many of the recipes have pictures of the final product. Each recipe has the ingredients list and instructions, and they're labeled if they're gluten-free, soy-free, or nut-free. I'd recommend this book for the sauces and cheeses alone, and many of the recipes look intriguing and tasty to me.

They started with dough recipes for whole wheat dough, sourdough starter, and a relatively simple gluten-free dough. The next section had recipes for several types of tomato-based sauces then some creative sauces using things like butternut squash, peas, asparagus, chickpeas, and red cabbage. These sauces look very pretty in the pictures, and I intend to try all of them. Obviously, these will make non-typical tasting pizzas, but these sauces can also be used on pastas. The next section is vegan cheese recipes for Parmesan, ricotta, a spreadable cheese, several types of mozzarella, and two types of hard cheese. I certainly intend to try these, especially as they look less time-consuming to make than some of the non-liquid vegan cheeses that I've tried. The next section was recipes for various toppings like caramelized onions, eggplant "meatballs", roasted potatoes, stirfried broccoli, panfried peppers, salmon style fillet (using marinated carrots), bean "sausages", and many others. They also include some recipes for dips, pastas, and desserts. The recipe section for the pizzas mainly combined previous recipes to make a tasty pizzas.

I received an ebook review copy of this book from the publisher through Amazon Vine.