Raw Vegan Pizza (with) Salad

Flat as once thought world was and tasty like a cheat meal…

We really love pizza. Back when we were still on a standard diet, we used to buy two frozen pizza crusts, and load them with… everything! Since going vegan, we had a blast experimenting with different toppings, like peanut butter and tempeh or ajvar and mushrooms. I remember one with tofu cream, but that one never got ‘recorded’. Granted, it took longer time to prepare the dough and the toppings, but it was so worth it! We never made same pizza twice, always something new had to be tried out.

Since going raw (officially December last year, but navigating toward that six months earlier), raw pizza was a mystery. Almost all the recipes we came across required a dehydrator to dry out the crust and we are still waiting for a good moment financially to get our paws on one. But, who knows how long can that take? No pizza until then? No way, Jose!

There is a no-dehydrator recipe for ‘crust’ that uses caps of Portobello mushrooms, but still, that’s not what we had in mind. So, we experimented a little. Thinking about the way raw ’cheesecakes’ are made, you know, seeds or nuts as a base, I thought to give that a go. I used walnuts with various spices as a base. It was tasty, no doubt about it. But, since we are trying most of the time to eat 80/10/10 diet, our conscience wasn’t pleased, as you might guess.

Somewhere along the line, we started eating raw, soaked or sprouted buckwheat and that gave me the idea to use it as our pizza base. First time I mixed it in a food processor, ending up with some creamy mush and was not satisfied. Finally, I figured it out and got the result I was happy with (Mladen was over the roof! 🙂 )

Pizza base

• 250 grams of raw buckwheat
• 2 tablespoons of grounded flax-seed
• 2 tablespoons of grounded black sesame seeds (or regular)
• 1 teaspoon of Italian dried mixed spices (oregano, basil, parsley, mint, rosemary and marjoram)
• 1 teaspoon of garlic powder (or to taste)
• 1/3 teaspoon of salt (or to taste)
• 5 tablespoons of sunflower seed butter (or any other seed or nut butter)

You can use soaked or sprouted buckwheat. We soaked our buckwheat for about 24 hours in a fridge in a little salted water. Drain the water and place buckwheat in a mixing bowl. Add ground flax and sesame seed, Italian spices, garlic and salt. I actually grounded spices with seeds, just to be sure it will distribute evenly. Mix ingredients, add sunflower seed butter and mix again. Transfer your mixture on plates, spread and flatten it using a spatula. Our ‘crust’ is done!

Creamy spread

• 100 grams of raw cashew nuts
• 2 teaspoons of nutritional yeast
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (or to taste)
• 2 teaspoons of salt water sole (or salt to taste)
• 1-2 tablespoons of water (just to make it creamy)

Soak your cashews for 6-8 hours, drain and rinse them and pop them in a food processor or a blender. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until you get the spread like consistency. Depending on your equipment, you may need more or less water. Spread the cream over the base.

Topping

• 200 grams of marinated mushrooms
• 10 green and 10 black olives (pitted)
• 1 large red bell pepper
• 1/2 of a large yellow pepper
• some chives

That’s it. Your raw vegan, no-dehydrator pizza is done!

Did I hear someone say there’s not enough greens? How about now:

Salad

• 1 head lettuce
• handful of wild garlic
• bunch of scallion greens
• 4 red radishes
• 2 carrots
• handful of chives
• 80 grams of alfalfa sprouts
• 4 tablespoons of fermented mixed mushrooms – shiitake, cloud ear (black) mushrooms, white wood ear (optional)

Grate carrots, chop everything else and pour over mushroom marinade. Place the salad around pizza and sprinkle some umeboshi vinegar on top of it.

For normal people this amount would be enough for 3-4 servings, but as you can see in our case, just for the two of us! 🙂

Not really a pizza with a crust that you can hold in your hand, but a super-tasty variation if you (yet!) don’t own a dehydrator. Enjoy!

Mladen demonstrating the pizzas’ size 🙂