Finding dairy-free or vegan pizza at a restaurant can be tricky, and who wants to pay full-price for a pizza without cheese when you could simply make one at home? Yes, pizza is surprisingly easy to make, even from scratch. Recipes for vegan pizza crust may seem daunting, but they are really quite easy and require very little hands-on time (most of the time involved is in rising, which requires no effort on your part!).
But why stop at a basic crust? Kick things up a notch with this flavorful crust, or breadsticks, recipe from Chef Jason Wyrick, founder of Vegan Culinary Experience and The Vegan Taste Meal Service.
Jason recommends, “When this is in breadstick form, it is a must to have a great dripping sauce. I am addicted to arrabiata sauce with this recipe.”
Special Diet Notes: Roasted Garlic Chili Vegan Pizza Crust
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, nut-free, peanut-free, soy-free, vegan / plant-based, and vegetarian.
- 6 to 8 garlic cloves
- 1½ tablespoons sugar
- 1 package active yeast (about 2 teaspoons)
- 1 cup warm water
- 3 cups all-purpose or plain flour
- 1 large teaspoon crushed chili flakes (or more)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup good quality olive oil
- The best way to do this is keep your garlic in the paper, and heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Place your garlic inside and allow this to sit for about 10 minutes on each side, until the garlic paper is slightly blackened and you can smell the aroma. Then turn to a new side until all the sides are done.
- Allow the garlic to cool.
- Remove the garlic cloves from their paper skins and mince.
- Place the yeast, water, and sugar in a glass bowl. Lightly mix with your fingers and allow to rest about 5‐10 minutes. The yeast mixture should start to bubble. If it doesn’t, you might have old yeast, so you might want to try again.
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, chili flakes, and salt. Add the roasted garlic and the olive oil, and slowly add the yeast water, mixing as you go. If you have a large stand mixer with a dough paddle, this is the time to use it. If not, you are going to get a work out. You want the dough to stick to itself and not you. Add a few drops more of water, or a little bit more flour until you have this consistency. Once you have it, knead the dough for at least ten minutes.
- Cover and allow the dough to rest in a warm place for about 1 hour. It will get big. Very big.
- Punch the dough down after the hour and knead again for another 5 to 10 minutes. Then, the magic happens.
- Roll the dough out into your desired shape. For bread sticks, I like an oblong shape that you can cut into bread stick shapes. For the pizza crust, roll out into one or two circles (for two thin crust pizzas), place on your pizza stone or baking sheet, and trim or stretch to match the pan.
- Cover the dough and let rise for another 1 hour.
- Preheat your oven to 450ºF. Remove your cover from your crust, and bake it for about 5 minutes.
- Cover the crust with your topping and bake about 10 more minutes.
7 Comments
I probably missed it but when do you add the garlic? I’m guessing before you pre-bake but do you mix into the dough or just spread on top?
Yikes, it does look like the good chef omitted that! I’ve updated the recipe a bit – it should be mixed into the dough. If you prefer though, you can use it as a topping instead – in this case, I would add it with the other toppings.
I’ve used this recipe a few times now and it is awesome. Can I use whole wheat or spelt flour instead of all purpose?
The results will be quite a bit more dense. Do you have a copy of the book Go Dairy Free? I have a spelt pizza crust recipe in there that we love. As for this recipe, if you opt to trial whole grain, I would either just sub part of the flour for wheat flour and/or use white wheat flour, which is actually 100% whole grain, but has a lighter texture than traditional hard wheat flour.
Thanks Alisa. I don’t have that cookbook. I will try subbing spelt flour/whole wheat based on your comments above.
I would live to make this but were not eating olive oil, any suggestions for substitutes?
Thank you
You can use your oil of choice – all oils have the same level of fat and perform the same in recipes. The flavor will just be slightly different and will depend on the oil.