Recently, Adam went on a gluten-free kick because he convinced himself he was allergic to the stuff after an hour of dodgy internet research.
He’s a hypochondriac. I try to be supportive.
For couples who’ve been together as long as we have, being supportive loosely translates to nodding and smiling a lot. I do it in camera stores. He does it in Sephora.
But this time, I was kind of intrigued. My mind went straight to Pinterest (a whole other post on that is coming up, for real) and I remembered a recipe for flour-less pizza crust made with cauliflower.
I know, it sounded weird to me too. But it was so, so good and so, so much better than regular pizza dough I don’t think I’ll ever go back to using flour. The texture is surprisingly bread-like* and the cauliflower is nearly undetectable beneath the flavours of cheese and pizza sauce. Also, it’s the only crust I’ve ever encountered that begs to be eaten past the point of toppings. Not that the pictures do it any justice at all, since they were taken with an iPhone, but I guarantee it’s a recipe that’s worth a try.
Cauliflower Pizza Crust
1 large head of cauliflower
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 egg
½ tsp salt
1 tbs Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
1. Rice the cauliflower with a rough grater.
2. Put cauliflower bits in a bowl and microwave on high for 8 minutes. Don’t add water or oil here – just zap it by itself.
3. Once cooled, mix your cauliflower bits with all other ingredients.
4. Oil your pizza pan (or baking sheet) generously, even if it’s non-stick. Better yet – use a silpat mat or parchment paper.
5. Pat the mixture into a 12” round. This is going to make you feel like someone who thinks baking coleslaw will equal bread. Work through the textural weirdness and have some faith.
6. Spray with Pam, and bake for 15-20 minutes (until golden) in a 450f / 235c degree oven.
7. You can carefully flip it, and bake the other side as well if you’d like. We did this because at this point we were paranoid about it falling apart, but it’s really not necessary.
8. Turn your oven to broil, add your toppings and watch closely so make sure it doesn’t burn. We went really easy on the sauce and cheese, and cooked all other ingredients completely before dressing our pies.
*Note: It took me two pizzas worth of trial and error to get my technique down because I was convinced I could tweak the recipe right out of the gate. Don’t do this. It was really discouraging to see two whole pies crumble apart just because I wanted to use egg replacer instead of real eggs. The crusts we made with real eggs were far more bread-like, and held together beautifully. The ones with the egg replacer ended up as cauliflower hash. Very tasty hash that we ate right off the pan, but still. Follow the recipe, kids.
