Showing posts with label homemade pizza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homemade pizza. Show all posts

Thursday, July 02, 2015

Cauliflower Pizza

Cauliflower is one of those weird vegetables you can use in anything and make it into a lot of strange things. I decided to make a cauliflower pizza base, as an alternative to a carb-heavy base which usually takes more effort to make by scratch.

Making the pizza base is really simple, but it takes a while mostly waiting for the cauliflower to cool down once it's cooked.

Step 1. Acquire one head of cauliflower.

Step 2. Cut off all the florets.

Step 3. Blitz it up in a food processor until the bits are the size of rice.

Step 4. Microwave dat shiz. It's faster than the boiling method, which also uses more utensils...

Step 5. Let it cool, before squeezing out all the moisture with paper towels.

Step 6. While the cauliflower cools, add some garlic, parmesan cheese, and herbs and spices to a bowl.
You can make this vegan/dairy free by omitting the cheese, but it made my crust takes very pizza-like!
The spices I added was onion powder, mixed herb (rosemary, basil, thyme, oregano etc.) and a touch of paprika.

Step 7. Add the cooled/squeezed cauliflower.

Step 8. I added some potato starch, because I thought it might help bind it together.

Step 9. I also added an egg because I thought it would help it bind and keep together as well.
Again, you can omit the egg to make it vegan friendly!

Step 10. Mix it up, and dump onto a lined pizza-pan.

Step 11. Press it down as compact as possible, and bake for 15-20 mins, 180 degrees Celsius. (I just guessed it, and mostly
waited for the crust to turn golden brown. Only the egg needs to be "cooked" to be safe to eat anyway.

Step 12. When the crust is cooked, finish it up with your favourite toppings, and bake until the toppings are cooked through!

Overall, I thought the pizza was delicious. (So did my mother.) However, I must have left a bit too much moisture in the cauliflower because the crust was soggier than I wanted, but it kept together just enough to be eaten like a pizza. I also had nothing in my fridge, so I topped it with anything I had: organic ketchup (a lot richer and more concentrated than regular ketchup), sliced zucchini, onions, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and a tiny sprinkling of cheese. It tasted amazing though! You can literally chuck anything you have in your fridge, tis the beauty of homemade pizza ;)