Meatless Monday: Gluten-Free Cauliflower-Crust Pizza

On Friday night, Toronto’s hazy heat wave finally broke. A windy rain storm left trees strewn about Toronto’s streets – and finally provided some relief from the heat. My apartment doesn’t have AC, so I’m not going to pretend I didn’t run out onto my deck immediately and let the rain cool me down.

I was happy to finally have my apartment at a normal temperature, because it meant I could actually cook using the oven again. I put my new food processor (a wedding shower gift) to use, and tried my hand at creating a cauliflower pizza crust.

Ingredients:

1 small cauliflower, roughly chopped
1/4 cup onion
2 garlic cloves
3/4 cup almond meal
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill)

Toppings

1 can organic pizza sauce (I used Eden Organic)
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp. nutritional yeast
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
1/2 green pepper, chopped
1/2 zucchini, chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a food processor, blend cauliflower well, until it almost looks like rice. Heat olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add cauliflower, chopped onion and garlic to the pan and cook for 5 to 10 minutes, or until onion becomes translucent. Remove from heat.

In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, flaxseed and almond meal. Add cauliflower mixture to combine. It should have the consistency of a dough. Knead dough with hands and spread it out on a baking pan (I made two small pizza crusts) and cook in the oven for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a pan on medium heat, lightly cook vegetables for topping. I used mushrooms, green pepper and zucchini.

Remove dough from oven, spread with pizza sauce, add toppings (I also sprinkled with some nutritional yeast and garlic powder) and cook for another 15 to 20 minutes.

-Katharine Watts, associate web editor