Vegan Pizza

After reading many good reviews, I took a leap of faith and bought some Follow Your Heart mozzarella cheese. I haven't liked any vegan cheeses that I've tried so far, so I was really nervous to try this one. We really like pizza around here though, and cheeseless pizza just doesn't really cut it all of the time......sometimes you just need a little creamy, cheesy goodness on your pizza, ya know?

I'm happy to report that FYH mozzarella was a hit, and we can have "cheese" pizza again!! Mairin is extremely sensitive to any changes in our food routines, so I was especially surprised to find that she actually liked the pizza. And, to my surprise, she liked the "cheese" best of all just cut off of the block (which I tried as well, and didn't like nearly as much as I liked it melted on the pizza). She even asked me after dinner if we could have this pizza every Sunday night :) (note that it's Thursday night, so I have no idea where that came from). I'm also happy to report, that as of blogging this, Stella ate the "cheese" and has had no reactions!!

I've read reviews that this "cheese" doesn't melt as well as the bold type "IT MELTS" on the package would have you believe. However, I found the bold type to be true. This "cheese" melted very well on our pizzas with no extra effort. Perhaps because I grated it with a fine holed grater. Or, perhaps because I cook my pizzas at 500F. But, either way, the "cheese" melted nicely in the same amount of time that dairy mozzarella would have melted. The flavor was very nice as well. Really, the only difference we noticed was that this "cheese" was creamier than dairy mozzarella, and it didn't have the stringy characteristic of dairy mozzarella.

About the pizzas, they were both made on white pizza crusts from dough made in my bread machine (I went with white crust because it tastes oh so good, and I thought that if the "cheese" was a bust, at least the crust would be good!). The sauce on both was made from one small can of organic tomato sauce mixed with a few teaspoons each of dried oregano and dried basil. The pizza in the top photo was topped with sliced black olives, baby spinach leaves, halved artichoke hearts, sliced roma tomatoes, Follow Your Heart mozzarella, and salt and pepper. The pizza in the photo below was topped with only black olives and Follow Your Heart mozzarella (Mairin's favorite way to eat pizza).