CHEEZLY BLOODY CHEEZLY - more forays into the world of frozen vegan pizza

Holland and Barrett is a pretty essential shop if you are attempting to live that vegan life, because they sell lots of vegan convenience food, and as much as I enjoy being vegan, convenient is often one thing that it is not. One such convenience food is the range of VegiDeli frozen vegan pizzas that they sell (I previously talked about the Cheese and Tomato flavour one here). These pizzas are great because they are topped with vegan cheese (VegiDeli's Mozzarella style Cheezly), and I have been going pretty hard on them lately so I wanted to write about that, because I want to bring my authentic pizza experience 2 u, my loyal readers.

First of all, here is the seasonal 'Festive Pizza' that is currently available in the range:

(sry for shitty picture, me and Ben were sharing/rly hungry so forgot to take a pic of the full thing, but this gives you the right idea) 

The Festive Pizza has on it turkey style chunks, Lincolnshire style veggie sausage, green peppers, sweetcorn and cranberries. It is very very good, and I was especially into the sausage (edit: that's what she said tehe). Unfortunately, like any frozen pizza really, the base is not of great quality, but I would definitely say that the toppings make up for it. If u are in the market for a tasty vegan pizza for like a Christmas buffet or maybe for your second Christmas dinner (lmao u really expect me to celebrate the birth of Jesus with a fucking roast when pizza, his favourite food, exists?) or something then this is your guy. I am considering buying them up so that I can enjoy them in January and prolong the period before my inevitable withdrawal sets in. 

Pizza rating - 8/10

Secondly, here is that Cheese and Tomato flavour pizza again, accompanied by the 'Meatless Feast':

(yep I had two pizzas they are really small get out of my face haters)

Again this is a shit picture, but you get the idea. The Cheese and Tomato pizza is yummy enough - you kind of get what you expect which is not a bad thing. The Meatless Feast is again very tasty - I especially like the pepperoni slices (you can buy those in a packet from VegiDeli's chilled 'meats' range which is also sold at Holland and Barrett but ur reading a vegan pizza blog so you probably already know that) and the ground beef style pieces, but I coulda done without the ham style chunks - the turkey ones on the Festive Pizza are lots superior. Again, the base isn't great but is much improved by a dip (I'd suggest BBQ) and the cheese is Cheezly so you know you can rely on it. 

Pizza rating: 7/10

So yeah these Cheezly pizzas are great when you can't be bothered to make/assemble/order a vegan pizza, and I would especially recommend the Festive one so get your hungry lil mitts on that while u can! Hopefully VegiDeli bring out more limited edition pizzas for me to eat and then tell you about. That would be great.

vegan pizza b4g3ls - 18/5/2014

Pizza bagels you were promised, so pizza bagels you shall have. Continuing my odyssey of turning various bread products into PIZZA products (see 'za crumpets from about 2 weeks ago), I focussed my attentions on the bagel. I just want to take a second to give a shout out to bagels because they are seriously fucking great. I am all about that gooey chewy inside bread life. 

So "how did u make pizza bagels???" I hear u cry. Well, my pizza pal(s) (lol who am I kidding), it was very easy. This post will tell u just how to do it *a million pizza fans breathe a collective sigh of relief*. Also in a restinpizza first, I'm about to hit u with an actual recipe 'cause I made my own pizza sauce so hold on to your damn hats.

These are the basic ingredients you will need. You will also need some crushed garlic or a squeezy tube of garlic puree which is not pictured because I forgot. I chose to use New York Bakery bagels mainly because they come pre-cut and I have some sort of delusion about being a luxury bitch who refuses to do menial tasks such as slicing bagels, but you can obvi use any you like according to personal taste/budget.

Now for the pizza sauce recipe - I usually use that Tesco stuff that I've talked about a couple of times before, but because I am part Italian it was drummed into me as a child that one should always have a vast array of tomato products to hand in case of emergency (I am really not joking about this, I have witnessed my dad buy at least a two tins of chopped tomatoes on every supermarket shop I've ever accompanied him on), and also because I'm hella poor right now, I decided to use the tools at my disposal to craft my own delicious pizza sauce.

So. For four pizza bagels, I'd recommend about a tablespoon and a half of tomato puree, as well as a few generous sloshings (v professional food blogger) of passata. Give it all a mix about so that it's a consistency somewhere in between the slightly thin passata and the thicker puree, and then add a squeeze squeeze of garlic (depending on how strong u like it ;-) hehe) and some herby seasoning - the one I use is Sainsbury's Italian Herb Seasoning and it is a rly good all purpose seasoning for pasta sauces and pizzas and so on. Give all of that a stir and as if by magic - you got yourself pizza sauce. Even though I made this sauce for the bagels, it's obviously fine for any other sort of pizza too (it actually tastes really really good so would recommend giving it a go if you're so inclined) and once you've bought all the ingredients it does actually end up working out cheaper, if a bit less convenient, than buying a pre-made one.

We toasted the bagels super lightly, and then added the sauce, and then we also added some grated mozzarella style Cheezly (which u can see in the ingredients photo - rly good vegan cheese replacement that actually melts and bubbles and does all that cool normal cheese stuff; obviously u can use any cheese, dairy or otherwise, of ur choice and u will still wield similar results). We didn't add any more toppings but we definitely could have - sliced black olives would have been cool here and I'm definitely gonna try em out next time. Then we put them under the grill for abooout 5 mins at abooout 150 degrees (this is why you don't need to toast the bagels loads in the first place), but because every oven is different, just keep an eye on them - you can probably take them out when the cheese starts to bubble. 

You should end up with something like this (tbh I don't see how you couldn't unless you are an idiot or baby, this is not a challenging recipe). They taste totally friggin dope and imo they're better than pizza crumpets. But maybe that's just because I like bagels more than I like crumpets. The squishy inside-ness of the bagel went really, sort of unexpectedly, well with the sauce/cheese combination, and this is 100% something I would make again. 

I am not sure what bread I will turn into a pizza next. I will have to think on it and get back to you. 4 now, c u all soon and happy pizza bagel-ing. Mwah xoxoxo

Pizza rating: 8.5/10   

(vegan) pizza crumpet$$$

Ben reckons he invented these but he obviously didn't. Either way they are totally class and very easy to make when u need dat pizza fix.

Basically we toasted some crumpets and then we put that Tesco pizza sauce that I reviewed a while ago on them (as u can see me doing very skilfully below.)

This was all well and good. This pizza sauce is v reliable for all your homemade pizza needs, and it's pretty cheap also. However, the real star of this snack was the CHEESE. You may notice that the title of this post includes the word vegan and you may also notice that in the picture at the top of the post it looks very convincingly like actual cheese. Well my friends, let's talk about motherfucking Mozzarella Style Cheezly. It is literally the holy grail of vegan cheeses in that it actually MELTS and TASTES LIKE REAL CHEESE when it does so. It is also super easy to grate (Ben froze it beforehand which made doing so even easier but also sort of painful - our hands felt like they were gonna fall off after a bit because cold) and it sprinkled on the pizzas in nice satisfying clumps. This shit is awesome and also rly widely available (you can get it in most Holland and Barrett shops), so if you're so inclined you should totally give it a go because its production doesn't make any cows sad which is obviously a big plus. 

I am super stoked to use this cheese on other stuff (cheesy garlic bread and on top of pasta and inside burritos oh my!), and I am also super stoked to continue experimenting with various breads and pizza toppings (watch out for PIZZA BAGELS coming to a restinpizza post near u soon lol) because clearly, pizza is the dope shit and also my reason for living. Have a nice evening and eat yrself a pizza crumpet or five. 

lmao

Pizza rating: 7/10