White Pizza (with grilled veg and "ricotta cheese")

This pizza rivals any of its tomato based cousins. Roasted fennel and onion together with oil marinated artichoke offer a sweet and slightly sour combination that compliments the crumbly texture of the cheese. The cheese is fairly neutral and offsets the vegetables with their stronger flavours. The pizza base is given a short second rise and cooked at a low temperature for longer so it is more like a crispy foccacia than a traditional thin pizza base. Using sprouted wholegrain spelt flour gives the dough an earthy taste, reinforced by the land cress. A little drizzle of truffle oil made it very well grounded. 

The cheese is made from soya milk and the recipe for it is on the previous post, Cream Cheese. Here I made the cheese to a drier consistency, kind of reminiscent of ricotta, simply by straining for longer. The dough for the base ingredients and method is similar to what we use for the Pizza (which contains a video tutorial) and the Sprouted Flour Loaf recipes. The oil marinated artichoke hearts are store-bought. The land cress is very similar to watercress, so both would work, but can also be easily substituted with rucola. 

Recipe feeds 2 hungry adults (sorry Baby Green).

Pizza base:

Ingredients:

• 250g wholegrain flour, we use sprouted spelt.
• 250ml of lukewarm water
• 1 tsp/sachet of instant yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt

Method:

• Mix flour, water, sugar and yeast until a sticky dough forms and then add the salt and continue to knead until a spongy dough forms. Use olive oil and not flour when kneading. Oil your hands and the surface you are using well and you should not have too much trouble handling the dough.
• Allow to rise in a dark and warm place for approx. 90 minutes.
• Oil hands and the kneading surface, and roll out dough until approx 1 cm thick and place on your baking tray (you should only need one large tray).
• Allow to rise for 20 min. Meanwhile you can roast the vegetables in a preheated oven.
• Place your toppings onto the base. We used jarred artichokes and oven roasted fennel and onion.
• Bake at 200C for 15 minutes or until dough is cooked through.

Oven roasted fennel and onion:

Ingredients:

• 1 X medium onion
• 1 X medium fennel bulb
• 2 tbsp oil (I used virgin rapeseed oil)
• 1 tsp salt.

Method:

• Slice the onion into eighths and the fennel lengthwise into 'steaks' of around 1.5 cm thick.
• Place the vegetables on a baking sheet, brush both sides with oil and sprinkle with salt.
• Roast in a preheated oven at 200C for 20 minutes.
• Allow to cool before handling.