Low-Carb Pizza Crust

Cooking

Pizza is Another Word for Love

Friday night is date night for my husband and me. Date night doesn’t mean you necessarily go out, only that you circle your activities–whatever they may be–together with your partner. While our children were still at home we started Friday Fun night with pizza and movies. Now that the kids are gone, we’ve turned Fridays into our date night and I still make pizza and we sit before the big-screen TV and watch movies. We could go out–and we sometimes do–but why do that when I make a damn good pizza in our own kitchen. Over the years I developed my sourdough crust and perfected the pizza sauce. 

The love of food has padded me over the years, giving me a well-rounded appearance. After trying to simply cut down on my portions and increase my activity, I was still not losing the weight I needed in order to reduce back to a healthy BMI. I looked at many diet plans and found by eating a keto lifestyle I could lose weight without feeling deprived of foods I love.  

I’ve slowly been losing weight, and with it, I’m learning how to modify the foods I love into keto-friendly versions. When I meet my weight-loss goal, I will modify my diet to include my yummy sourdough pizza crust once again, but for now I’m committed to making the best pizza crust within my dietary guidelines.

After trying out dozens of keto-pizza crust recipes from all over the internet–from the famous Fathead pizza crust to the cauliflower crust– I’ve finally developed a crust of my own that my husband and I can enjoy together. This crust is easy to make, but along with almond flour that is now fairly common in supermarkets, the recipe does include some of the unusual ingredients many keto foods contain: ground flax, ground psyllium husk and hemp hearts.

Many of the pizza crust recipes I found online made ridiculously small pizzas. Even though we don’t eat a whole, large-size pizza between the two of us, we like to have a large pizza for leftovers. One slice of this pizza is a perfect meal portion and is ideal for quick lunches. I wrap the individual pieces separately and put them in the freezer to pull out when I feel like a piece of pizza during the week (which I often do!).  Enjoy!

Ingredients

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Add all of the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl with the dough hook attached, or a food processor with the food blade engaged. Mix all of the dry ingredients together.

Add the eggs, avocado oil and water and mix, scraping the sides as necessary to ensure a consistent mixture. 

The dough will be firm. From here I let the dough rest for a few minutes (about 10 is good) to allow the liquids to fully integrate with the dry ingredients. (Psyllium will absorb water and plump up.)

Remove the dough and shape into a ball, place on a sheet of parchment paper. Because the dough can be sticky on a rolling pin, I place a sheet of plastic wrap over the ball and flatten with my hand before rolling.

Roll dough to an even 1/4 inch. The edges of the dough may break (like pie crust does), but pull off any uneven edges to fill in the cracks and work together. Your dough should be about 14 inches in diameter. If you like a finished edge to your pizza, you can roll the ends of the dough forward to create a little berm on the edge.

Place the dough on the parchment page atop a baking stone if you have one, or if not, you can place directly on the lowest oven rack.

Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Add sauce and toppings on the pre-baked dough. You’ll need to bake once again with toppings for about 10 minutes.

Cut into 8 pieces and enjoy!