Dinner Last Night: “Primal” Pizza

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that my boyfriend Brad has been following a “primal” diet. I’m not a diet gal, but it’s been interesting to try new foods, and discovering wheat/gluten-free alternatives to foods we all know and love. Enter “Primal” pizza. When Brad first mentioned the idea to me, I was a little…freaked out. He couldn’t remember the ingredients off hand and mentioned something about pumpkin seeds. I automatically thought of these crackers he makes to snack on made of seeds and nuts and, while they are decent crackers, it wouldn’t have been a good pizza crust. But once I took a gander at the recipe, I decided I would be up to giving it a go.

My nervousness died down when I saw we would still be making the pizza crust with some sort of flour. When we picked up the almond flour from the grocery store, I found out that there are so many gluten-free flour alternatives I never would’ve thought of! Coconut and Hazelnut are just a couple of the bunch. Seeing a bag of “flour” eased a bit of my worries.

The dough isn’t obviously as doughy as your average pizza dough (SO MUCH DOUGH). It was a little complicated to spread out, but with lots of patting and pulling, Brad eventually got it into a decent size pizza shape. We had to bake the crust first, before putting anything else on it. As the crust baked, Brad also made the pizza sauce. We knew every ingredient going into the pizza, which is always a comforting thing.

We topped the pizza with fresh grated mozzarella, onions, and not-so-diet-friendly pepperoni. And I have to say, the pizza was quite tasty! The almond flour makes for an interesting consistency on the crust. It’s not your average chewy, pull-y pizza crust. It was a bit richer than I’m used to, but still tasty none of the less. The sauce was to die for and everything melted and meshed together perfectly.

Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be leaving good ol’ fashioned pizza in the dust. But this was a tasty, organic substitute that was fairly easy to make and absolutely fun to eat! Not all gluten-free substitute recipes turn out so well. This one is a keeper.