We went over to someone's house the other night and they bought a gluten free pizza for my son, which was very thoughtful, but the only brand they had at our local store was also a vegan 'meatlovers' pizza with vegan 'cheese and meat' as well. I had often laughed at the ridiculous idea of a vegan, gf meatlovers pizza but this was my big chance to see how bad it truly was. I had a dubious flirtation with fake cheese once upon a time, even making my own, but I couldn't stomach the stuff no matter the ingredients, my gut didn't like the consistency so I gave it up, though I did have fairly good success using kappa carrageenan, at least to make it stretchy and chewy rather than mushy which the tapioca starch tends to do. There is just no replacement for real cheese. You can make a passable gluten free bread, the crust on the thing was lovely. The sauce was good. The onions (the only real topping) were mushy but this was a frozen pizza and they added a nice flavor. The 'cheese' melted into dubious globs of tapioca starch and was mushy no matter that I put it under the broiler. The 'meat' was a highly spiced, slightly plasticky substance that looked like pepperoni, sort of like they don't use real food for commercials or movie props or ads but use sturdy, delicious looking stand ins, yum! My son hated it, my husband said 'it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be,' and I agreed with him though it most certainly didn't agree with me, as I knew it wouldn't but it was for science!
Verdict: stick with real food. Lose the fake meat and cheese obsession and focus on making actual fruit and vegetables as delectable as possible instead of terraforming a pizza out of tapioca starch and pea protein, which is about as tasty as it sounds, sort of like making food out of play dough and expecting it to taste like the real thing! This would have been an excellent pizza if they had done a veggie supreme and used real cheese, not vegan but also real pizza. I don't get this obsession, especially when everyone also insists on organic, non-gmo, and all natural and unprocessed. This pizza was anything but natural and way too processed, but there is a subset of the population that can eat organic Oreos with a straight face and think it is somehow virtuous or healthy or something! Maybe they'll eat the leftovers?
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