Midweek Meltdown: Daiya Pizza

It's been a while since I whipped up a homemade pizza dough. Upon returning from Vermont on Sunday I had just enough time before dinner to let a batch of dough rise. It really only takes 5 minutes to throw everything in the processor, knead it a couple times and set it and forget it for an hour and a half. I threw some tomatoes and garlic in a pan and let that simmer, too. Good time to put away the carload of bargains from Walmart in New Hampshire.

I feel the beginning of a pizza-obsessed phase coming on, so I saved half the dough for later in the week. Last night I decided to try out the Daiya cheese.

I tasted it out of the package and I thought it had an ok flavor. Kind of a hint of vinegar though. And something tasting like those nutritional yeast flakes that almost want to be chicken flavor. I kept the pizza simple and just topped it with basic sauce, oregano, onions and Daiya.

The cheese shreds looked like a good time coming as they melted and browned in the oven. It seemed to be doing what cheese is supposed to. When it came out, it was almost gooey like mozzarella. For the first two bites, I thought, ok... this could be ok. At least my (Mark Bittman recipe) pizza crust was crispy and delicious.

But just like the other cheese I tried, as it cools it becomes more creamy. A few bites later I felt like I was eating a pizza topped with cream cheese. Maybe you could melt this on your bagel, but I'm not 100% sold that it's the greatest pizza topping.

I think I will still opt for a chunkier tomato sauce and veggie toppings when attempting to veganify my pizza, instead of focusing on trying to fake the cheese. Hopefully I will find a use for the rest of the Daiya - maybe even a Mexican dip or spinach dip? I bet that would be good!