Vegan Margherita Pizza
If you don’t want to make a pizza from scratch, then use bottled pizza sauce, and a pre-bought crust, but whatever you do, Please make the fresh Moxarella Cheese. It’s nearly instant.
Homemade Vegan Moxarella, without any artificial anything. It browns and stretches.
Individual Pizzas Make Everyone Happy!
Vegan Margherita Pizzas
This Recipe Makes 4 individual pizzas. Don’t forget to have fresh tomatoes and basil on hand. First, start the dough.
Pizza Dough:
This crust contains gluten, for several gluten free crust options, click here.
- 2 C. organic all purpose flour
- 1 C. organic whole wheat flour
- 2 1/4 t. active dry yeast (1 packet)
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 t. sea salt
- 1 t. agave
Method: Combine all ingredients and knead for 10 minutes. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 60 minutes until doubled. While the dough is rising, make the pizza sauce and the fresh moxarella cheese.
The Pizza Sauce:
- one 14 ounce can crushed tomatoes
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- 1/2 t. dried thyme
- 1/2 t. dried oregano
- 1/2 t. dried basil
- 1 t. agave
- sea salt and ground black pepper to taste
Method: saute the garlic in a little vegetable broth or the olive oil in a small saucepan for a minute or two on medium heat. Add all the other ingredients. Reduce heat to low and let simmer while you make the Moxarella Cheese.
Fresh Moxarella Cheese:
I wanted to call this “Foxy Moxy,” but that name has been taken by some unsavory characters on the web….
This cheese stays in a “melted” type form until baked, and then it forms a nice crust, like dairy cheese does. It’s not intended to be eaten plain (like real dairy fresh mozzarella can). It’s also fairly salty to make it stand out in your recipes, if you prefer less salt, please feel free to reduce to 1/2 teaspoon, or less, but the flavor won’t be as pronounced.
Note: This recipe is one of the most popular recipes on my site and is therefore one of the most copied/imitated. If you make this cheese and like it enough to blog about it, please have the ethics to respect me, my creativity and the weeks that I spent developing this recipe by simply linking to this post rather than sharing the recipe on your own site. ❤️ -Somer
- 1/4 cup raw cashews (soaked in water for several hours and then drained IF you don’t have a high powered blender)
- 1 cup hot water
- 2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon tapioca starch
- 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast
- 1 small garlic clove, minced
- 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Method: Blend all ingredients together in a high speed blender until completely smooth, about 1 minute. Pour into a small saucepan and cook, stirring constantly over medium high heat. After a couple of minutes the mixture will start to look weird, like it’s curdling or separating. This is totally normal, reduce heat to medium and KEEP stirring so you don’t burn the cheese to the bottom of the pot. Keep cooking and stirring til really thick (about 2-3 more minutes) and the mixture becomes like a cohesive mass of melted dairy cheese and stretches like in the photo below. Remove from heat and let cool a bit while you assemble the pizzas. Moxarella stores well in a sealed container in the fridge for a few days and can be used to make excellent grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, etc….
Assembly: Your dough should be nearly ready now, so when it hits 60 minutes or is doubled, punch it down and divide it into four pieces. Preheat the oven to 500°. Roll out the dough on a floured surface as thin or thick as you like. We opted for thicker pizzas this round. Spread each pizza with 1/4 of the pizza sauce. Top with fresh tomato slices, dollops of the fresh moxarella cheese and fresh basil leaves like shown in the photo below. 
Bake individual pizzas for 10-12 minutes on a baking sheet until cheese and the crusts are nicely browned. Note: there is a very fine line between nicely browned and burnt here, so please, watch your pizzas carefully. Sprinkle pizzas with a bit of additional chopped fresh basil once out of the oven if desired. 
I won’t take any responsibility for anyone burning their mouth on hot cheese.
Vedged Out 
Wonderful – a mozarella made from easily-found real food ingredients – Thank you!
You’re so very welcome! 🙂
I made this yesterday, with only a couple of minor modifications, and it was awesome! Thank you!
I’m so glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
What did you do? I am about to make it and I would love to know!!
We finally made the Moxarella Cheese today. It was really amazing. Thanks for the great recipe.
hello! do you think this could be done with arrowroot with the same result? i don’t have any tapioca starch in the house today…let me know your thoughts!
Hi Lisa Dawn, unfortunately I don’t think arrowroot will give it the same stretch and texture as tapioca starch does, but the flavor would probably still be very nice. Might as well try it! xx
I used potato starch and it worked perfectly!
Do the cashews need to be raw? Or is that just your preference?
Moxarella. Homemade. GENIUS! This makes me want to make vegan fondue……. and lots and lots of pizza!
I made the moxarella tonight for our Friday pizza night (with arrowroot starch) and it turned out awesome! My husband loved it, too (and he’s a hard marker!)
Just wanted to let you know that I tried this with almonds (soak overnight and skin first, or buy blanched) and it works just as well!
I made the moxarella this evening to top a veggie pizza and liked it quite well. Unfortunately my husband HATED it and said never to serve it to him again. He is not usually picky, but there was something about it that he really didn’t like.
Made this tonight and it was delicious!!
Ok, what did I do wrong? The moxarella did not work out well at all. I don’t have a high speed blender so I used a food processor. That was the only difference. The moxarella did not get thick and stretchy. I cooked and stirred for over an hour. The rest of the pizza was good.
Hmm, that is really bizarre, I’ve had dozens and dozens of people respond to this recipe through various social media platforms with positive results. Many have blogged about it and shared their photos. Did you use the tapioca starch? It should literally come together in minutes on the stove.
I did use the tapioca starch, and added more when it wasn’t getting thick which seemed to help, It’s also not really smooth. It looks grainy. I tasted it and it tastes good. It just didn’t cook as you had described, with the curdling stage and then the thickening stage. I will try again. And I read all of the great comments.
I feel like a failure. :(((
Don’t feel like a failure! I’m so sorry it didn’t work out properly for you, my thought with the food processor is that because you mentioned the cheese ended up grainy, that the cashews may not have broken down enough. It should be super silky smooth. Cashews thicken things very well, so if they are not “obliterated” they may not have the same thickening power. You could try this in a normal blender, maybe soaking the cashews overnight so they get really nice and soft prior to blendin. Another thought, is that if you own a coffee grinder, you could grind the cashews til they are very fine and then try the recipe through your food processor to get it even smoother. Best of luck!
Ok I’ll apply all your suggestions. Thank you! I’ll let you know how I do.
Way to go with the perseverance. I really hope your next batch is a success! 🙂
I am looking forward to trying out this recipe with the cheese. Personally, I can’t get enough home made pizza. I find I don’t care for the vegan cheeses recipes that use agar; this looks like a winner! I had given up on any kind of cheese on my pizzas.
OMG I made this pizza crust this morning! Thank you for the recipe! 🙂
Somer, as a breast cancer patient (and half-marathoner), I am definitely trying to incorporate more veggies and less processed food into my diet. I eat pretty healthy but could do better. This is a beautiful and extremely helpful site. My question is, how do you find the time to prepare all these recipes from scratch? Having 3 kids, working, and going to treatments, I find it so hard to get a healthy meal on the table every night.
To be completely honest, I do prepare almost all of my meals from scratch, and I do spend a lot of time in the kitchen, it’s my passion and my joy, but I’m fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom (2 kids).
However, I think that you could still eat VERY healthily with plenty of shortcuts, getting lots of fresh produce will be key for you, but for a pizza like this, you could definitely purchase a whole grain crust, use a quality bottled sauce and top with the fresh toppings, which should literally take less than 10 minutes to assemble.
Another thing that would help is to spend the weekend cooking and preparing meals that you could freeze and then re-heat during the week. If your family doesn’t mind leftovers, you could prepare a double portion of the recipe you are making. Then all you have to do on weeknights is reheat the meal.
Best of luck with your treatment. I’ll be thinking of you.
Oh my gosh Somer, I just made the moxarella and how cool it is! I haven’t got as far as putting on my pizza yet, I just can’t stop playing with it! It’s so stringy and melty and gooey! SOOOO EXCITED!!!!! 😀
Haha! I was freaking out when I finally got it right! It’s soooo cheesy! I’m so happy you found the time to make it! Hope you enjoy it! xx
I definitely did enjoy it and still have some left in the fridge! Great recipe, thank you! 😀 x
Thank you Thank you! I love your recipe.
I’m gearing towards being a vegan but I love cheese (dairy).
I’m aware now of the cruelty behind making cheese in the industry & I was a bit worried where to find or DO my cheese 😦
You are my life saviour!! xoxoxoxo
Yay! I’m so happy you love it! Yeah, as much as I love being vegan, I really, really loved cheese before I changed my diet. The other night we made this and I added just a couple of drops of liquid smoke to the cheese when it was blending. Took it to a whole ‘nother level. Enjoy! xx
Liquid smoke?? WOW!! 😀 Likey like!! Will try on that too.
I was searching recipes for vegan meals, especially cheese and happened to “stumble” on your recipe. Not only did I find out how to make vegan cheese, pizza & tomato sauce too!! All from scratch, step by step & easy attainable ingredients! I’m like, shopping for cheese & gotten pizza base & its sauce for FREE!! You have no idea how happy I am !! It has also prove that making the move to be a vegan worth lots! Million thanks 🙂 ♡♡♡♡♡
Hi,
Thanks for this recipe. Its a savior! I tried this cheese today. I am preparing for my friends who dont eat garlic. So its tasting bery bland. Can you suggest any replacement for garlic? Also its quits thick. Would it melt like cheese when making pizza?
You could add a tablespoon of nutritional yeast or use a teaspoon of onion powder instead of garlic.
The cheese is thick, it will look just like these photos when you bake it up. It won’t spread over the pizza, but is meant to be used in dollops or circles, like fresh mozzarella.
I can not eat tapioca as Jains do not eat root vegetables. What can I substitute for the Topioca starch? Thank you – Pradip Shah
you could use corn starch, it just won’t have the same sort of stretch. Good luck.
This recipe was so delicious, worked perfectly and could not have been easier to follow. I’m so indebted to you for all the cheezy things I’m going to be enjoying in the next few days! thank you thank you!!
I made the “cheese” tonight in place of Daiya tonight. So good! I didn’t have any tapioca starch, so I just used corn starch and it worked out fine. Probably a slightly different texture, but still worked great and tasted delicious.
Will definitely be making this regularly!
This is the best mozeralla flavored “cheese” I’ve ever tasted. I also make the dough and sauce, both were GREAT and HIT in my house with my 7 year old and non vegan husband. Definitely going in my recipe box!!! THANK YOU
I made this with potato starch last night and it worked perfectly. Great recipe… and so easy.
I made pizza with this “cheese” tonight and it got lots of thumbs up from my dairy-free family. I had to make a double quantity though to have enough to put on a large pizza for almost all the family plus a smaller gluten-free one for the gf daughter!
I added a tsp of liquid smoke and a heaped tablespoon of nutritional yeast – all to make it more cheesy-tasting (though admittedly less mozzarella-y).
Thanks for the recipe. The biggest bonus is that it’s so quick and easy to make!
Really great! I’m really pleased with the taste and texture but how did you make yours white? Mine has come out a greyish colour, which I don’t mind but if I’m going to serve it at a dinner party it would be nice to have a white one!
Mine was perfectly white. Not sure where the difference was. Did you have to soak the cashews? Sometimes soaked cashews turn purple-ish or gray.
Absolutely amazing recipe, thank you so much for sharing this! I added some fresh parsely and basil to my moxarella and it was to die for. I’ll be making this again and again!