Pizza Sticks – Vegan MoFo Day 1!

It’s that time of year again! Time for 2016’s Vegan Month of Food (“VeganMoFo”). This year comes with a whole new set of weekly themes and prompts and promises to be a great month for vegan food. Check out the website to find out more! 

The first weekly theme is “Treat Yourself (and others)” so this week will be all about treats. Today’s daily prompt is “What is your favourite food?“. I had to think long and hard about this because I don’t know if I have a favourite food. I like lots of foods but my “favourite” tends to change depending on what mood I am in. One food that pops up a lot though is pizza. Pizza is pretty versatile – especially if, like me, you treat it as dough with whatever topping you like, from a cheesy feast to a healthy hummus/vegetable topped meal. I already have not one but two pizza recipes on my blog,  do I really need another one though? Yes, of course. This one is slightly different. It’s a recipe for pizza sticks.

 Pizza sticks are somewhat a cross between a breadstick and a calzone. They are a little messy to make, yes, but they are a great food for parties, picnics, and just snacks! Have a pot of hummus or your dip of choice and eat away.

They’re not too difficult to make either – and you can fill them with a huge variety of toppings.

Roll out your pizza dough into a rough rectangular shape (oblong if you’re more like me). Top half of it it with tomato sauce (recipe to follow), and your toppings of choice – I used Vbites “Bacon” and Mozzarisella cheese – fold the top half over, squish it down a little with a rolling pin, and slice into sticks about 2cm/3/4 inch thick. Place on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes or until nice and golden!

If you have a good melty cheese then it does ooze out a little but that just adds to the tastiness. Plus, you can totally eat the cheese scraps off the baking tray (not that I did…ahem…).

Pizza Sticks

• Servings: about 50 sticks
• Print

Ingredients

For the Pizza Dough
• 400g bread flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 250-300ml hand-hot water (water hot enough that you can just stick your little finger in without it being too hot)

For the Tomato Sauce

• 5 tbsp tomato puree
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp cider vinegar
• salt + pepper
• Boiling water
• Toppings of choice eg: Vegan Cheese, Vegan bacon/pepperoni

Directions

1. First, make the pizza dough. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, salt and yeast. Stir through the olive oil.
2. Gradually add the hot water to the flour mix, adding enough to form a dough consistency. Knead the mix for 8 minutes until it forms a stretchy, firm dough.
3. Cover the bowl, and place aside in a warm area (by the heater, in the airing cupboard etc) to rise for at least 1 hour, until doubled in size.
4. Once the dough is risen, preheat the oven to 210C/410F.
5. Next, make the tomato sauce. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, and slowly add boiling water until the paste becomes a spreadable, sauce-like consistency. Taste and adjust seasoning.
6. Time to assemble the pizza sticks! Split the dough into four pieces. Roll each dough ball into a rectangle about 5mm thick (a fifth of an inch).
7. On the bottom half of the rectangle, spread tomato sauce. Top with your toppings of choice.
8. Fold the top half of the dough rectangle (the bit without any toppings) over the bottom half, and gently roll over it with your rolling pin to seal.
9. Cut the folded dough into strips about 2cm/a quarter inch wide. Place on a baking tray.
10. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown. Repeat with the remaining dough!