Dairy Free Quick Pizza

Once again, I’m going suggest making something as if it’s a recipe when in fact it’s really just using a Jus-Rol product exactly as it’s intended. Only this time, instead of making sausage rolls from puff pastry, we’re going to make sourdough pizza from a sourdough mix… The reason I’m sharing this, though, is that the Jus Rol product is fairly new and so some of my vegan and dairy-free friends don’t know about it but also making pizza with a toddler is really rewarding.

You can pretty much put whatever you want on your pizza but today we made ones using the following:

• Jus Rol Sourdough Pizza Base
•  A carton of passata
• A red onion
• A fresh chilli (perhaps not on the bits you know the little one is going to eat – today’s was HOT)
• A pack of fresh basil
• A handful of frozen sweetcorn
• A pack of pepperoni slices
• A red bell pepper
• A pack of Bute Island Foods Grated Sheeze Vegan Mozzarella
• A pinch of ground black pepper and olive oil to season
• Some flour to dust the work surface and dough with

It’s a little bit messy but Piglet really enjoyed being a full co-chef in the process. And was much more keen to eat it once it was ready for fully knowing what was in it than he might have been otherwise…

I’m not usually a big fan of vegan cheese (having not eaten milk for the first 17 years of my life, I’ve never really formed an attachment) but we bought this for a particular recipe not that long ago and actually it gives us a way to make alternative meals that we never would have otherwise though to try (pizza, pasta bake etc…)

You can follow the steps pretty much exactly as written on the dough packaging but in short we did the following:

• Pre-heat the oven to 200 oC and get the dough out of the fridge about 15 mins before you start
• Boil the kettle and pour some hot water over the frozen sweetcorn in a bowl. Pour the lukewarm water out through your fingers after a few minutes
• Dust a clean work surface with flour. Also dust your hands (both of you). Consequently end up dusting your face, most of your clothes, the floor and random parts of the kitchen you didn’t realise your little one could reach…
• Get the dough out of the packet and take turns to stretch it out (not rolling) with your fingers. Then hold the dough by the edges to stretch it out
• Place the pizza base dough on to a baking sheet/parchment paper on a baking tray
• Pour the passata into a bowl and spoon it out onto stretched out dough – try to keep a 1cm gap at the edge but don’t worry too much (Piglet got sauce in several places we weren’t planning to – it didn’t really matter)
• Add a couple of pinches of black pepper as evenly as possible
• Half and thinly slice a red onion, sprinkle this across the passata
• Add thin finger slices of pepper, torn up bits of basil and sweetcorn kernels
• If creating an ‘adult’ end, sprinkle the chilli over one half
• Place slices of pepperoni evenly across the toppings
• Sprinkle about 1/2 of the bag of vegan mozzarella even over the top
• Drizzle a decent glug (highly technical volume) of olive oil over the top
• Put the baking tray in the oven fairly near the top and set a timer for 20 minutes.

The packaging says 20-25 mins but ours was definitely ready towards the shorter end of that range.

After all this – the biggest problem with the recipe is that the pizza looks delicious and clearly wants eating but is only just cooler than the surface of the sun and definitely requires cooling until the passata and cheese can be touched in their thickest/wettest bits…

I cut Piglet’s part into thin strips so he could easily pick them up with his fingers. I also served them with peas, just because.

Please do let me know of any killer pizza toppings you think we should try.