BBQ Tempeh Vegan Pizza Recipe (With Video)

This transcription will have some mistakes because it is partially automated.

Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show. I’m Heather and tonight we are making a barbeque tempeh pizza.

Now I’ve made pizza before, we did Greek last time and what I did was use a store bought flat bread or pita bread and that’s definitely an option its better than buying a frozen pizza or a takeout pizza from a pizza place but a friend of mine was disappointed that I didn’t show how to make your own pizza crust because that is definitely the best way to go.

First of all the ingredients are gonna be fresh, they’re gonna be coming right out of your cupboard and mix them together. Second of all you know exactly what’s going in there. You know there aren’t any preservatives or chemicals or anything like that and thirdly it just taste really delicious.

So what you’re gonna do to start on your pizza crust and its really easy so don’t be scared, turn on your oven. Pizzas want a really high temperature, ok a little high. 400 degrees is pretty good, the pizza in restaurant is cooked really really hot. I don’t even know what temperature they’re doing that but hotter than our ovens will go anyway.

Alright! So we’re starting with some flour in a bowl and what I’m gonna add is some yeast, something like that and this is the traditional style yeast. You can buy them in a jar, you can buy them in pockets, if you use pockets just use one pocket. There’s also quick action yeast and that is more of a flake than the granule. Those are great too, either one will work here.

Now food for yeast is sugar and I’m gonna add some sugar here just to make the action of the yeast go, it’s not to make this sweet but you can’t leave it out otherwise your yeast won’t have anything to eat and I don’t know about you but when I don’t have anything to eat I don’t wanna do anything.

I’m gonna add a little bit of salt, that’s to bring the flavors together and if you want to do something really special you can add some herbs to your pizza crust so rosemary’s are really nice one or thyme. They both come true really well in the crust.

So stir all those dried ingredients together and what we’re gonna do is to make a well in the center and if you have no idea what that means I’ll show you.

You literally just make a whole in the middle of your flour and what your gonna do is pour your liquids into that hole and I’m gonna start with a little bit of olive oil and about a tablespoon or two is fine.

And then the rest of the liquid to make your dough is gonna be water and the water to flour ratio can change depending on what type of flour you use. I’m using whole wheat. Use any type of whole grain flour you like, brown rice flour works very well with pizza crust as well.

But anyway you, you might not use exactly the same ratio of water as I am so what you do is add it and just kind of give it a stir and as your stirring your gonna be able to tell how wet this dough is gonna be.

And it’s very easy to add more flour but it’s very difficult to add more water so yeah I’ve used about three quarters of a cup for my cup of flour and it’s a bit wet so I’m gonna need to grab some more flour in order to make this a nice pizza dough.

At some point in the progression of your dough, your spoon is not gonna cut it anymore and that’s where the fun part starts. Get some flour on your hands and then get them right in there with the dough what you’re looking for is that this dough is a nice soft consistency.

It will probably be little bit sticky and the way to get a really soft pizza dough is to get your dough as with little flour as possible in order that it doesn’t stick to your hands and that’s a very fine balancing act that you need to come up with, little practice and you’ll be – you’ll be fine.

But what you want to do is make sure your pizza crust stays on the verge of sticking to your hands and then anytime it does start to stick you just take a little bit of flour, sprinkle it on there and keep going.

Now kneading and I’ll take this out of the bowl so you can see better. Kneading is something that people are probably familiar with the word but maybe you haven’t done it before.

What you’re gonna do is take your dough, fold it in half, give it a press, turn it, fold it, press. Turn it, fold it, press! Turn it, fold it, press! You can see this bottom side is gonna start to get sticky, get a little flour on there. It doesn’t hurt to have some flour on the board, press, fold, turn. Press, fold, turn. Press, fold, turn!

The longer you knead the softer your dough is gonna be and the better the yeast action so you know get a little radio going, get some TV in the background, get a glass of wine and knead away.

Once you got your dough kneaded for about five minutes that should be good. It should be really nice, soft consistency and not quite sticking to your hands but nice and moist that is what you are looking for.

Ok! Now if you ever notice on a pizza crust when they have those little yellow bits on the bottom? What it is is cornmeal and what it does is help the pizza not to stick to your baking pan.

And you can do the same thing with millet. I find it easier because I don’t use cornmeal very often so if I have some millet which I tend to have on hand I just pop a little bit in my coffee grinder and then it makes a nice course millet flour.

So what your gonna do with that is just sprinkle it on your baking sheet and then you’re going to form your dough into your pizza crust and you can make one massive pizza, you can make two medium size pizzas, you can make four little mini pizzas, whatever you like.

Phil and I like a really thin crust and all you got to do I usually pull it apart a little bit, I don’t try any fancy like the pizza chefs in movies and stuff but press it out, you can use a rolling pin that sometimes helps. Once you get it to a certain thinness, you sometimes need some help.

Anyway form it to whatever shape you like and then we’re gonna pop it in the oven once the oven is heated and your gonna get them going for about ten minutes just to get the crust most of the way cooked and then we’ll gonna put the toppings on and finish it off.

So once your crust is in the oven you’ve got a little while to prepare your toppings and what I’m using is for a barbeque pizza I’ve got some tempeh, I’ve got tomato, red pepper and I’ve got a bunch of fresh spinach.

Now I’m using a barbeque sauce that was given to me for Christmas by Jane, thank you Jane and I’ve included a recipe for a barbeque sauce because I don’t know how she did this, she made a plum barbeque sauce that is spectacular so if you have a good barbeque sauce recipe go for it and all you do, chop up your veggies and we’re getting ready to put it on top of that pizza.

So you got your veggies and tempeh chopped up and when you’re putting vegetables on pizza it’s no different from roasting vegetables and when you roast vegetables in order to protect them from drying out in the oven you need to put a little bit of oil on them and the best way to use the least amount of oil possible is put them all in a bowl, drizzle a little bit of olive oil on top there and then get in with your hands and mix it like that.

Sprinkle a little bit of salt on after you get the oil to help them soften in the oven and you will have some lovely soft vegetables once your pizza is cooked.

Now our crust is out of the oven so just spread a small amount of sauce on the pizza here and then top it with your veggies and your tempeh, put it back in the oven it takes about twenty minutes for those vegetables to soften up.

These are looking pretty awesome, they’ve been in for twenty minutes, stuff are getting nice and soft. The barbeque sauce has run onto the baking sheet a little bit which reminds me that parchment paper is never a bad idea to line the baking sheet with before you put it in the oven.

Healthy vegan barbeque tempeh pizza looks delicious now that you know how to make your own crust have fun and make up as many different pizzas as you can think of.