Vegan pizza diavola 

The Diavola is a great pizza for anyone who loves strong flavours as the main ingredient here is pickled jalapeños. It is one of the best-known pizzas outside of Italy, especially in the United States, Canada and the UK. Enjoying a vegetarian pizza is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to maintain their figure or eating habits without sacrificing the irresistible taste of a pizza. There are numerous toppings, flavors and types of vegetables that you can choose from to fill an alternative pizza for vegetarians, without forgetting the possibility of indulging yourself with dairy products, spices, sauces and dried fruit.

8 tips on how to season a vegetarian pizza.

A vegetarian pizza can be stuffed with different types of vegetables, using the most disparate toppings and indulging every type of taste, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. To orient yourself in the choice of vegetables for pizza, you can opt for seasonal ingredients: seasoning a pizza for vegetarians with the freshest vegetables available on the market is undoubtedly a light choice, as well as an excellent solution to enjoy a complete and genuine vegetarian meal. Go wild in delicious flavor experiments in your pizza with vegetables and try to prefer vegetables that have similar cooking times and are well cooked on the grill. Below is a list of the best vegetables to use as a topping for a light vegetarian pizza:

Aubergine

Potatoes

Spinach

Onions

Zucchini

Radicchio

Pumpkin

Friarielli

Peppers

Turnip greens

Escarole

Artichokes

TOPPINGS FOR A VEGETARIAN PIZZA

Once you've chosen the vegetables for your vegetarian pizza, it's time to combine them and choose the dough you want. You can start with a white-based pizza: the absence of acidity and aromas of the tomato sauce will allow you to enjoy your toppings at their best and preserve their texture and flavor. Or you can choose a margherita base with tomato sauce. Here are some ideas for topping a vegetarian pizza:

1. BROCCOLI

Friarielli are a typical Neapolitan vegetable and are an essential condiment if you want to give a touch of Neapolitan tradition to a vegetarian pizza. The most famous version of the white pizza with broccoli is paired with pork sausage, but if you intend to try a tasty meatless pizza you can accompany this bitter vegetable with stringy cheeses such as scamorza or provola and sprinkle it with chopped almonds.

2. ZUCCHINI FLOWERS

Zucchini flowers are a condiment widely used to prepare different variations of Neapolitan pizza and their use gives life to a vegetarian dish full of goodness, as delicate as it is intense in taste. Pizza with zucchini flowers is best enjoyed with a Neapolitan dough and this vegetable can also be eaten as a single topping in a white vegetarian pizza with only mozzarella. The richness of water and mineral salts and the strong flavor make it a light and refined ingredient, but if you are looking for a perfect match for your pizza with zucchini flowers you can flavor it with escarole and a basil leaf.

3. FRESH SPINACH

Among the most common pizza toppings, spinach cannot be missing, whose freshness offers excellent ideas for an alternative, fragrant and energetic green pizza. The most classic version of this white vegetarian pizza involves the delicate combination of fresh spinach with provola or smoked scamorza, balancing the taste with a bitter sprinkling of black olives and the crunchiness of toasted pine nuts. If you want to try a variant that contains a touch of red in your pizza, choose fresh cherry tomatoes cut into strips and placed raw on the dough.

4. GRILLED ZUCCHINI

Zucchini is one of the most popular vegetables and can also be enjoyed throughout the year as a delicious topping for a light and healthy white pizza. This vegetable has a very low calorie intake and choosing it as the main ingredient of your vegetarian pizza means enjoying a fresh and delicate meal. Fill your pizza with grilled zucchini, mozzarella and basil and add a sprinkling of Parmesan flakes if you want to stick to a classic recipe, add cherry tomatoes and stracciatella if you want to experiment with more flavors and want to indulge in a more delicious meal!

5. EGGPLANT

Eggplant is a great pizza vegetable to choose if you are looking for ideas for a delicious dinner with a vegetarian dish. To enjoy this red pizza you can opt for white eggplant, rigidly grilled, with a touch of fiordilatte or stringy mozzarella and basil leaves. The eggplant parmigiana pizza can be sweetened by choosing grated ricotta cheese as a topping: as a result you will get a soft and balanced pizza ready to amaze you, especially in summer!

6. PORCINI MUSHROOMS

Porcini mushrooms are one of the lightest vegetarian pizza toppings, as they contain very little fat and are low in calories. Their harvest during the last months of the year makes them the perfect ingredient for a winter vegetarian pizza, which respects the seasonality of the raw materials and can be enjoyed with fresh products as early as the first days of October. Opt for thinly sliced white porcini mushrooms and pair it with buffalo mozzarella or scamorza cheese for a tasty red pizza. If, on the other hand, you want to give your pizza a breath of autumn, you can sprinkle it with toasted and crumbled chestnuts.

7. ARTICHOKES

Another idea for topping a red pizza is offered by artichokes in oil. Although this vegetable is best enjoyed in the capricious version, combined with cooked ham or anchovies, there are several vegetarian variants that include the combination with only capers and pitted black olives, ideal even for the little ones. Choose sliced artichokes for your vegetable pizza and enjoy all your toppings to the fullest, preferring fiordilatte or buffalo mozzarella PDO to your liking.

8. BASIL PESTO

Pesto pizza is an appetizing variant of pizza margherita and using basil as a topping will offer a delicious aromatic and green touch to your dish. Fill your red-based pizza with fiordilatte, yellow cherry tomatoes and basil pesto and customize it with a sprinkling of pine nuts and grated Parmesan flakes: your red vegetarian pizza is served, more fragrant than ever!

Choose the topping you want to fill the pizza, starting from the most delicious varieties of San Marzano DOP and following your every taste. 

Ingredients

1 Onion

1 garlic clove

4 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 Tbsp sugar

200 ml/ 3/4 cup pureed tomatoes

2 Tbsp yeast flakes

salt

pepper

1 bell pepper

3 Tbsp pickled jalapeños

150 g/ 5 oz. vegan grated cheese 

200 g/ 7 oz. vegan pepperoni

SALA MI cold cuts 500 g 

2 Tbsp dried marjoram

 Instructions

Let´s start with the tomato sauce! First, peel and chop the onion and mince the garlic and sauté them in olive oil. Add the tomato paste and the sugar and let the mixture fry briefly. Then deglaze with pureed tomatoes, add the yeast flakes and the vegetable mixture and let the sauce simmer for about 20 minutes. Don´t forget to stir occasionally! Once the sauce has thickened, you can season it with salt and pepper. Chop the bell pepper into strips and train the jalapeños in a sieve. Preheat the oven at 220° C/ 425° F (top and bottom heat). Prepare the pizza dough according to the package instructions, divide it into two warts, and roll each of them out onto a parchment-lined round baking sheet. Top the desired amount of tomato sauce, sprinkle the vegan grated cheese substitute on top, and add the remaining ingredients, i. e. bell pepper strips, jalapeños, and the vegan pepperoni substitute. Bake for about about 15 minutes until crisp and golden brown. Serve with marjoram and enjoy your homemade vegan pizza diavola!

Note

The recipe can be varied wonderfully: If you want to make more pizzas, you can simply adjust the number of ingredients needed accordingly. Instead of the pickled jalapeños, you can also use fresh ones.