"Pizza" By Any Other Name

If you've read my early blog posts, you know that I'm allergic or intolerant to every key ingredient in pizza: dairy, wheat, and tomatoes.  I have been, over the past year, testing out a few methods that might make it possible for me to consume something pizza-like, and I think I've finally nailed a decent facsimile.  When I posted my first 'pizza' attempt on Instagram (it was okay, but I wasn't wild about the crust), one of my followers suggested that I call it something different, as it was so far removed from what a pizza is.

I will continue to call it pizza, because I feel like after being deprived of dairy, wheat, and tomatoes, I should at least be allowed the simple pleasure of calling this thing I've concocted whatever I want to call it, even if it doesn't fit traditional confines.  Feel free to call yours a tasty food disc or whatever you like, but for simplicity and for the sense of feeling like I'm not a complete outsider in this food experience that so many other people consider part of a 'normal' life, I'm going to exercise my freedom of speech.

This is actually two recipes: one for the crust, and one for the 'marinara sauce'.  Let's do the sauce first.

I start with beets and carrots.  It's about this many (I'm not much for measuring).

some beets and some carrots.

Peel them, chop them up, and boil them until soft.

Peel

Chop

Boil

Then, you put the whole mess (water included) into a blender, and purée the heck out of it.  Put the blend back in your sauce pot, and season to taste.  If it's very runny, just simmer it until some of the moisture evaporates.

Add flavorings.  Probably include garlic.

I'm not going to tell you how to season your sauce, because I--A: didn't write down what I put in (definitely garlic, but, uh, how much?...) and I B: am from German descent and honestly have no business telling people how to make something taste Italian.  Look for some nice marinara sauce recipes online.  I bet there's a million.  I'm sure they'll tell you how to make it good.  Be aware that it will taste verrry much like beets and carrots.  You'll need to add a lot of magic spices to make it taste anything like tomato sauce, and in the end, it won't, really.  It will be a red purée of nice flavor that, if you squint and pour it over something like pasta or a pizza, you could convince yourself it's marinara-adjacent.

Sauce that is red!

Now for the crust.  Again, there are a bajillion great adapted crusts out there, using a variety of ingredients (did you know you can make pizza crust with cauliflower?).  I've learned, as I've had to eliminate most grains from my diet, that baking is not really the wizardry some people would have you believe.  Yes, if you're making a soufflé or a flan or something quite technically challenging, you should definitely follow instructions closely.  But for quickbreads, cookies, and crusts--baking is a pretty simple business.  You take dry ingredients and make them wet, and then you cook them until they're dry again.  The rest is just: how do you want it to taste/how fluffy do you want it/how dense, how dry, how crusty...all of this can be finagled with a little know-how (regarding how much egg/fat/baking powder, etc. you decide to use).  For this crust, I used *no* recipe, and made use of the ingredients *I* (a gluten-free/dairy-free baker) tend to use.  Lucky for all of us, I wrote everything down.  Feel free to substitute any part of this with pretty much anything remotely similar.  It will probably work.

Dry ingredients:

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup quinoa flour

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/2 cup tigernut flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Wet ingredients:

1/2 cup puréed spaghetti squash

2 eggs

1-2 cups water 

Start by mixing the dry ingredients, plus the squash (if you have some--I literally had some around, and I've been meaning to test out my theory that squash would make a good ingredient in quickbread recipes--it does!), and one egg.  

Add a cup of water, and as you mix it up, keep adding water until it reaches a nice, doughy consistency.  I warn you, it will NOT behave like pizza dough.  It will be more like gritty cake batter, but stickier.  Scoop this goo onto a pizza pan with a sheet of parchment paper on top.

Then, use a spreader to make a nice, round disc of sticky, flat dough.

Bake this at 350 (Fahrenheit) for 15 minutes.  Then, you'll be using the second egg to seal it before baking it a second time.  Just paint that egg all over the top of the crust.  This is a key step in many crusty recipes.  I use egg washes for sweet and savory pie crusts as well.  Bake the topless crust another 20 minutes.

Once your twice-baked crust is nice and crusty, layer on the 'marinara' sauce and your favorite toppings.  For the cheese, I use Daiya brand mozzerella.  It melts.  Sort of.  Again, if you squint and use your imagination, you can believe it's cheese-adjacent.

Bake this again (still at 350--going any hotter risks burning the crust) for about 30 minutes--and yep, this is a Hawaiian pizza.  I figure I've offended pizza-lovers so much already (you'll be appalled to hear that we ate these with forks and knives, because the crust, while delicious, is not structurally sound), why not go whole hog and throw pineapple and ham on this monstrosity.

Straight up delicious.  No joke.  Closest thing to a pizza I've eaten in literally years.  I hope you can find the joy for yourself that this disc of food items has brought to me.