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This paleo pizza crust recipe is quick and easy and absolutely delicious. Even my picky husband and toddler love it when I make pizza with it.
A while algo I showed you how I made my quick and easy pizza dough. I used to make that recipe all of the time and loved it.
Since experimenting with removing grains from my diet, though, I hadn’t really found a great substitute for that…
until now!
I had been experimenting with various combinations of tapioca flour with other flours hoping to come up with something that was quick, easy to make, and that tasted wonderful. While my experiments were quick and easy, the tapioca flour left the pizza with a strange taste that made my son turned up his nose at it. My husband thought it was “OK,” but my little guy refused to eat it at all.
Don’t get me wrong, tapioca flour can be really great in some recipes. I still need to share with you a cheese bread recipe that uses it and tastes amazing. You’d think it was made with wheat! Back to my story, though…
Whenever they wanted pizza, I was basically stuck with making two different pizza doughs, my original quick and easy pizza dough with wheat in it for them, and my weird tapioca flour paleo pizza crust for me.
Of course even I wasn’t happy with that recipe and rarely made pizza anymore. That recipe definitely wasn’t going to make it’s way to the blog any time soon!
In comes my friend Megan Stevens from the Eat Beautiful blog. Like me she has been experimenting with her diet and makes mostly grain free recipes. Thinking that we probably share some of the same types of readers, she asked me if I was interested in reviewing her new cookbook, also titled Eat Beautiful, with the tagline of “Grain free, sugar free and loving it.“
That got my attention since that is the way that I like to eat myself!
Of course I said yes, and was excited to see the types of recipes that were included.
In the book you can find everything from grain free waffles, cakes, muffins and cookies to the more savory breads like panini and this paleo pizza crust recipe that caught my eye.
It isn’t only about grain free eating, though. It’s about transitioning to making your own foods from scratch, and how to get your kids on board through the process. You can transition without having to feel deprived because you can have the same types of comfort foods sans the gluten, wheat, and other grains.
She also shares recipes for homemade milks, lassi, kvass, and a chia electrolyte beverage. She shares her thought on what sorts of foods you should be eating and which you shouldn’t, and gives you a section with methods that share how to soak beans, nuts, make almond and nut butters, etc.
This paleo pizza crust recipe incorporates one of her methods of soaking the nuts for easy use and healthier eating.
It’s her new grain free baking technique:
It’s popular to use nuts in grain-free baking whether it be in the form of butter, meal or flour. Sometimes the nuts are sprouted to aid in digestion and the assimilation of nutrients, but…
- Nut butters, meals and flours quickly go rancid, and are usually not sprouted. So even though we think of them as healthy, they really can be improved upon.
- Sprouted nuts (soaked overnight and then dehydrated and ground into flour) are expensive to buy or time-consuming to create at home.
This new method solves both shortcomings.
How does it work?
You put raw nuts, salt and water into a bowl in the evening and the next morning you rinse them off in a colander. They are now ready to use! These “soaked and wet” nuts are easy to make and much healthier than store-bought butters or flours.
So, before making this pizza dough, you should soak the raw almonds in water with a little sea salt overnight. For the 1 cup of almonds in this recipe, you should cover the nuts by two inches with room temperature filtered water and about 1/2 tsp. of salt. The next day you’ll find that they are soft and you can easily puree them into your pizza dough.
Ingredients
- 1 cup soaked almonds following the soaked nut technique above
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 4 egg whole, preferably grass-fed
- 2 egg white
- 1 tsp. basil or oregano or rosemary
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/16 tsp. stevia
- 3/4 cup chia-seed meal
- 1/8 cup coconut flour
- 1/8 cup flaxseed meal
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
Instructions
- Prepare a round pizza pan by rubbing it with olive oil, coconut oil or animal fat — or spray with coconut oil spray. For a rectangular pizza, prepare a cookie sheet in the same manner, greasing the bottom and sides.
- Place these ingredients into a high-powered blender in the following order: eggs, olive oil, almonds (or 1 1/2 cups of other soaked nuts), herbs, sea salt and stevia.
- Blend on medium-high speed until the mixture is batter-like and mostly smooth.
- Sift together the remaining dry ingredients in a small bowl: chia-seed meal, coconut flour, flaxseed meal and baking soda.
- Add these to the blender and quickly puree them on medium speed to completely and evenly incorporate them into the batter, without over-mixing.
- Do not let the batter set up and thicken. Immediately pour the batter into an even round circle on the prepared pan, smoothing out the surface and shape with an offset spatula. Alternately, pour the batter into your prepared cookie sheet, spreading out the batter evenly into the rectangular shape.
- Bake dough for 15 to 20 minutes, until the edges are drying out and the center is puffed in places.
- Remove dough and immediately top it with your favorite toppings: homemade tomato sauce, sautéed sausage or lightly cooked bacon, grated aged cheese, feta, goat cheese or homemade, Herbed Dairy-free Ricotta (recipe follows), sautéed onions, bell peppers, olives, fresh garlic, cubes of cooked winter squash, sprouted walnuts, chanterelle mushrooms, etc.
- Bake pizza for 20 additional minutes, until the edges are brown but not too dark, and the ingredients in the center are sizzling and hot, tinged with brown.
- Top with optional prosciutto, homegrown tomatoes (in season) and fresh basil; slice and serve.
So, how good is this paleo pizza crust recipe?
I was amazed at how quickly my son scarfed down mini pizza after mini pizza!
I should have made it a little bit thinner, but I ran out of room on my pan when trying to make mini pizzas. I decided on mini pizzas mostly because I thought they photograph nicer on the blog. (Blogger issues!) 🙂 Next time I’ll try making on of the suggested ways using a rectangular pan to make a rectangular pizza.
As for my husband?
What he said surprised me even more. Despite not trying it until hours later when it had been sitting around for awhile, at first he said it was pretty good. After a few bites, he shocked me with the statement that he thought he liked it better than regular pizza crusts!
Yay! Finally a grain free pizza crust that I can make for the entire family!!
Want to know more about the Eat Beautiful cookbook?
It looks great so far!
I just got back from a cruise which happened to coincide with the release of the book, so for now I have only been able to try out one of the recipes. I’m really looking forward to trying more of them out, though, because there are a lot of really fun recipes that have caught my eye along with lots of great information.
Interested?
Click here to learn more or to make your purchase.
Low Carb Paleo Tortillas with Flaxseeds and Eggs
Geri Lynn Habstritt
Looks lovely! Thank you for this. Do you think the eggs could be substituted for a flax egg or egg replacer even though the recipe already has flax meal in it?
Tracy Ariza
Hi Geri,
I haven’t tried it, but I’d guess it would work with a recipe like this one. Flax works really well as a binder, as I found when I experimented with making tortillas using only flax! 😉
Natalie
I know it’s been a long time since you wrote this post, but wanted to comment because these look so delicious and I love the idea of soaking the almonds like this instead of using almond flour! I was bummed to see that coconut flour is called for because I am sensitive to it. I know it’s a hard one to substitute, but wondered what you thought about adding more ground chia instead? If not, it’s just 1/8 cup, so maybe I could tolerate it.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Natalie,
I’m not really sure as I’ve never tried making this without the coconut flour.
I’d think that it would be possible without it.
Maybe you could try something like tapioca flour or arrowroot starch too? That would bring the carb content up, but would help with the texture, maybe?
If you do give it a try, I’d love to hear how it goes. Your experience with substitutions may help other readers.
Davilyn
Dear One, there is no such thing as grass-fed chickens – LOL! I raise chickens and ducks – they eat mostly grains and bugs. Mostly they only eat greens like lettuce which we give to them once a day as a treat. While I am at it – there is no such thing as a healthy egg bought commercially. The chickens are horribly abused and most commercial operations cut their beaks off so they can’t peck each other to death or eat the eggs before they are collected, both of which is common with chickens. By law commercial egg producers don’t even have to send the eggs to market for 30 days. There is no such thing as a commercially raised free range chicken – the way the law works, they can have access to outside – but in reality they never do get to go outside. Commercial chickens never see, let alone eat a single green leaf of anything, their whole entire lives. That is why it is so important to get local eggs.
My eggs are so healthy you almost need a small hammer to crack them.
Tracy Ariza
Hi Davilyn,
This isn’t my recipe.
I have copied the recipe word for word as given to me, and, yes, it’s true that normally that probably isn’t the terminology that is used for eggs, but rather for gelatin and other beef products. That said, I’d have to disagree that chickens don’t eat grass. I’m writing outside as we speak to keep an eye on my hens as they graze so that my dog doesn’t attack them. Little by little I’m training her to be good around my girls. 🙂
My hens will quickly wipe out entire areas of grass if I let them. In fact their fenced in area is completely devoid of grass because they’ve completely eaten it all. Today they’ve had a special treat of extra grass because my husband cut the lawn and threw the clippings into their area. Within a day or so they eat all of it.
I live in Spain, and from what I have read for an egg to be marked as free range here, they do have to have access to the outside and free air all day. That said, I’m guessing most are in patios and don’t have beautiful green pastures as shown in commercials. I have no idea about the laws wherever you are.
My hens don’t usually eat grains. They mostly eat the grasses, weeds, and insects when I let them into the rest of the lawn, and they also get a lot of our leftovers. This being rice country that means their grains often take the form of paella or arroz abanda. They really love that and give me nice and hard, healthy eggs too.
So, you can guess that I completely agree with you about local eggs (if you can’t raise your own hens) being best, especially if you know the farmer and can see the condition of their hens and where they keep them.
Megan, the author of the recipe, would also wholeheartedly agree, and that’s where her comment stemmed from- making sure that you choose the best quality eggs that you can find. I think that’s what is really important and not so much the terminology.
We are all on the same side on the fight to change the food system for the better and to have the healthiest, and least cruel options become the norm. Hopefully little by little people will become more educated about the problems in the system that you have mentioned and things will change for the better.
Tracey thorley
Ok thank you x
Tracey thorley
Hiya
Is there an alternative to chai seed meal ??
Ive never heard of it before or if not where would i buy it from? Im also in spain so have the usual spanish supermarkets mercadonna carrefour dial a prix masy mas x
Tracy Ariza
Hi Tracey,
I’m so sorry I overlooked this comment when I responded to your other one!
I must have thought it was the same one and accidentally skipped it.
This is what I did—
I bought chia seeds at a local health store. I’ve never seen them in the general supermarkets you’ve listed, but the local health food stores/herboristerías should have them. Then I just ground mine up in a coffee grinder to make the meal, but a blender may also work.
I hope that helps somewhat!
Trina K
Hi Trac! Great blog post! I’ve came across The Wheat Belly diet watching a PBS show and he stressed grain-free diet. So I’ve been trying to follow his diet mainly for health reasons. I like the sound of this book. Have you tried other recipes? If so, how did they turn out? I am always out looking for better recipes. This pizza does sound delish!
Tracy Ariza
Hi Trina,
Thanks so much!
I know of a lot of people who’ve been greatly helped with a grain free diet, including Megan the author of the book. She was really sick before healing herself with a change in diet. I didn’t have any serious issues to begin with, but have been experimenting with it for minor issues. Without any serious problems to begin with, it’s hard for me to know how much the change in diet has been helping me, but I will say that I generally feel better when I eat less grains and carbs in general. I like that this recipe uses almonds rather than replacing the wheat with tapioca flour (as I often do), and was surprised by how well it worked out. It is really tasty, and I love her method.
The release of her book happened to coincide with our planned cruise, though, so I didn’t get a chance to try out any of the other recipes before I left. Since my return, I’ve been having a hard time getting any work done with my toddler around. We’ve been outside a lot trying to teach him to swim and visiting friends. You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as regularly lately for that very reason.
I really want to take the time to go back through and try to make some of the other recipes, though, because I remember there were lots of fun recipes that stood out for me. While I haven’t had a chance to try out other recipes from the book yet, I will say that I have tried other recipes of Megan’s before and I have always liked them. I hope that helps.
If you have any other questions about the book, let me know and I’ll be happy to answer whatever I can!
Trina K
Thanks so much for taking your time to write such thorough response. I can understand how busy life is with a toddler – your son is precious! Enjoy your time with him. xoxo, T
Tracy Ariza
Thanks, Trina!