Pizza Time - But Hold the Cheese

Most people who know me are aware that I have a severe dairy allergy. When people learn this piece of information, the first thing they ask is, "What? You mean you can't eat pizza?" Pizza it seems is a big part of people's lives.

Recently my kids have started coming home from school and asking if they could have pizza. A couple of weeks ago, wanting to make them happy, I told them I could make them a pizza without cheese.  They were uber excited.

This afternoon I decided to surprise them with pizza for dinner. I pulled out my food processor, got out the recipe booklet which came with the machine and got to work.

In the past I haven't really had spectacular results with the pizza dough recipe, so today I decided to read the recipe a little more carefully. (I think I am recipe challenged!!) While reading the instructions I noticed a few tiny words I had never seen before and hoped it was the solution to my problem.

I made the pizza dough, with just a little variation from the recipe and set it to rise. I then began to search my fridge and cabinets for yummy ingredients to top this pizza with.

After assembling the sauce, black olives, slivers of onion and diced red peppers on the pizza dough, it was ready to go into the oven.

My house smelled heavenly as it baked and a short while later a beautiful, dairy-free pizza emerged!

The smiles on Mushky and Shalom's faces when they saw the pizza were priceless!

Pizza was delish - and almost everyone loved it - Shalom simply informed me that he doesn't like pizza with sauce, seems you can't win them all.

Cheeseless Pizza Recipe


1/2 tablespoon yeast
a little sugar
1 cup warm water
2 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon oil
Hunt's tomato sauce
Hunt's tomato paste
oregano
garlic powder (the granulated kind)
sliced black olives
1/2 fresh red pepper
1/4 of a sweet onion


To Make The Dough: (I use a Cuisinart food processor with the Dough mode and dough blade.)


1.Dissolve 1/2 tablespoon yeast + a pinch or two of sugar,  in 1 cup warm water. Wait for the mixture to foam.
2. Put the flour, salt and oil in the bowl of the food processor. Press Dough and then On.
3. Pour the yeast/water mixture through the small hole in the pusher tube. (This is the piece you would use to push ingredients down the tube. The small hole is to let liquids fall into the bowl at a slow pace - I think this was the step I was missing all these years.)
4. Allow the dough to be processed until it cleans off the sides of the work bowl. I then added around another 1/3 of a cup of flour to keep the dough from being to sticky - and let it process again for 30 seconds. 
5. Remove dough from bowl and allow to rise for about an hour. 
6. Press dough into a big rectangle on a cookie sheet and brush with a little bit of oil.
7. Mix tomato sauce with tomato paste and spread on the dough - don't put sauce near the edges, this way the edges will puff up into a nice crust.
8. Sprinkle sauce with sliced black olives, sliced onion, diced red pepper, oregano and garlic.
9. Bake on 425 for 15-20 minutes.
10. Enjoy!