They say necessity is the mother of invention and I believe this to be true. I also believe delicious pizza to be a necessity. And that’s how I came up with this vegan pesto pizza with smoked tofu and artichokes.
There are a couple of options when making this pizza: you can use store-bought ingredients, or you can make everything from scratch. Or, if you’re like me, you can use a combination of both.
Pizza dough isn’t terribly hard to make (you can google “quick easy pizza dough”), but the recipes I’ve tried never taste quite as good as the stuff made by Holy Napoli, a company based here in the Lower Mainland and available a lots of grocery stores. Follow your heart when you choose your dough, just make sure it’s vegan!
If you go with a frozen dough, defrost it and then roll it out on a clean, lightly-floured surface until it’s roughly the size and shape of your baking sheet. Mine is a circular pizza pan, so I work with the ball shape of the dough to create a round pizza.
I used store-bought vegan pesto here, but you can make a lovely vegan pesto using nutritional yeast instead of traditional cheese — and even play around with the other ingredients, using kale instead of basil or walnuts instead of pine nuts.
Once you’ve spread a nice even layer of pesto on your pizza dough, it’s time to add some toppings! Smoked tofu is so flavourful and can be used straight outta the package for sandwiches, salads, vegan cheese plates — the list goes on! But putting it on pizza was something I never tried and I’m so glad I did.
Slice your smoked tofu into approximately 8 pieces and then cut those in half on a diagonal to create triangles. Distribute the tofu evenly over your pesto pizza base. Next, take 5-6 pieces of marinated artichoke hearts and slice them in half. Place these evenly between the smoked tofu.
For this pizza, I like to make my own gooey vegan mozzarella (recipe here), as well as adding some (optional) vegan mozzarella shreds. The combination is lovely, but if you’re going to choose one, make the melty mozza — it’s super easy and crazy delicious.
Now pop your gorgeous pizza in that super hot oven for 5 minutes, rotate it and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Let cool before you dive in and enjoy!
Smoked Tofu & Artichoke Pizza
Ingredients
- 1 package pre-made pizza dough
- 3 tbsp pesto
- 90 g smoked tofu, sliced
- 5-6 marinated artichoke hearts, halved.
- 110 g melty vegan mozzarella (linked above)
- 1/3 cup vegan mozzarella shreds (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 500° and lightly flour a clean work surface.
- Using a rolling pin, roll out your pizza dough to roughly the shape of your baking sheet.
- Transfer your rolled out dough to a lightly oiled baking sheet and top with pesto.
- Slice the smoked tofu into roughly 8 pieces and then in half and place evenly around your pizza.
- Next, had the halved marinated artichoke hearts and 8-10 large dollops of vegan mozzarella. If you choose to also use vegan mozzarella shreds, add them last.
- Cook pizza for 5 minutes, then rotate it and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.
