Flourless Crust Pizza

I've discussed before how sometimes you run across a recipe and it simply demands you make it because it's so goofy you cannot conceive of how it'll work. This is another one. Pizza with no flour in the crust? What?? Even as I was making it I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. And it's not a cauliflower crust, either, although I will be making one of those in the relatively near future as well.

It's not that we ever ate a ton of pizza, it's that having to cut out virtually all the carbs killed eating pizza ever for us, because the tradeoff wasn't that great. And as you know, being told you can't have something makes you want it constantly, even if you normally wouldn't have wanted it at all.

This isn't my recipe, of course. I could have never come up with it. Instead, it comes from Plain Chicken. The recipe mostly concerns the crust, however, since toppings are a personal choice.

The crust contains simply full-fat cream cheese, eggs, Parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and pepper. That's it! I know... I didn't believe it, either.

For toppings (in addition to pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese, of course), we chose pepperoni, bacon, green pepper, mushrooms, green olives, and black olives.

The directions say to make it in a 9x13-inch pan. I did not. Do you have those pans or dishes in your house that have become specifically for certain things, and it's wrong to make something else in them as well as to make them in a different receptacle? What you see here is a cookie sheet with sides, which is one of two we ALWAYS made pizza in when I was a kid. Sure, I own a round pizza pan (two different sizes of them, in fact), but these pans are what homemade pizza comes in, end of discussion. Using a 9x13 was never even on my radar.

I've got to tell you, when I mixed up the "crust" ingredients and poured it into the pan, I was convinced this experiment was an abysmal failure. It's really, really, fluid. Like, I was pretty sure I was going to have to eat pizza with a spoon.

As it turns out, it really does mostly make something that very closely resembles a really soft crust! It's certainly not a thick crust, and it's not as solidly held together as say a hand-tossed, but it's not horrible, either. It pulled away from the edges of the pan, and I was able to slip a spatula underneath it (I checked before I started putting on toppings in case I had to quick come up with another plan). I do think I could've let it bake a bit longer based on some of the comments on the original recipe, but I didn't dare as I'd already gone 20 minutes and it said to bake for 12-15.

While the crust was cooling (and firming up), I set up my toppings station. For me, even though it dirties a bunch more dishes, this is considerably easier than trying to chop and layer and figure out what the heck I'm doing when I'm topping a pizza. Not that it matters in the least, but this is the order in which I did my toppings: Sauce, pepperoni, bacon, some mozzarella, mushrooms, green pepper, black olives, green olives, and then the rest of the mozzarella.

The recipe calls for specific amounts of sauce and cheese. I used...some. I have no idea how much. It was less than half the can of sauce, but I didn't measure, I just spooned it out of the can and spread it on the crust until it looked like how much I wanted. Ditto the cheese. I know I ended up not using the entire package of cheese, but it was pretty close.

Once the toppings were to my liking, into the oven it went. It said to bake for 8-10 minutes, until the cheese is melted. My cheese was sort-of melted at 10 minutes, so I let it go another 5. Which was about perfect, really.

Here's the thing: Do NOT expect to pick this up like you would a regular slice of pizza! The crust is very moist, and pretty wimpy. The only way we found we could hold it was to lay it flat on the palms of our hands so the entire piece was supported. It's also not chewy like pizza crust normally is. I'm betting both of those things could be remedied by using more Parmesan in the crust, and by baking it a bit longer.

I didn't notice until after I ate my slices that the toppings on the left-hand piece were sliding off in this picture. That's nothing to do with the recipe and everything to do with my buying giant pepperoni slices.

One thing I discovered in reading the comments is she used the Parmesan cheese in a can rather than shredded real Parmesan. I don't know if that would make a difference or not as far as crust texture, but I'm willing to make this again and find out! Another suggestion was to use the "crust" as noodles for lasagna, and that's on my list of things to try as well.

Where's the Crust Pizza

Serves 12

Crust
1 (8 oz) package of full fat cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Topping
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
toppings - pepperoni, ham, sausage, mushrooms, peppers
Garlic powder
Again, not my recipe. All credit goes to Plain Chicken who in turn adapted it from What's That Smell?

*Serving Size: 117 g

Calories: 276

Calories from Fat: 191

Total Fat: 21.1 g

Saturated Fat: 10.1 g

Trans Fat: 0.1 g

Cholesterol: 85 mg

Sodium: 835 mg

Total Carbohydrates: 5.8 g

Dietary Fiber: 1.0 g

Sugars: 1.7 g

Protein: 15.7 g

*Nutrition information is figured on the pizza as I made it with my toppings, assuming 4 ounces of each kind of topping. Your mileage will vary depending on what you choose.