Meety Pizza... it must be father's week

Nothing says loving to my DH like a pizza coming out of the oven. It is his absolute favorite!
This week cooking is in honor of him.

Meety Broccoli Mushroom Pizza
This is a remake of a former pizzeria favorite, back in his work two jobs days, one of which was a pizza delivery guy. I was pregnant at the time and fell in love with broccoli, a veggie I did not eat growing up. I craved mushroom broccoli pizza's and DH would order one for me and drop it by on his breaks. He liked burger on his, but learned to like the mushroom broccoli too.

Today, I made a typical whole white (golden 86) wheat bread dough for the crust , but since I used my Bosch Univeral to make 3 loaves worth of bread I had enough to do calzones and mini pizza crusts ahead for freezing.

The secret to great pizza crusts is to allow the dough to rise in the refrigerator, roll the cold dough out for topping and then pop it into a hot oven. It will give that big bubbly kind of pizzeria crust that way. Make sure you find a pizza crust dough recipe you like though, I don't like heavy crusts - It's worth the experimenting. Bryanna offers a nice one in her high fiber cookbook.

Although I have a good homemade sauce, I used a canned varity that we enjoy in this one. Since DH loves a meety pizza I used B**fy Flavored TVP. This is easy to do, my seasonings were based off of a Bryanna veggie burger recipe. Here's my recipe:
Add the following to micro safe container:
1 3/4 C water
1/4 C soy sauce water
1 Tbsp ketchup
1 Tbsp marmite (the secret to the wonderful flavor)
1 tsp kitchen bouquet
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp each onion powder and garlic powderto a boil
Microwave for 2 1/2 minutes until boiling. Add 2 Cups TVP, stir and allow to rehydrate for 5 minutes. That's all, it's ready to use for the pizza or calzones. This may cause some bean type reactions (gasiness) . A cup of hot fennel tea following the meal healps for me, for DH Beano works wonders.

I also added steamed broccoli (from our garden) and some fresh sliced mushrooms. On this BIG pizza (this pan is 16 onches wide) I made a WHOLE batch of Bryanna's Gruyere cheese, froze it and shredded it over the top. It melted and browned very well, see the top picture for proof. I actually stuck it under the broiler for a few minutes, it browned just a tad bit more than I wanted, but was still scrumptious.



A big batch of dough also makes several mini pizza doughs or calzones that can be decorated in any way one wants. Even with vegan cheese available I often like my pizza's without. The one pictured is my mini 4" pizza with sauce, mushrooms, green pepper, red pepper, purple onion, garlic granules and vegan parmesan sprinkles. I like to dip it in extra sauce, warmed. Sometimes I add crumbled marinated and grilled tofu if I have leftovers.

All pizza's freeze well (cooked with toppings and all), but it is best to reheat them in the oven to get it good and crispy again.

Enjoy!