Cauliflower Pizza Crust Recipe - Cauliflower Pizza "Dough" Recipe

hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with cauliflower pizza crust that's right if you thought it was impossible to make pizza crust without flour and yeast using only cauliflower well you were right it is impossible but that's okay while this is not anything like traditional pizza doughs it is in its own right a very delicious thing very nutritious and as far as appearances goes produces something that looks remarkably like an awesome pizza so let me show you how to make this and to get started we need to prep our cauliflower and there it is one head of cauliflower this one was a little on the small side but your standard sized head of cauliflower from the grocery store should work and to prep all you're going to do is cut out the core and then simply break off those cauliflower florets and throw those into the bowl your food processor although i guess we should call those cauliflowerettes but nevertheless we're going to break that up into our food processor and then you know what's coming next we're going to process this until it's finely ground and of course as physics and tradition would dictate you want to start by pulsing on and off and then you want to continue processing that until it's very very very finely ground oh and by the way in the cauliflower pizza crust subculture they actually refer to this as cauliflower rice which i guess i can see but since we are making pizza crusts with this i prefer cauliflower flour but anyway our cauliflower is prepped and it's time to dump that into some kind of saute pan or anything that will go on the stove along with a splash of water and we're going to put that on medium high heat and we're gonna cook that for about five or six minutes so basically the game plan here is we need to cook this cauliflower and then squeeze out as much water liquid as possible because that's the only way you're gonna get a pizza crust made out of this stuff that's firm enough to stay together that you can actually lift up and bite like a slice and of course like any kind of vegetable cookery we're going to need enough salt so you saw me throw in a big pinch of salt there and i'm going to give that a stir and like i said we're going to cook that for about five or six minutes at which point we're going to turn off the heat and then simply let it cool you could leave it right on the stove but if you're in a hurry like i always am you could go ahead and throw that in front of an open window and it will cool a lot faster just watch out for bears but anyway let your cauliflower flower cool down and then we're going to go ahead and transfer that into the center of a clean napkin and raise your hand if you were gonna use a dirty napkin until you heard me say that see that's exactly the kind of obvious tip you do not get on the other channels and once that's been transferred go ahead and gather up the corners and start squeezing and you're going to see just a massive amount of water coming out of there in fact so massive you may not want to squeeze it on the cutting board let me grab the pan here squeeze it into that and i mean squeeze with all your mites in fact if you have little wimpy spaghetti arms have a friend give you a hand you know that friend of yours that wears the half shirts he's perfect for this but anyway somehow someway squeeze all the water out because as i mentioned earlier this really is the key step and if you do it right you should be left with something that looks like this i know it doesn't look that great but it's cauliflower would you expect so at that point go ahead and transfer that into a mixing bowl and we'll add the rest of the ingredients the first of which would be some cayenne pepper so a little shake of that after that we'll do some freshly and finely grated parmigiano-reggiano except no substitutes and then we're gonna throw in a little chunk of fresh goat cheese i know you didn't see that one coming along with one egg and since we put our salt in earlier that is gonna do it so we're gonna take a spatula and mix that up extremely thoroughly and you'll see by the time you're done mixing you should have something that looks and feels like that and it should be very very pressable and you'll know for sure when you move on to the next step so we're gonna go ahead and line a baking sheet with some parchment paper the parchment paper is critical i'll talk about that on the blog but you have to have parchment paper and then just go ahead and take your cauliflower mixture kind of wadded up into a dough ball and i totally did the air quotes around dough and place that in the center of your parchment paper and then we're going to go ahead and press that out to about a quarter inch thick and just some damp fingers will work but i like to go ahead and throw a piece of plastic down and use that to help press and once we have that pressed out into a nice even round shape the like i said is about a quarter inch thick maybe a hair thicker maybe 3 8 that's pretty much ready although there is one optional step if you want to go around the outside around the outside around the outside with your fingers and kind of create like a simulated pizza crust edge go ahead i did it i think it looks nicer when it's done but suit yourself but anyway once your cauliflower pizza crust is shaped it's time to bake and what we're going to do is we're going to throw that in the center of a preheated 400 degree oven for about 40 minutes or until it looks like this check that out that kind of looks like a pizza crust and as we'll talk about later that's kind of where the similarities end but anyway what we're going to do at this point is let it cool down just a little because what we're going to do is go ahead and flip this over all right this brown decide is a little firmer a little less moist than the underside so what we'll do is we'll just flip it over and this is sort of the first test if you did everything right it should totally hold together and at that point you're ready to build your pizza and i know you know how to do this but i'm going to show you how i did mine i started with a little bit of our famous pizza sauce recipe just a little not too much it's just like regular pizza you'll wreck it if you put too much sauce and then after my sauce i did a little bit of red pepper flake and then some beautiful diced fresh mozzarella you know we're not crazy about the kind you can actually grate so try to find fresh mozzarella next up i went with a few thin slices of pepperoni although to be honest it wasn't really pepperoni it was some kind of spicy artisan hipster salami but it worked good i'm also going to do a little pinch of oregano and then last but not least a light dusting of parmesan and then that's ready for the oven which by the way i've raised to 450. all right so as you're prepping your pizza go ahead and turn your oven up to 450 and once your pizza has been topped to your satisfaction we're gonna go ahead and pop that in for about 10 to 12 minutes or until it looks like this and you gotta admit that looks like one killer pizza pie and yes the edges of the crust are gonna kind of crisp up a little bit crust up a little bit and then just because i was concerned about moisture i did let this cool for about five minutes on a wire rack i think that kind of lets the bottom dry out a little bit as it cools and then i went ahead and slid it on the cutting board i grabbed my trusty pizza cutter and we cut that up and if you didn't know any better you'd swear you were just about to bite into the most delicious pizza you've ever had which brings us to the key point make sure you know better because while this looks exactly like pizza and as i pick it up it kind of feels exactly like pizza if you're actually going to compare this to a wheat and yeast based pizza dough you will be sorely sorely disappointed so if you're going to serve this this is a classic example of managing expectations don't tell people they're coming over for pizza tell them they're coming over for cauliflower and that way there's no way they'll be disappointed because if you think you're having cauliflower for dinner and you get this you're pretty psyched and of course i've been talking mostly about texture here the taste is much closer i mean there is definitely a little bit of roasted cauliflower flavor in the background but it is fairly subtle and all in all i think it makes a great and obviously significantly healthier delivery system for pizza toppings so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,254,539

Keywords: Cauliflower, Pizza, Crust, recipe, dough, gluten-free, chef, john, foodwishes, Food, Cooking, Kitchen, vegetables, vegetarian

Id: WYjsqeLHS14

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2014