It’s Day Five and I’m still in the game. Barely. This is tiring!
A few people asked me about the Nutritional Yeast in yesterday’s recipe. I have discussed this on the blog before, but if you missed it, Nutritional Yeast is a yeast grown specifically to be a nutritional supplement. I use the Red Star brand. It is NOT Brewer’s yeast, a by-product of beer-making, which tastes horrible and bitter. Nooch, as we vegans call it, tastes cheesy and yummy and is a great source of protein and B-vitamins.
The bad news is that it is not widely available in Israel, although people have told me they have found it in health food stores here and there. I’ve never seen it here so I stock-pile when I go to the U.S. I’m sorry. I really try to not include ingredients in my recipes that are hard to get here, but I make the exception for Nutritional Yeast and for Vegan Protein Powders, such as Sun Warrior, as they are major staples in my diet.
If you want to make one of my recipes, and it calls for Nutritional Yeast and you don’t have it, it’s fine to leave it out. Your final result will taste differently but it will probably still be really good.
The second thing I wanted to mention is that I have been trying really hard to improve my photography skills. Those of you who are friends on facebook – and if you’re not, why not? friend me HERE - already know the ongoing foodgawker rejection saga. Their daily rejection of every photo I send in is almost depressing, but I am determined!
That said, tonight’s picture is a dud. I apologize. Once the sun goes down, I’m sunk in terms of photographing my food. Now that it’s going down so early, well dinner just isn’t ready yet. I am planning to make a lightbox to help out the situation. We shall see. In the meantime, trust me that this looked better than the photo!
Tonight’s recipe is a compilation of two prior blog recipes: the whole grain pizza dough and my famous Pesto No-Breast-o. This pesto has no cheese of course, but is FULL of calcium and nutrition from all the sesame and the spinach. Enjoy!
This recipe makes enough for 2 pizzas, dough and topping (with some leftover pesto too!)
Ingredients
- 3 tsp dry yeast
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1 tsp maple syrup or brown rice syrup
- 4 1/2 cups flour, any combo of whole wheat, spelt, oat flour, barley flour etc etc
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp oregano
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 T olive oil
- 1/2 cup sesame seeds
- 2 T Nutritional yeast
- 1/2 cup raw cashews
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 bunch fresh basil
- 4 big handfuls fresh spinach
- 2 cloves of garlic
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
- Mix together the yeast, 1/2 cup warm water, and sweetener. Stir until yeast dissolves.
- Set aside for 5-10 minutes while you measure out dry ingredients into a large bowl.
- Add yeast mixture (which should be foaming up high) into the dry ingredients.
- Stir in the remaining 1 cup warm water and the oil.
- Knead a few minutes to form a sticky soft dough.
- Coat a large bowl with olive oil, place dough inside and turn it to coat all sides.
- Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set in a warm place to rise for one hour or until doubled in size.
- Preheat oven to 200C.
- Split dough into two, and gently stretch one portion into a big circle. Place on greased pizza tray or ungreased, pre-heated pizza stone.
- Top with a thick layer of pesto and slices of fresh tomato and red onion (or whatever you want).
- Bake 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on it because the pesto is a bit fragile and you don't want it to burn.
- Repeat with second ball of dough.
- In a skillet over medium heat, toast the sesame seeds, stirring and watching the entire time. They burn fast, so just toast them for a few minutes until they are just starting to turn golden and dump them out of then pan and into your food processor immediately. (They will keep cooking if you leave them in the pan and burned sesame seeds smell bad, trust me).
- Add the Nutritional yeast and process until crumbly.
- Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth.
- Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Dunno, looks awfully yummy to me! And you did a great job on getting it so round! I might try that one…