vegan mexican pizza

Happy Vegan Pizza Day! Any holiday that involves food or alcohol, you can bet I will be celebrating. Vegan pizza is nothing new for us, although we don’t eat a lot of homemade pizza in the summer. Our house with no A/C + oven heated to 500 degrees = three totally miserable people.  Don’t worry, I planned ahead and had a chilled bottle of wine ready to go as soon as I turned on the oven.

I decided to mix it up a bit tonight and make a Mexican pizza. Let me tell you, this pizza was worth turning the oven on for.

Use your favorite recipe for crust, or store-bought crust is fine. I use the basic pizza crust recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. This recipe makes enough for three 14″ pizzas, so I always freeze the extra dough to make pizza later in the month. Just form the extra dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, put in a freezer bag and throw it in the freezer. Take it out of the freezer the morning you want to use it, unwrap it, put it in a bowl and let it defrost in the fridge.

Vegan Mexican Pizza

Favorite recipe of prepared pizza dough

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 lb mushrooms, chopped (I use oyster mushrooms because those are the only mushrooms I will eat cooked, but feel free to use any kind you like)

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 can vegetarian refried beans

1/2 c vegan pepperjack cheese* (if you don’t like pepperjack, use 1/2 cup of jack or mozzarella)

1/2 c vegan cheddar cheese*

1/2 medium tomato, deseeded and chopped

1/4 c red bell pepper, chopped

1 green onion, finely chopped

1 jalapeno, finely chopped, seeds removed

2 tbsp diced green chilies

Heat oven to 500 degrees.

Heat non-stick skillet to medium and add olive oil. Add cumin seeds and saute for 1 minute. Add chopped mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are soft, about 8-10 minutes. Put cooked mushrooms aside.

Prepare pizza dough in a 14″ pizza pan, or stretch out on a cookie sheet. Spread refried beans on dough leaving 1/2″ on the edge. Sprinkle both cheeses on top of the beans. Sprinkle remaining toppings – mushrooms, tomato, red pepper, green onion, jalapeno and green chilies – on top of the cheese.

Cook pizza for 10 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes before slicing.

Serve pizza with vegan sour cream and diced avocado.

*A few thoughts on vegan cheese…For this recipe I used Daiya shredded cheese. I love Daiya cheese. It melts and stretches like dairy cheese and tastes great when cooked. Daiya makes shredded cheese in three flavors – cheddar, pepperjack and mozzarella. Daiya recently came out with wedges in three flavors – cheddar, jack and jalapeno garlic havarti. I have tried all three flavors of the shreds and the cheddar wedge, and I love them all. I will only eat this cheese cooked, as I don’t care for the flavor of any of them when raw. Some people like it raw, I am just not one of them. There are quite a few other brands of vegan cheese out there – rice cheese, almond cheese, soy cheese – but Daiya is my go-to brand.