Vegan Cowboy Pizza

As I write this, I hope this Vegan Cowboy pizza actually tastes good (or at the very least the photos of it look good). I’m making this pizza now as I type this post. My inspiration to try this dish came last night while I was eating at a friend’s house. She lives in Cayucos, California a super cute and small central California coastal town that we went to visit this past weekend. She described a pizza that she was in love with at a local pizzeria. She went into such detail about this pizza for the sad reason that they have altered the recipe and she was dismayed about that. The upside of her story was she basically put making pizza on my mind.

The pizza she longs for and the one I’m creating don’t have much in common – her’s actually has shaved ham and goat cheese on it (maybe that will inspire some of you reading this). My version has only one ingredient in common with the one she described – arugula.

You may ask, why call it “Cowboy Pizza” (I hope the vegan part is obvious)? Well, simply because it has Texas bar-b-que sauce on it and that makes it sound Cowboy enough for me. Arugula may honestly not even work in the version of this pizza I’m creating, but I have some in a spinach/arugula mix in my fridge along with all the other ingredients already in my cupboards. I also figure the arugula could counter-balance the sweetness that the Texas BBQ sauce has.

Pizza Details

Basically, this pizza is made up of whole wheat crust, onions (yellow and red), mushrooms, vegan chicken (from Beyond Meat), Texas BBQ sauce (from Brandless), So Delicious Cheddar Flavored Shreds and a few slices of tomato.

I like to stretch the pizza dough and then bake it a few minutes before adding the toppings. I also like to heat up some of the toppings in the bbq sauce beforehand (onions, mushrooms, veggie chicken). For me, this gives the flavors time to mix together nicely. For this dish, I didn’t measure anything – just used my eye to add what I like.

The end result was a pretty tasty pie if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, my photos don’t do the dish justice as the light was getting pretty dim in my kitchen. Next time I make this pie, I’ll try to update the shots.

Have any tips on toppings to add? Please share them in the comments below.