Growing up my mom would make pizza of all sorts. She would commonly buy a boxed Jiffy crust mix and roll out the dough to make pizza for the whole family. Other times, if she was just making lunch or dinner for me, she found alternatives to use as the crust. One of these being English muffins.
As I was looking for an English muffin to buy, even just to have for breakfast, I found the most common brands were not vegan. They all contained, what I felt unnecessarily, a milk derivative. During my latest shopping trip to Whole Foods, I checked their 365 brand. Not only were they whole wheat, they were labeled vegan and had minimal ingredients. Exactly as an English muffin should be! (Exactly as most products should be.)
For the sauce, you can use any of your favorite jarred tomato sauces. It doesn’t necessarily have to be pizza sauce to work, but Trader Joe’s has a jarred pizza sauce that’s delicious and inexpensive. I happened to have some in my pantry.
The vegan cheese is probably the most controversial component. I plan to do a future post about my rankings of favorite brands of vegan cheese, but for now, I will say that I enjoy the So Delicious mozzarella shreds on my pizzas. This is followed closely by the Follow Your Heart mozzarella shreds.
A little tip about these vegan cheeses:
While the bag claims the cheese will be so “melty” and “perfect on pizza,” the reality is, vegan cheese just doesn’t melt like dairy cheese. The good news is, the cheese itself is so tasty, it really doesn’t matter. I overall judge a good vegan cheese by whether or not I can eat it by itself, and my two brands for pizza taste amazing alone.
That being said, I like to broil the pizzas for a few minutes after cooking in the oven. It gets them slightly more melty than if not broiling.
*Side note*
Trader Joe’s vegan mozzarella shreds melt better than any vegan cheese, however, they do not taste good on their own. If using these, use sparingly because it spreads. Once cooked and with other ingredients, it tastes better, but I still prefer the two brands mentioned above for taste.
You can add any toppings to these little pizzas, just as you would a regular one. My daughter prefers just cheese, but it’s easy to add some vegan sausage, peppers, or any other veggies.
Servings: 1 English muffin (2 pizzas) is one serving.
Make as few or as many as you want!
Ingredients:
1 package vegan English muffins
Jarred tomato sauce
1 bag vegan mozzarella cheese
Any other toppings
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400° F
Open English muffins and split in half. Place on baking sheet. Each muffin will give you two pizzas. I usually make 8 pizzas at a time.
Spoon about a tablespoon of sauce onto each muffin and spread to the edges.
Top each muffin with enough vegan cheese to fully cover it.
Bake for 10 minutes. The muffins will start to get crispy around the edges. After baking, you can broil them on high for about 5 minutes or until you see the cheese start to melt more.
From the pictures, you can see the cheese does melt a little bit, just not the same as dairy cheese. Believe me, this factor really doesn’t matter. Once you bite into the pizza, the cheese actually melts in your mouth.
My daughter and I love to have fun making these and she will usually eat at least 2 or 3! It’s a perfect dish to get the kids to engage and be proud of what they made.
The Veg Table 