I love perogies. I grew up on them. But, even when I was a vegetarian I had never had a perogy pizza. I thought tomato sauce pizzas were the only type of pizzas worth eating, so it never crossed my mind to try a perogy pizza. Then I went vegan, and I went to a vegan pizza place. They had a perogy pizza that was amazing! I knew I needed to make a vegan perogy pizza at home. I am happy to say that I did it and I have a new favorite food that I could eat every single day.
How I Made My Vegan Perogy Pizza
The Dough:
- 3 ยฝ cups of All Purpose Flour
- 2 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Sugar
- 2 tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1 1/3 cups of Water
- 2 1/4 tsp yeast
Combine the water, yeast, and sugar and let sit until the yeast becomes frothy, then combine the rest to make the dough.
I let the dough rise for about 2 hours and then kneaded it on a lightly floured counter and rolled it out.
As you can see, I made a thick crust, but that was because I wasn’t sure how the dough would hold up to the cheese sauce. Turns out it held up well, so next time I will be making a thin crust.
The Cheese Sauce Base:
I used my favorite homemade vegan cheese sauce for this pizza and it worked beautifully. It gave this perogy pizza a slightly spicy kick, which was perfect.
I put the cheese sauce on first.
I put a lot of cheese sauce on.
I would say about 1 1/2 cups. It definitely looked like a lot when I was putting it on. So much that I thought it was too much. But, in the end, it actually could have used more cheese sauce!
I’m going to double it next time because… cheese sauce.
The Potato:
I used one russet potato. I sliced it up and boiled the slices until tender.
I put the potato slices on top of the cheese sauce.
There wasn’t enough potato to cover the whole pizza. Next time I’m going to slice up two russet potatoes and I think that will help cover the whole pizza so there is some potato in every bite. After all, it’s a perogy pizza and you deserve a piece of potato in each bite.
The bacon-flavored crumbled cheese:
I put some bacon-flavored crumbled cheese on third before I baked the pizza.
At the restaurant I went to, they used bacon-flavored feta. I haven’t come up with a good vegan feta recipe, yet, so I decided to give my new favorite ricotta recipe a try. I made the ricotta that same day.
I took about a half a cup of ricotta and added 1 tbsp. maple syrup, 1/2 tsp liquid smoke, and 1 tbsp. soy sauce. This is part of what I would do if I were making vegan bacon from coconut flakes, and I found it gave the ricotta a nice bacon-like flavor.
As you can see in the above picture, the bacon-flavored ricotta is quite chunky looking.
The next time I make the perogy pizza I’m going to bake the ricotta with the maple syrup, liquid smoke, and soy sauce first to dry it out a bit. Then I will crumble it onto the pizza after cooking the pizza to disperse it more and hopefully take away that lumpy brown look.
Green Onions:
I cut up some green onions and threw those over the pizza after it came out of the oven. I love green onions and they made this vegan perogy pizza come together.
The Sour Cream:
I used my favorite sour cream recipe. I always have some of it on hand, so there wasn’t a lot of pre-planning there.
There are plenty of recipes online that show you how to make vegan sour cream without fermentation, so it’s really quick – besides quick soaking some cashews. I haven’t tried any quick-to-make vegan sour creams, so I can’t speak for the taste.
We just drizzled the sour cream over our individual slices after it was baked instead of putting it over the whole pizza.
Temperature and Bake Time
I threw my pizza in a 450 degrees F oven and baked it until the pizza crust looked nice and brown. I didn’t time it. I never do. I just watch to make sure the crust looks good and that’s when I pop it out.
If you really need a length of time to bake, most people say it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to cook a pizza. I would say it was in the oven for around 15 minutes.
Vegan Perogy Pizza For Life!
And that’s it! It’s a little bit of prep work, but if you know that you are making this during the week, you can easily have everything ready to go with some forethought. I think it’s pretty easy to whip up as an afterthought too, though.
This vegan perogy pizza was so good.
I’m so happy that we don’t need to pay the $22 per pizza anymore and we can make it with as much or as little of each ingredient that we want, which is always one of the big benefits of making food at home.
