This here delicious pizza is the real way to start your morning.
I've always loved the combo of sausage, egg and cheese. Even when I didn't like them individually, somehow they come together and create magic. The hardest part about going vegan for me was giving up breakfast sandwiches and breakfast pizza. Luckily, I've learned to recreate some of the flavors and found the best brands of replacements so that I'm no longer missing those old foods. This version tastes so much better in my opinion.
The Sausage
The sausage I've found to be the best tasting goes to Sol Cuisine. I try not to eat a lot of processed foods, but I can't resist and always have these on hand.
The Scrambled Egg
The scrambled egg here is really just a basic tofu scramble. The yellow color comes from Turmeric. I also add garlic powder, onion powder, and salt. It's crazy that crumbling a brick of tofu gives the same texture as scrambled eggs. A lot of the time, I'll just make a hearty tofu scramble and add a bunch of vegetables and spinach. More often than not, I crave a savory breakfast rather than a sweet one, and tofu is my go to.
The Cheese
This is where things get tricky. Vegan cheese just isn't the same as regular cheese. The biggest difference is just how much fat is in real cheese. To mimic this in vegan form, you would need to use so much oil that nobody would even want to eat it. Creating an almost identical flavor, texture, and melt would just be plain disgusting. That being said, there are some outstanding vegan cheeses in regards to taste. They just have a less greasy texture and don't melt into a single glob on top of pizza. Here I used Follow Your Heart brand shredded cheese. However, my favorite vegan cheese of all time would absolutely be Field Roast Chao Cheese in the flavor Tomato Cayenne. This is another product that I almost always have on hand.
The Sauce
The sauce of this pizza is more akin to the roux style breakfast pizza sauce rather than the cheese sauce that sometimes comes on non-vegan breakfast pizza. The white roux sauce I made from melting equal parts vegan butter and flour together until it cooks just a little, then whisking unsweetened plain almond milk to get out all lumps. This mixture will thicken. I seasoned it with onion powder, garlic salt and black pepper. This is exactly how I make biscuits and gravy. It's this sauce and add in some cooked breakfast sausage. For the breakfast pizza, however, I added 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast and let it thicken up a bit more. (Don't mind my dirty stove. I cook a lot.)
The Assembly
Now that I had each individual component to my pizza cooked up, I began assembly. I took the lazy way out and used a pre-made store-bought pizza crust. Then, I lathered on a thick layer of sauce, sprinkled on the sausage and tofu, spooned some salsa in between, and covered it all in a blend of cheddar and mozzarella style shredded cheese. I took it one step further and sprayed the outer crust with coconut oil and sprinkled on my custom blend Parmesan cheese substitute; brazil nuts, cashews, hemp hearts, nutritional yeast, onion powder, and garlic salt combine in a food processor.
The Result
The result is this delicious nostalgic breakfast pizza that has all the flavor with none of the cruelty and health implications. A real winner!