Vegan Pizza

So I can promise you the best pizza crust ever. Really! 

Pizza Crust

• 5 cups Bread flour
• 2 Tablespoons instant yeast
• 1 Tablespoon sugar (or agave)
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 2 Cups warm water
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 5 tablespoons Vital Wheat Gluten

This makes TWO 16 inch pans- or smaller if you want. 

Pizza Sauce

• Hm Tomato sauce

Cheese

Hm Vegan cheese..... this is a work in progress but so far to date its the closest thing I have had to real cheese ... ever! Rough recipe as follows:

• 1 cup almonds
• 2 cups hot water 
• 1 1/2 cup oil 
• 2 tablespoons arrowroot powder
• 3 tablespoons agar
• Dried Onions
• Salt
• Few pinches of Nutritional yeast 

Add all ingredients to your blender and process till smooth. Add to a pot and turn to medium and stir until it thickens. I used it right when it came off the stove. It worked perfect. Will see what happens tomorrow after it fully sets. Like I said a work in progress but it definitely has merit.    

Pizza Crust

Combine flour and VWG and sift. Add other dry ingredients and mix. Add oil and the warm water and mix the dough until when you lightly poke it it springs back. (about 10 mins). Lightly oil the dough and cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel. Let sit for two hours. Dump out onto a rolling surface and split the dough into two pieces. Roll out. 

Before cheese and with vegan pepperoni 

Take your pizza pan and lightly oil it. Gently fold the dough in half to pick it up and then stretch out onto the pan. Add your sauce, your toppings, and then the cheese. bake it at 500 degrees until it's bubbling and brown. (my oven about 20 min's or so) The cheese was actually bubbling. Crazy I know.










Now it's time for beer (or wine) and pizza!

Vegan Gnocchi

Baked Gnocchi

Gnocchi

• Potatoes
• Mushrooms
• Green Onions
• Garlic
• Seasonings
• Vegan Ricotta 

Gnocchi Mix

• Onions
• Mushrooms
• Spinach
• ...any veggie's u want
• Seasonings
• Vegan mayo
• Vegan Ricotta 

Bake potatoes. Once baked let them cool and then scrape the potato out of its skin. If you have a food mill you can use that to rice them. If you don't you can just mash them up really well. Sauté the mushrooms, onions, and garlic in a little olive oil and add to the potatoes. Mix. Add enough flour to the potatoes that they just stop sticking to your fingers and then roll them out into a long snake. Once rolled out cut into 1/2 inch slices and then roll on a Gnocchi board.  

 

Add to boiling water till they float. Remove. Put in bowl and sprinkle with a little olive oil. Stir them carefully to coat with oil so they don't stick.

Lightly sauté your vegetable mix. Add Gnocchi to your baking dish and mix in the veggie mixture and the almond mayo, and ricotta. Mix in. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees until bubbly hot.   

Vegan Chimichanga

Vegan Chimichanga

(Yes, They have been deep fried) I have to say this... everyone should have a wok. No need for a deep fryer. A wok is so versatile you will quickly fall in love with it's multiple uses. 

Vegan Hamburger 
Taco Shells
Vegan Mayo
Salsa
Lentils
Beans

Veggie Filling

Ground up Vegan "ham"burger

• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Peppers, red, yellow & green
• Jalapeños
• Garlic
• Cilantro 

Lightly sauté on your griddle the veggies, put them in a bowl and season them to taste (don't forget cumin is a important seasoning when making Mexican food) Using your food processor grind up your "ham" burger

Mix together your veggies and "ham" burger. 

Cook lentils. Drain any excess water and blend them into a paste. Season to taste.  

To assemble: spread on the lentils mixture, add beans, add your veggie mixture. Then fold it up over center, fold ends in and then roll over so all folds face down. Heat your wok up adding about 1/2 inch oil. Always place in the oil fold side down. Fry 2-3 minutes turning once or until shell is crispy and golden brown

Top with lettuce, almond "mayo, salsa or any of your favorite toppings. 

Raw Key Lime Dessert

Avocado Key Lime Pie

Crust

• Almonds
• Walnuts
• Cashews 
• Pistachios 
• Agave

Because this recipe is so versatile I am not giving amounts because it depends on if you want to make one or lots or if you are making a crust for a pie pan. Feel free to use whatever you want for nuts. Food processor them and then add agave till it starts to stick together. Press into your dish.

Avocado filling

• 1-2  Ripe Avocados
• 3-4 Tablespoons Fresh lime Juice
• 1/4 cup Agave 

 Again, if you need more you can double the recipe. Add all ingredients to your blender and process till smooth. Fill your crust with the avocado filling. Cover and chill till you are ready to serve it.  

Spicy Vegan garden Veggie Fettucini Pasta

Fettucini with Garden Veggies

• Pasta noodle recipe 
• onions
• garlic
• spinach
• carrots
• cucumbers
• tomatoes
• peppers
• mushrooms
• squash
• seasonings to taste
• Almond "mayo"
• Almond Ricotta 

Noddles cut up and ready to be cooked

Make noodles as directed. Flour and fold and cut up into thick strips. Boil water add a little oil. Cook till they float to the top. Drain water add a little oil so they don't stick. Stir them. 

Cut up as many veggies as you want in various amounts. Either lightly cook the veggies or add them raw to cooked noodles stir together. Add almond mayo and almond ricotta and seasonings.

Yummy! 

  

Baguettes

Baquettes

Baguettes are not hard to make they just require time. You make the starter the night before and the next day you add the starter to the rest and 6 hours later you have the most tasty baguettes ever.

Just mixing the starter

Starter

• 1/2 cup cool water
• 1 cup bread flour
• 1/16 teaspoon instant yeast

Sift flour add yeast mix. Add water. Mix together. Cover with plastic wrap. Set on counter till the next day. 

Starter Mixed

Starter the next day ready to be added to the Dough mix

Now that your starter is happy.

Dough

• 3 1/2 cups bread flour
• 1 +  2 teaspoons cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 teaspoon of salt

Mixed dough and starter

Sift flour, add all ingredients. Mix together. Add liquid and the starter . Mix until you have a dough that has a bit of a rough surface but still smooth. 

Cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel and let sit for 1 hour. After 1 hour gently poke the dough to deflate it. Turn it over and recover it. After another hour has passed do the same thing. At the 3 hour mark turn the dough out onto a lightly greased surface and cut into 3 pieces. Slightly flatten each one into a rectangle and let sit for 15 minutes. 

Cut into 3's

Sliced and ready for the oven

.After the 15 minutes take each piece and fold it in on itself like you are rolling a paper tube pinch the seams together and roll out into a 16 inch long log and lay down on a floured tea cloth. Let sit for 90 minutes and gently roll each one off onto a  greased cookie sheet. Seam side down. Using a razor blade slice each loaf 3 times in a long crossing pattern.

Remember to preheat your oven to 450 degrees before the 90 minutes are up. 

After you have sliced the dough use cold or hot water (I use ice water) and gently brush them with the water. Bake them for 25 minutes or until they are golden brown.

Fresh baguettes with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and seasonings

White Loaf Bread

Fresh out of the oven 

One of the best white loaf breads I've ever had ...been making this for 10+ years. It's so simple to make.

Dry ingredient for 4 loafs 

• 3 cups flour
• 1-2 tablespoons sugar (or agave) 
• 1 Teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon yeast 
• 2-4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 cup almond milk, or potato water (milk richer browner crust, potato water more moist crumb) or a mix of them both. 
• ground flax if you want to 

This recipe multiplies well so if you want to make more then one loaf just multiply all ingredient's (example: 4 loafs multiply all ingredients by 4) 

(I'm making 4 loafs myself-freezes well) 

Just mixed and lightly oiled

Total risings 2. Oven 400 degrees

Sift flour and add all dry ingredients together. Add Oil, water and the additional almond milk or potato water (or a mix of both) stir together and then knead turning in the corners and flipping over till the dough has come together and when you poke it it springs back. Lightly oil the dough and cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel. Let rise for 1 hour. (preheat oven to 400 degrees) .... dump out onto a flat  service and cut into (depending on how many loafs you are making, if more then one.... square up your dough as much as you can. Cut it and then lightly stretch to fit your oiled bread pan. Let sit for 45-60 mins and then put in oven for 35 minutes or until tapping the bread it sounds hollow. Lightly oil the bread and let sit for 10 minutes or so before removing it from the bread pan. 

After 1 hour rise time and dumped out of bowl to be cut

Cut into 4 loafs

After 45 minutes rise time. Ready for the oven

It's a magic loaf...it disappears so fast ;)

It's a very light fluffy loaf of bread but not overly so. Toasts wonderfully! 

 

Vegan Tarter Sauce

Tarter sauce n (Fish n Chips) 

• Almond mayo (a cup) 
• 1 medium Onion
• 4-5 pickles (ours where homemade)
• Salt, Cayenne, garlic, Horseradish powder, Mustard powder, Emeril's

Almond Ricotta

Almond Riccotta

Almond Riccotta

• 1 cup Almonds without skin
• 2 cups HOT water
• 2 cups cold water
• 8 tablespoons corn starch
• 8 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Add all ingredients to a blender. Turn on and process, be patient you want to get the almonds as smooth as you can. When done mixing add to a 3qt pot and stirring consistently until it thickens and boils. Let cook 1 more minute and then let cool. 

May be used right away or put in fridge to cool over night to get the "ricotta" consistently. When you take it out of the fridge break it up with a fork to get the crumbles. 

Phyllo Dough

Phyllo

No need to ever buy phyllo dough again. (You're welcome) I have had this recipe for years and no idea where I got it from. This recipe has two ways to make it one is it sits overnight and the other is it needs to rest about one hour. I'll be honest I prefer the one that sits overnight because it rolls thinner and it has a better developed taste but I will tell you this much both are worth it. I actually made the quick Phyllo Dough tonight and thats what the pictures will show. When I make the other one I will take photo's so you can see the minute differences. Unless you own a handy dandy Pasta Machine the only option you have is to make the "instant" Phyllo. I have a 4 foot dowel that sits in my kitchen that I use to hand roll the dough.

Overnight Phyllo (pasta machine)

Golf ball sized 

• 8 cups bread flour 
• 2 teaspoons white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1-2 cups hot water*
• flour for rolling

"1 hour" Phyllo: (hand rolled or pasta machine)

Notice you can see my skin?

• 6 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons vinegar
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1-2 cups water
• flour for rolling

Use the hottest tap water that you can. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix for 20 minutes. Until the dough has a soft feel. Adding additional water if you need to. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the fridge till the next day. Unused Phyllo can be kept in the fridge for up to 10 days.

For the Hour Phyllo it will much more pliable. Mix and wrap and let sit for a hour. Now for the dough that you don't use... it's going to become harder to work with the longer that you have it in the fridge until it is almost too hard to use.And what I mean is that it will rip and tear and you won't be able to do anything but hand roll it so keep that in mind. I always try and use up the hand rolled dough as quick as I can. 

 Tear or cut off from the dough a piece about the size of a golf ball. Run it through your pasta roller all the way to level 9. 

Starting to hand roll it

Rolled out and wrapping it up to flip it

Ready to be rolled up and layed out to be cut

Or if you are hand rolling it get a 4 foot dowel and hand roll it out. As you roll it use the dowel to pick it back up and off the table to lay it down and unroll it on its other side. Hand rolled phyllo will be about the thickness of 2 sheets of copy paper.

Fully rolled up to be layed down on a big cutting board to be cut to size

Rolled to "9" in the pasta machine

Getting ready to cut to size

Spank! (aka spanakopita) We call it Spank! 

"Vegan "Ham"burger

Vegan burger with "mayo" 

So as I already stated calling it a "ham"burger is truly head scratchingly, numb minded, bendingly... strange. (and that actually makes more sense then calling a "ham"burger a "ham"burger (being that it's made from COW and not ham).... so I am not a person that NEEDS to create a "meat" kind of, replacement. But! I will tell you it sure is fun.... and this is what I think.... meat (as we know it nowadays) is not meat..... it's so full of STUFF and things that it actually and very rarely  honest to goodness meat.... now If I knew a farmer and a butcher that I could trust. Well frankly I would feel a lot better about eating meat... but in truth? I most likely would not, and this is why... When I stopped eating meat my body, and my health improved so much that I would hate to test the balance. So with all due respect to the animals- and everyone- that chooses their own path. Mine is what it is for my body. No judgement and I don't care to be judged back.  Food tho is common ground and frankly fun. So this is the closest thing I have had to "hamburger" made from Seitan and "No soy"(tofu)!  Soy sauce is its own thing and Not a bad word as far as I'm concerned...neither is Miso.

Dry Ingredients:

just mixed dough

• 2 cups Vital wheat Gluten
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast  
• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/4 cup -or more Dried onions
• Seasonings ( Pepper, Garlic, Emerial's, salt)
• 1/4 cup tapioca pearls 

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 cup boiled lentils
•  2/3 cup Mushroom broth*
• 1/4 cup (at least) steak sauce*
• dash of "smoke sauce" .. I soak 3 chipotles in enough water to slightly cover them in a small bowl and drain them of the "smoke flavor" usually about 4 tablespoons
• *feel free to add additional liquid's till it comes together 
• 2 tablespoons Molasses 
• 4 tablespoons oil 

Add dry ingredients and mix, Mix and add wet ingredient's stir with fork till it comes together .... mix by hand the little bit of dry ingredient into the wet ingredient adding any additional wet into the mix to just pull it together, when it's mixed cut into 4 parts. press out into a 6" by 2 1/2 inch round log ...roll into cheese cloth and tie off each end. Add each one to the cooking liquid and turn on . Cover and set to boil. "Just as it boils!" turn down to simmer and let simmer for 1 hour. Turn off and let sit in pan until cool. When cool take out of cooking liquid and cut the cheese cloth off ... put into a pan and add 2 cups cooking liquid, cover with tin foil and let cook in a 350 degree oven turning every 30 mins until liquid has started to simmer off.... then remove the tin foil and cook for another 30 min's or so. Turning as you see fit. Whats left of the cooking liquid makes a great gravy. Wrap and keep it in the fridge or freeze it. I save and use the cooking liquid for braising and reheating when I want to reheat it ...Place the seitan in a deep dish and  add a little to the pan,  cover it with tin foil and let reheat in oven (350 degrees)....  any extra liquid ....just freeze it and reuse it the next time you want to make more.

Cooking liquid

just out of the oven

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup mushroom brooth
• 1/3 cup steak sauce
• seasonings (pepper, garlic, salt etc..)
• a little olive oil (3Tbs.
• 6 qt's water 
• (feel free to add more or less of the above to your own taste)  

sliced in half

*Mushroom broth

 1 pound  (approximately) of mushrooms chopped and placed in a 3 QT sauce pan. Any kind will do ( I use a mix of White, Shiitake, and Oyster, and or King Oyster
Place in pan, Fill with water

Cover and Boil, when it boils turn to simmer and cook till mushrooms are cooked through. Turn off and use either a hand held blender or let cool and add to a blender and mix. It freezes well for later uses.

*Steak sauce

"steak" sauce

• 4 cups tomato sauce 
• 1 cup raisins
•  1/4 cup orange juice
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 red wine 
• 3  chipotle's  soaked till soft in water (just enough to hydrate, add  the soaking water also)
• seasoning's (sweet?, hot? ) you get to add what you want .... it's a taste test process (onion, garlic, fennel, pepper(s) of all kinds, seasoned salts(smoked?, lemon?, Emeril's? Lowery's?) a little cumin? Taste is what your looking for. If it doesn't "pop" quite as much as you want, try adding a little more vinegar or squeezing a lime into it .. Have fun!

Add all ingredients to saucepan and cover. Turn on high when starts to boil turn down and simmer. You need to watch it and stir it often or it will burn. When it's done, again either use a hand held blender or wait till it's cool and add to blender. Now this is the fun part...... you get to make it what YOU want... adjust any flavors you need to, (sweet barbecue sauce, hot sauce, steak sauce...don't forget molasses is a big flavor addition also, sweet, but strong and smoky)

Taco Shells cooking

Vegan Almond "Mayo"

Vegan "Mayo" 

So far Almond Mayo has become a staple for us. We use it as sour cream, cheese, cream cheese, and so much more.
I made a cheesecake with it (to die for.) It makes great won tons,.... the list is endless.

Ready to start blending ;)

• 1 Cup Blanched Almonds (*for unblanched) 
• 1 Cup Water
• 1 to 1-1/2 cups Olive Oil
• Dried Onions
• Seasonings (I use a little garlic, Cayenne, and Emeril's)
• Squeeze two Lemons for the juice (1/4 cup)

*For unblanched, Fill small pot with water and boil. Once water has boiled add almonds, and turn the heat off let them sit for 15-20 minutes. they'll just pop right out of their husk. Remember the longer they soak the smoother they blend out. 

Add almonds and everything but the oil to the blender and process till smooth. It will thicken up A LOT. After it has blended add the oil ( I always start with a cup) and sometimes add the half  cup extra. It will continue to thicken as it cools.  

Vegan Fajitas (our dinner for 2nite) ;)

Making a Boule

I'm  turning the dough inside itself, kinda like when your rub your fingers together? Thats what I am doing to the dough. Mind you I have small hands, and that piece of dough is about 2 inches.

All Purpose Buns

'Ham'burger Buns

So Is it just me that questions calling a hamburger a "hamburger" when its actually cow meat not pig meat? So I love making bread. It's one of my most favorite things to do. This dough is a higher hydration then even making Baguettes and its so worth your 4 hours time. I love this site The Fresh Loaf . It's gives me inspiration and a starting point to for me to create my own ideas. 

• Bread flour 650 grams
• Water 290 grams
• Milk* 200 grams
• Olive oil 30 grams
• Salt 13 grams
• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• **130 grams bread flour (approximately)

* Because we don't use milk I either use almond milk that I have made or a just take a couple of tablespoons of almond mayo and mix in to the 200 grams of water...  and its good to go.

Mix together sifted flour, salt and yeast. Add oil, water and "milk" stir it up. I mix this dough counter clock wise (I'm right handed) spinning the bowl every time I turn it in on itself.  I use the four fingers on my right hand with my thumb tucked up and out of the way. Because it's wet dough and it's nice to actually have dough to use ... I mix it till its cohesive (at least ten minutes... maybe 15) watching it the whole way. After it starts to come together I add **additional flour ...just enough till when I can just barely pick the dough up off of the bowl without it sticking. Once it is mixed I dump a tablespoon or so of oil on the bread coat each side and cover it.

After a hour I gently pull each of the sides in and flip it over . I wait another hour and do the same. After another 1/2 hour . I take the dough out and cut it up into how many pieces I want. This time I made a dozen but I have made 18 also, Feel free to choose how many you want. Using the boule technique form the buns and place in a lightly greased pan. Gently olive oil the buns .Cover them and while the buns are rising preheat the oven to 450 Degrees.  

Bake for 15 minutes or till the tops are lightly browned.(mine usually take a little longer then 15 minutes. After they you take them out, again gently olive oil them.