For a Guaranteed Crispy Homeade Pizza Crust.......

...you need a pizza stone! One of the best purchases I ever made for $10 at Walmart. Made of some type of porous clay, when heated up, it has properties that allows it to not only bake pizza dough evenly, but it also absorbs some of the moisture in the crust, hence creating a very crispy crust that will allow your pizza to hold its shape after it has been sliced through.

It is ever so frustrating when you take that first piece of homemade pizza and it just slumps over like a really old man, and all of your toppings fall off. Given that your pizza dough is rolled out to a decent thickness, baking your pizza on a stone will fix the issue. MAKE SURE that you spread a decent layer of corn meal on your stone before placing your pizza on it, otherwise your pizza will become part of your stone!

This is probably the best pizza I have ever had. The strong flavours of vegan pesto matched with the touch of sweetness in the roasted vegetables is fabulous. If you are not vegan, I recommend adding parmesan cheese to the pesto. There are quite a few steps to this pizza, which is why I recommend just buying ready made dough to roll out yourself. If you are really lazy, you can even buy a ready made crust that is half cooked. Enjoy!

Aromatic Roasted Vegetable Pesto Pizza

1 whole wheat pizza crust
3/4 block of extra firm tofu
1 cup spinach leaves
1/2 cup basil leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 of a large eggplant, peeled and cut into 3 inch strips
1 onion (Vidalia or Spanish work best), cut into strips
1 red pepper, cut into strips
2 artichokes, chopped
5 mushrooms, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
2 Tablespoons brown sugar, or even better, honey
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
grated cheese to your taste
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Toss eggplant, onion, red pepper and garlic with olive oil, sugar/honey and a pinch of salt. Bake in an oven at 375F until cooked through (about 25 min)

In a food processor, puree tofu, spinach, basil, 1/4 cup olive oil, tomato paste and salt and pepper to your liking. Add a little bit of water if this puree is too thick to process to a smooth texture. Set aside.

Spread majority of the tofu mixture all over pizza as the sauce. Once roasted veggies are cooked, spread all over pizza, then add the artichokes and mushrooms.

Take the leftover tofu spread and dollop small amounts on top of pizza.

Bake in a 350 F over until crust is crispy on the bottom and cooked through and it's bubbly hot.

Let me know how it turns out!