(Gluten Free -can be Meat Free and Dairy Free) Let’s face it. Who doesn’t love pizza? But, trying to find a really tasty (not mushy) cauliflower crust pizza can be difficult. Fear not! This one will change your mind about cauliflower in the crust of your pizza. I swear. So buckle up, because it’s time for (cauliflower crust) pizza!

Tomato Sauce Ingredients

• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp coconut oil (or ghee)
• 12 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 tsp dried oregano or 1 tbsp fresh oregano leaves
• Sea salt and black pepper
• 1 fresh or dried chill, finely sliced or chopped (optional)

Pizza Base Ingredients

• 140g cauliflower (about 1/4 of a head without stalk)
• 1 egg white, beaten
• 50 g ground almonds
• 40 g buckwheat flour (I didn’t have ground almonds or buckwheat flour so I just put in 2/3 cup gluten-free flour)
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Choose your favorite toppings! I chose parma ham, fresh parmesan and a spinach/rocket (arugula) mix.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 190C (375F). Link a baking tray with parchment paper and lightly grease with butter, ghee or coconut oil (I was out of parchment paper so I just used tin foil).
2. Make the tomato sauce: gently heat the coconut oil in a pan over a medium heat and fry the garlic for 1 minute, then add the chopped tomatoes, oregano, salt, pepper and a little chilly, if you’re into that.
3. Cook the tomatoes down to a thick sauce over a medium heat, lid off, which will take about 15 minutes. Then mash the tomatoes with your spatula or blend to a paste if you want.
4. While the sauce is cooking, grate the cauliflower into rice-sized pieces using a hand grater or food processor.
5. Put all the pizza base ingredients into a bowl and mix well with a spoon, or add to he food processor and blend to form a sticky dough.
6. Spread the dough out with the back of the spoon the prepared tray, shaping into whatever shape/size you like (20 cm/8 in) recommended).
7. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, flipping it over after 15 minutes to cook the underside (I took another pan lined with foil, put it up on top of pizza crust and flipped the pan over the other pan that way…since I was afraid I was going to break crust by flipping it!)
8. Choosing your pizza topping! If you’ve made the sauce in advance and it’s cold, put the tomato sauce on baked crust and put back in oven for 5 minutes before adding toppings.
9. Serve the pizza with a big green salad.

Makes 1 Pizza

Source | Hemsley Hemsley, ‘The Art of Eating Well’

A Few Tips

• Double the recipe to make two pizzas so you can freeze one of the bases or freeze the entirely constructed pizza to pop in the oven later in the week (I did this, and it worked like a charm!)
• I threw a little green pesto I had in my fridge into the sauce to jazz things up – it was delightful.
• Make a few crusts when you’re having friends around so they can build their own pizza with whatever topping you have…and you can have a pizza party!