There are two AMAZING things about Promise Pizza:
1) Gluten-Free Pizza Crust:
- Smart Flour (amaranth flour, tapioca flour, teff flour), water, sweet white sorghum flour, modified tapioca starch, potato starch, eggs, olive oil, honey, yeast, sugar, xanthan gum, guar gum, salt, baking powder, baking soda
MUCH better for you than regular crust!
2) Vegan cheese WITHOUT casein, soy, lactose, gluten, egg, wheat, barley, corn, whey, rice, or nuts
What IS in it then? Plant-based ingredients. The full list of ingredients:
Purified water, tapioca and/or arrowroot flours, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and/or non-GMO expeller pressed safflower oil, coconut oil pea protein, salt, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, natural flavors (derived from plants), xanthan gum, sunflower lecithin, vegan enzymes (no animal rennet or animal enzymes), vegan bacterial cultures, citric acid (for flavor), annatto.
For more info: http://www.daiyafoods.com/products.html
So Promise Pizza is active on twitter (@promisepizza), and excited, energetic co-founder (of 4) Suzanne tweeted me suggesting I come give it a shot. I invented an excuse to head up to Round Rock (ok, I really had to be there, but NOW I’ll start inventing excuses) and was floored by Suzanne. It’s a labor of love for her, and the three other founders, and they really just wanted to make good pizza. Maybe that’s the third AMAZING thing about Promise Pizza. The brains behind it have no background in restaurant, retail, nothing. Two of the investors own a wind energy firm in town. They just wanted to make happy pizza as eco-friendly as possible. They deliver in Smart Cars. Recycle everything. Have cane-juice-sweetened drinks (erm … I mean, if you’re gonna have sugar, it’s better than HFCS). Gotta love all that.
But on to the pizza. Pictured above is a Nature’s Choice, with Daiya, Tomato, Portobello Mushroom, Black Olives, Red Onion, Green Pepper, Basil on gluten-free crust. And it is delicious. It was also a little too sweet for me. At first I thought it might be the cheese, but turns out the cheese is just fantastic. Then maybe the crust. Turns out the crust is crispy-crunchy and just salty enough. It definitely wasn’t the delicious, perfectly-prepped veggies who retained the slightest firmness while melding into the pizza. So I deduced with my pizza powers that the sauce was too sweet for me, and upon looking on the web at the ingredients, I discover why:
Tomato Sauce: Ground Tomato, Herbs, Garlic, Sugar
I kid you not, this pizza would have been absolutely perfect for me were it not for the too-sweet sauce. Even the black olive bombs (in honor of my missing Vermocoloradoan) in all their salty glory couldn’t counteract the sweet. BUT don’t be fooled, I still ate the entire damn thing (except one piece my mom later enjoyed) in one sittingdriving back to Austin.
For those of you lucky enough to live in RR (did I just say that?), they offer a KILLER lunch special–personal pizza (8″) + drink for only $5.95!!
They plan to open a downtown spot within six months. Can’t wait! In the meantime, it looks like I have a lot of, uh, work to do … in Round Rock … near Grimes Blvd …
Promise Pizza
1500 A. W. Grimes Blvd.
Suite #410
Round Rock, TX, 78664
(512) ORGANIC
RSS this is life in austin
11 Comments
November 11, 2009 at 10:18 am
it sounds great! I hope they open one in Austin.
November 11, 2009 at 11:47 am
This is VERY exciting! I’ve been gluten- and dairy-free for five months… craving pizza, but pretty worried that if I ate regular pizza, it might kill me. I do not want a canon ball in my stomach for 12 hours.
Promise Pizza sounds rad. Thanks for sharing!
November 11, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I hope Promise Pizza sees this and makes sans-sugar sauce an option. But then again, I like sweet pizza (pineapple & ham, please!)
November 11, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Do they also drive those smart cars efficiently?
November 11, 2009 at 9:11 pm
It sounds so good, but why have vegan cheese and then put honey AND eggs in your crust? That is just silly.
November 11, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Melicious – if we could order Daiya individually, I’d make you a flax-cauliflower pizza crust that’s awesome and won’t hurt your tummy!
Jennie – No idea about their Smart driving habits
Ariel – their regular white flour dough is vegan, so at least there’s that …
November 11, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by atxhipsters: via @lifeinaustin Promise Pizza: There are two AMAZING things about Promise Pizza: 1) Gluten-.. http://bit.ly/43ty59...
November 12, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I love Promise Pizza!
November 17, 2009 at 7:20 pm
I’ve been to Promise three times now. I went out there to see about this Daiya cheese I’ve been hearing about and I love that stuff. But the pizza was truly great, too. I’ve raved about it and dragged three friends out to Round Rock (from Austin) to show them the amazing pizza I found. I hadn’t had a decent pizza since I moved to Texas from Berkeley (Zachary’s!!!), so I was thrilled to find Promise.
The first two times, I had the garlic and olive oil “sauce.” Yesterday, I decided it was time to try the tomato sauce. I brought my friend Mary with me from Cedar Park, having talked it up to her. First thing we both said, “too sweet.” It was like finding out my mother was a serial killer. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am about this. How can they do everything so well and fail so big on that sauce? I wondered if it was just a bad batch, so I googled Promise Pizza sweet sauce and ended up here. I guess they like it that way on purpose.
A Promise pizza with garlic and olive oil will still be the best pizza going in Central Texas, in my opinion, but someone needs to do something about that tomato syrup problem.
November 18, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Fugue, I must try that garlic and oil sauce! I have no idea what’s with the sweetness … but I can’t wait to try the garlic and olive oil!
November 29, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Sauce is now fixed. 1/2 of the sugar content and it is just right.
As for the dough… we don’t use egg or honey in our regular pizza dough.