Vegan day 284: Cauliflower crust pizza

Looks great… but it wasn’t! 
Not yet anyway! Of course now I will have pizza on my brain until I get this crust right. It was like eating a pizza crumb pie. It tasted good but not the way I wanted it. 

I am already a certified pizza-holic. Add that to my long list of food addictions and my 4am cravings and you see the trouble! I am so familiar now with vegan and gluten-free pizzas that it’s no longer an obstacle. I love the whole gluten-free movement– it’s not a bad thing to move slightly away from sluggish foods like wheat. For some people, this is life threatening and for others it is an opportunity to explore different food items. As consumers, we tend to become accustomed to one thing and not vary off of it. Whenever possible, I try different pizza crusts like whole grain, spelt, quinoa, brown rice flour, flax, organic corn flour and vegetables. 

I made a pizza cracker once in the dehydrator but this time I wanted to go for a warm baked crust as if I owned my own pizza kitchen. Well, far from it. I don’t even have a pizza stone. I don’t read directions well either. I am impatient and I admit it! I tried though.. and I will try again. Perseverance will win the day!


Let’s see what I did right and what I could have done better!

I was still in awe from the orange cauliflower I bought the other day. I wanted to try something else with it so I decided to look into a cauliflower crust for pizza. I did find some recipes and they seemed to make sense.

Here are the ingredients that I used:

Cauliflower head – one 
Zucchini – two small
Almond meal – 2 cups
Flax – 3 tablespoons
Oats – 1/4 cup

So.. where did I go wrong?
(1) Maybe I did not remove enough moisture from the vegetables. Interesting story- my friend suggested using the juicer to remove the liquid from the pulp. We could then use the pulp to set the crust. It seemed to make sense to me except that we would be removing enzymes- but hey, let’s be real, cooking does the say thing- doesn’t it? I went with this logic but then felt guilty for taking out the nutrients and added back 1/3 of the liquid. Of course I would drink the remainder. The RECIPE said to chop it, blend it down in a food processor and then boil out the remaining liquid. I think I did this part right even though I took a different course. 

(2) Was it possible I didn’t use enough flax. Flax is the binder- maybe 3 tablespoons wasn’t enough?

(3) Not everything cooks at 350 degrees. If I am going to learn how to cook perhaps I should have read that the oven has to be very hot. This alone could have been the problem.

(4) Maybe I should just stay raw- if I dehydrated this crust it would have worked out perfectly- just 24 hours later! lol

Anyway,
I baked this crust! 
–I made a tomato sauce mostly from fresh tomatoes, onions and spices.
-I used Gimmie Lean beef for a meaty topping and sun-dried tomatoes
-I broke down and used a vegan cheese (as opposed to no cheese at all or a nut cheese finish). DAIYA to be exact and it is simply amazing. 

ok this VEGAN PIZZA comes first then I will try to make a RAW PIZZA.