How to make low-carb almond flour pizza in 15 minutes | Recipe Redo
Welcome to another episode of Recipe Redo! Today we're going to take a really famous recipe — pizza, everybody loves pizza. And we're going to make it a little bit more Mighty friendly.
Here are the links to the recipes covered today:
Almond flour crust: https://recipes.mightyhealth.com/almond-flour-pizza-crust
Sauce: https://recipes.mightyhealth.com/marinara-sauce
Coach Lindsay: So we've got Mary here, I know she's a friendly face for some of you. And she's going to be doing the recipe, I'm going to be kind of walking through the nutrition specifics. And we'll hopefully make this a fun event for you guys. So of course, you can stay muted during the event. But if you have questions, we'll have a short break while it's cooking to take some questions. So pop them in the chat as always, but then you can always come back come off mute if you need to. So I will just kind of let Mary get started here and take it away.
Mary: Thanks, Lindsay. Welcome to Recipe Redo. And it's a great one because we're going to make pizza, but make it in a healthier way. So we're going to make a crust, we're going to make a sauce, we're gonna add some delicious toppings, and it actually comes together pretty quick. So let's get started by letting me show you the ingredients for the crust. That's the first part —we're going to make a very important part. And there's just a few ingredients. You're gonna love how simple this recipe is. So the main, the star of the show here is some blanched almond flour, we have two cups, and then we've got 1-1-1-1 of all the rest of the things. If you can count to one, you can do this recipe. So we have some garlic powder, some baking soda, and some salt, one teaspoon of each of these. One egg — are you sensing a pattern here? And I have a little bit of water in case my dough is too crumbly. I've tried this a few times and I'm getting better at it each time. So let me give it another whirl. And we'll show what this looks like when it comes together. In this medium size bowl, I have a couple of pieces of parchment paper ready to go. So let's get started.
Mary: I'm going to take my two cups of almond flour, put it into my bowl. And sometimes almond flour can be a little crumbly or some little lumps in it, I like to take a fork and kind of get rid of those lumps. There, it's looking good. These will go away a little bit more, but either way it's going to be delicious. So here come my seasonings for the pizza dough — the garlic powder (garlic powder, not garlic salt) and then baking soda (this is what's going to get it to give it some rise get it to thicken up a little bit). And then that one teaspoon of salt. So I'm going to mix these together with my almond flour. Now you'll find at the store they have a whole almond flour, and then they have blanched. This is using the blanched it makes a lighter crust a colored dough, which is what we want.
Coach Lindsay: And for those of you that don't really know what blanched means it literally just means boiling the almonds to remove the skin so it's the almonds ground up without the skin or you can get the flour that's just pure almonds with the skin as well.
Mary: Right, thanks Lindsay. Okay, so it's hard to believe but this one little egg is going to provide the liquid that we need for this whole pizza dough. So I'm going to crack my egg into the bowl, a separate little bowl. And from there I'm going to beat it just a little bit. And then in it goes. So I've found that [using] just a rubber spatula is great to start to combine this and you're just letting the almond flour and all the spices soak up the egg. It looks like it's not going to turn into dough but trust me, have a little faith.
Coach Lindsay: While Mary is kind of mixing up the dough — because like she said it takes a little bit of time you have to have some faith and some gentleness with it — I just want to talk about kind of why we chose almond flour. You can do this recipe with coconut flour with some rice flours even but almond flour really just kind of proves to be one of the healthier flours on the market. To kind of compare it to like all purpose flour, it's way higher in fiber, way higher in protein. I'll talk about this specific like numbers later on, but [it has] way higher in fiber, way higher in protein, and way lower in carbs than all purpose flour. So it's just a better alternative for if you're going for a lower carb diet or just looking for something that's a little bit more nutrient dense than your all purpose flour.
Mary: When I was reading this, I couldn't believe how much protein it had. And it's fabulous.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah, so two cups of almond flour actually has 47 grams of protein, which is like, insane. Of course, you're not ideally not going to eat this entire pizza, you're probably going to eat a couple slices.
Mary: That’s detable!
Coach Lindsay: Yeah, that's very true. Hey, even then — 47 grams of protein that's, you know, a good chunk of your protein for the day, so!
Mary:Okay, so it's starting to moisten up, as you can see, don't be afraid to just get in there with your hands at this point. Because that's gonna really help it to bind together with your nice clean hands. And kind of knead it into a dough ball. I'm kind of pressing up all the little bits of flour, because we're gonna want all of that in our dough. So little bit of patience. And here we are. The one thing I did add after making this once is a little bit of water, because I found that a normal pizza dough has a little more moisture to it. And I found by adding one or two teaspoons of just plain water, It gave a better consistency to my pizza though. So I'm going to add that in right now. And mix it up.
Coach Lindsay: For those of you that didn't see already, I also posted the recipe link (linked above). So feel free to copy and paste that if you want to attempt this.
Mary: Okay, I think we're ready to roll it. This is the fun part. I have a couple pieces of parchment paper right beneath my bowl. It makes it super fun because it’ll slide all around. But it makes it handy. So what I like to do is after I have it in the disk, flatten that just a little bit. And then I'm going to add my second piece of parchment paper on top. Then I'm going to add my rolling pen and start rolling it out. So sometimes I like to stabilize it. Let's see, how's my shot there.
Mary: With what the pizza pan that I'm using, I think it says to use a stainless steel, cookie sheet type of pan. And that's great. I found using a cast iron pan works great too with this recipe because it doesn't make a giant pizza, it makes just about the size of a cast iron pan. Now you roll it — it says to roll it to about a quarter inch. I think if you could keep it a little thicker than that it makes it more pizza like so. With that in mind, you can do that. And what I found is the little bits that start seeping out the sides, you can kind of break off and put back — there's my little secret to get around crust. Don't tell anyone. Okay, this is looking great. And then I'm just going to grab my cast iron skillet. And I'm gonna lay it in. So here's my cast iron. I'm going to peel one part of the the parchment [paper] off. And then I'm going to use the other piece to lay it in ever so gently. And then press it into the sides. And then we'll pop it in the oven.
Coach Lindsay: It does fall apart a little bit but don't worry, it still tastes the same food. Food falls apart, but we still love it right?
Mary: You'll be glad to know — I'm going to set a eight minute timer to let that par bake. And while that's baking, we're going to get started on the sauce. For my sauce, let me show you those ingredients. We've got some rough cut onions and garlic. We've got some diced tomatoes and we've got some roasted red peppers. You could also use a fresh pepper — tastes just as great. This roasted [pepper] though, adds a little bit of nice flavor to this. So what you're going to do is take your rough cut onion and garlic, put that into your sauté pan. And by browning these in a little bit of olive oil, it's gonna really add some good flavor, it kind of gives it a little carmelized flavor to it.
Mary:So I'm going to put that just on my, on a low to medium setting, let it get sauteed up, give it a little stir with a wooden spoon, or with your hand, and you're going to have some beautiful carmelized veggies to throw in to give your sauce a lot of flavor. So fortunately, I was able to carmelize those a little bit earlier. So we're going to take those and put them in our blender to blend the sauce. So first, we take the carmelized onions and garlic —and that goes in. To that, we're going to add about two to three of these roasted red peppers. They're delicious. If you haven't bought them, I love to put these on sandwiches and salads. And this big one is gonna go a long way. They're pretty healthy. Lindsey probably could attest to that.
Coach Lindsay: Yes. Yeah and that's the nice thing about this sauce is it's all natural ingredients. And like Mary said, kind of caramelizing and roasting those onions. And garlic really kind of gives it that sweetness that normally the sugar would give the sauce. So as you notice, there's no sugar in this sauce for a reason.
Mary: Yes. Which, gosh, I don't know if you can find a sugar sauce without sugar out there. It's just so hard to find these days. So I just am putting in some petite diced tomatoes. That's my last ingredient for the sauce. And I'm going to give it a little pulse and a little blend. If you'd like a chunkier sauce on your pizza, you can keep it more pulsed. If you'd like a smoother, more ground up sauce, you can do that too. So I'm gonna just turn on my power, start a little pulsing. Isn't that fun?
Mary: So because I have that onion, and it's rough chop and the garlic, I think I'm gonna go ahead and give mine a good little blend there. With this recipe, you can just take your sauce and use it just as is or you can put this in a skillet and sauté it for a little bit if you want it to, to kind of cook down a little bit, it might make it a little bit thicker. But I made a dough a little bit earlier. And this is what it looks like when it comes out of the oven. So see, even if it's broken up, it's going to turn out perfectly.
Coach Lindsay: It looks so good Mary!
Mary: Whoops, I got a little zealous over my sauce here. But I'm going to take that and we're ready to top it. I've had this pizza crust in the oven for about eight minutes. So it's par baked — that means it's just partially baked. I like a saucy pizza. So I'm going to put all that on it. And I'm going to spread it around. We could just use the back of a spoon. There's our sauce. I'm Italian so I get really saucy with the pizza, I guess you can tell. And then I'm going to add some great toppings. Now, I have of course some mozzarella. Lindsay you might know — I know there's whole milk partially or skim milk mozzarella, what do you suggest on that?
Coach Lindsay: Well, at mighty we always recommend like the full fat. So whole milk mozzarella is best just because more nutrients less, you know, it's more satiating, and we're looking at what's going to take the less amount of food to fill us up, right?
Mary: And it tastes better.
Coach Lindsay: Exactly, yeah, and you can always use goat and goat cheese and feta cheese are also awesome. And then if you're looking for an extra kick of protein, it sounds funny but cottage cheese and then ricotta are really good ways to add a protein through your cheese. So there's a bunch of different cheeses you can experiment with here.
Mary: That's great. Okay, so of course the mozzarella. I like to start with that first — sprinkle it on. This is looking good. And then some great veggies. I'll show you what we have. I've got some fresh Spanish. I've got some bell pepper, and also some black olives. So these are all great toppings. I don't know if Lindsey has any input on that. I'm sure she does because she has such great input.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah, more veggies the better. Like you know, as you can see with Mary throwing the spinach and olives are technically considered a fat because they are higher in fat. But honestly, you know, any veggie any pizza that you can do really veggie heavy is the best.
Mary: Yeah, well, I'll go sparingly on the olives just in your honor there, Lindsey. But I also have some pepperoni, but this isn't your regular tip pepperoni — it’s uncured. And it's turkey pepperoni.
Coach Lindsay: Yep, and uncured pepperoni or whatever meats that you choose, are always best. Those sodium nitrates that are in cured meats are just not great for us. And so if you can find an uncured turkey pepperoni — it’s going to be a little bit leaner than just traditional pork pepperoni. And then other meat toppings. You can use ground beef, chicken, even like bacon crumbles if you want to. So there's a bunch of different things you can do here.
Mary: Turkey sausage, does that make make the cast? Yeah, yep, as long as it's uncured of course, which you can find links that. Great. So I'm going to sprinkle a little bit of spinach because this is only going to cook for about five minutes, so you don't have to be too worried. The other thing you could do is add your spinach after, if you don't want it to brown at all. And going sparingly on the olives, so I have a little pepperoni veggie pizza here. All ready to go in the oven. It's gonna bake for about five minutes. So let's go ahead and put it in. Grab my oven mitts, and I think our our poor pizza dough from earlier might be ready to come out. Oh, yeah. So that one baked right up. And in goes the pizza for five minutes. Get ready.
Coach Lindsay: And to go off of why it's good to bake the dough first before you put the sauce on it, it's just a crisp it up because the almond flour is going to make the dough a little bit less crispy. So if you can throw it in the oven, like Mary did for you know, five or eight minutes before putting the sauce on and then finish cooking — it’s gonna give you that nice crisp around the edges as well.
Mary: Right? And then nothing will absorb it keeps the moisture from absorbing into that dough, doesn't it? So you don't get your soggy pizza.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah. Awesome. Well, while we wait for that to kind of cook up. I mentioned before as I was comparing flours that I was going to talk a little bit more about specific numbers and getting into the reason why almond flour is a little bit better than the all purpose. And it really just comes down to almond flour and coconut flour are a lot less processed than your traditional all purpose flour. So that in the process of turning flour into flour, you're removing the bran and the germ. So you're removing a lot of the nutrients. And then they also bleach the flour. So that just in itself does not sound great, right? And so we want to make sure we're trying to you know — and with almond flour, It's literally just blanched if you get blanched and then it's ground up. So no processing involved in it. With all purpose flour for two cups, it's 910 calories versus two cups of almond flour, which is 1200. So there are more calories in the almond flour. But like I said, you know it is higher in fat higher in protein, you're ideally going to eat less of it. Plus, it's way more nutrient dense. So even if you're eating the entire 1200 calories, those calories are better quality calories than your 910.
Mary: Yes, great info.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah. Does anybody have any questions about the process so far? The nutrition of it,
Anne (Audience Member): Lindsay, if you ground your own flour, does that change [anything]?
Coach Lindsay: That's a good question. I guess I don't know if it changes the like nutrition facts of it. But you can make your own almond flour at home just like I don't know if anybody of you have ever made your own almond milk, but it's actually really easy. Same with almond flour, you literally just blanch it and boil the skin off and then ground up in a food processor and there's your almond flour. So this is something you definitely can make at home too.
Anne: We have friends that buy like whole wheat and then they grind their own flour. So then it's not bleached. Yeah, he got he got into this [during the pandemic] and he bought the grinder he swears by it. And then then you you skip all that processing and bleaching. So would that that would then like make the quality of the nutrition better?
Coach Lindsay: Yep, exactly. Because you're not removing anything you're literally just grinding it up into flour so there's no processing involved, there’s no nutritional changes involved really and that kind of goes along to I'm glad you brought that up Anne is that there's also like whole wheat flour and stuff like that out there. So you're obviously wanting to look for the best option possible that go along with your goals. So if your goals aren't necessarily low carb or keto, you just want a healthier option go with you know, 100% whole wheat flour. You can still do those, just making sure you're shopping for the best option.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. That's interesting. I didn't know you could buy just whole wheat and then grind it up yourself. I learned something new every day.
Anne: It was his COVID project.
Coach Lindsay: Hey, yeah, we all have to have a COVID project, right?
Mary: You should have grown the wheat too — I mean, they did everything else.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah. And then, I wanted to chat a little bit about the sauce too. So I posted the recipe — we did modify the recipe just a little bit, but for most, for the most part is the same. And if you don't have time to make your own sauce, or you don't want to, there are a couple brands that are great. Rao's, so I'll type them in the chat here. And then it's called Yo Mama's sauce, and they are sugar free. Then, Prego actually makes a sugar free sauce as well. So there's options —you just have to make sure you're shopping for them. But yeah, that's an option for sauces.
Mary: So there's, there's no added sugar. The recipe we posted online has red peppers and no tomato, right? And that's what the natural sugars in the tomatoes maybe give it?
Coach Lindsay: Yep, exactly. Yeah, and that's fine. I mean, if you're really looking to cut down your sugars, you would obviously remove the tomatoes, but added sugar is what we're really worried about. So as long as you can find a brand out there that doesn't have the added sugar, you’ll be just fine.
Mary: Yeah, I think that recipe you posted online does show it with no tomato and it has just water instead. So yeah, that would take care of that.
Coach Lindsay: Yeah, there's definitely options. Another kind of tip I'll give is something that I've done in the past is just bought a can of tomato paste because it's literally straight you know, tomatoes, and then just add water to to reduce it a little bit and then add seasoning. So that's another option too.
Mary: Guess what, Lindsay?
Coach Lindsay: Is it done?
Mary: The pizza is ready to come out of the oven.
Coach Lindsay: Let’s see what it looks like. I wish I was there to try it.
Mary: I wish you were there too. Alright, not half bad!
Coach Lindsay: Oh, that looks awesome. Mary. I'm trying to smell it. I just want to like waft the smell into my face.
Mary: I bet you want to try it.
Coach Lindsay: Yes!
Mary: So I let it cool for a little bit. My crust is nice and firm. It's just a great base for this beautiful pizza with the whole milk mozzarella and all the fresh veggies and the uncured turkey pepperoni. And we're going to have a feast. It’s a good thing it’s lunchtime.
Coach Lindsay: Yes! It looks so good. And the nice thing kind of like I mentioned at the beginning is this pizza and the whole entire recipe is 100% Mighty friendly. It's all natural ingredients, not a lot of processing really with any of the ingredients. And so this is something a good example of if you love pizza, it doesn't mean you have to give it up, just try it in a different way.
Mary: Recipe redo!
Coach Lindsay: Awesome. I want to thank Mary a ton for taking her time out of her day to make this in her beautiful kitchen. And thanks everybody for bearing with your voice. So I hope you guys all have a great rest of your day.
Mary: Thanks for joining! It's been great and I can't wait to have my lunch.