Sprout & Pea

My friend Mia and I have been talk­ing about host­ing a make your own pizza night for a long time and this week, we finally got some friends together and made it hap­pen.

As you can see from the above photo, the night was def­i­nitely a suc­cess and every­one had a great time being chefs for the evening and enjoy­ing one another’s company.

Mia brought some dough from a great Ital­ian place near her apart­ment and I attempted a gluten-​​free dough for peo­ple to play around with.  I came across a recipe on Gin­ger Lemon Girl that incor­po­rated almond flour and white beans — two things I like to cook with and also had lay­ing around my house– so I decided to give it a try.  I’ve included the recipe for this below.  I did find that I needed to add a lot more flour than the recipe calls for to make it less sticky and more like a pizza dough.  My friend Daniele had the smart idea to just place some extra flour on a wood board and roll the dough in it which worked out per­fectly. The dough came out pretty crispy but had a slight sweet taste that was a nice con­trast on some of the pizzas.

Chef Daniele rolling out the gluten free dough (improv style with a glass jar)

I was really impressed with everyone’s ideas and exper­i­ments that went into make your own pizza night.  We all wound up sam­pling every­thing fam­ily style and every­one was extremely sat­is­fied by the end of the night and the evening was a deli­cious good time had by all.

Tomato sauce, sun dried toma­toes with gar­lic, fresh basil, fresh moz­zarella (whole slices), driz­zle of pesto oil

Goat cheese, red onions, black olives and artichokes

Truf­fle oil, roasted brus­sels sprouts, caramelized onions, and a sprin­kle of smoked ched­dar (pancetta and sun dried tomato on one side)

Butter-​​browned figs, gor­gonzola, olive oil, and caramelized onions

Goat cheese, gor­gonzola, arti­chokes and truf­fle oil

Goat cheese, fresh figs, pine nuts, arugula and driz­zle of olive oil

Gin­ger Lemon Girl Gluten Free Pizza Crust Recipe

Makes 1 large 12″-14″ thick pizza crust –or– 2 medium sized gluten free thin crust pizzas.

Dry Ingre­di­ents:
2 cups almond flour
1/​2 tea­spoon salt
1/​4 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
1 tea­spoon oregano
1 tea­spoon gar­lic pow­der
1 tea­spoon basil

Wet Ingre­di­ents:
3/​4 cup mashed white beans, such as navy beans or can­nellini beans
3 eggs
3 table­spoons olive oil

Direc­tions:

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12″ round pizza pan with parch­ment paper.
In a large bowl mix all dry ingre­di­ents together.
Make a well in the cen­ter of the dry ingre­di­ents and add all the wet ingre­di­ents.
Mix the wet & dry ingre­di­ents together thor­oughly. You will have a very wet dough.
If you’re mak­ing two piz­zas split the dough in half.
Spread the dough in a cir­cle on the parch­ment paper with a spat­ula. It may help to wet the spat­ula with water or spritz it with non-​​stick cook­ing spray to keep the dough from stick­ing.
Pre-​​bake the dough in the pre­heated 350 degree oven for 10–12 min­utes until they are golden brown.
Add top­pings and bake an addi­tional 10–15 min­utes until your top­pings are cooked through or melted.
Cool pizza for about 5 min­utes and then serve!