I love pizza. I grew up in New York City and occasionally my mother would send us to the corner pizzeria on 96th street and we would order a cheese pizza to take home for dinner. No extras. It was a delicious treat! Sometimes simple is best!
I have been experimenting to make a pizza crust that is slightly crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside and holds together well enough for me to pick up a slice and eat it with my hands. It also needs to taste great.
I use the same ingredients for a pizza crust as I do for potato tortillas. The only difference for pizza dough is I do not roll it out; I press the dough in a tortilla press. It’s fast and it comes out the perfect thickness for a round pizza for one. If you are cooking for a larger crowd, allow each person to dress their own pizza just the way they like it! There is no better way to make everyone happy!
There is no grain, gluten or yeast, just the magic of potatoes!
This makes 8, 16-18 cm round pizza crusts. Use what you need right away and freeze the rest for fast, easy meals. Your future self will thank you!
Potato Pizza Crust
2 cups steamed, peeled and blended potatoes
Flour mixture
1 1/2 cups organic cassava flour
3/4 cup garbanzo and fava flour (or 3/4 cup chickpea flour)
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 tsp Himalayan sea salt
Method
Scrub 2 medium to large potatoes. Peel and steam them until they are tender. Add the potatoes to a twister bar or small jar fitted for a high speed blender. The smaller jar will enable you to run the blender and be able to move the potatoes down the jar while it is on rather than continually stopping and scrapping down the potatoes. Due to potatoes being thick and starchy, it is hard on the blender so if necessary, run for as short as possible just until you reach the desired consistency and/or add a little bit of water.
Scrape the potatoes in to a mid sized bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the cassava, garbanzo/fava flours and tapioca starch. Combine well.
Add the salt and 1 cup of the flour mix to the potatoes and combine. Keep adding flour until you have a MOIST but not sticky dough. Add the flour slowly so you don’t end up with a dry dough. You want only as much flour as you need to bind the potatoes together. I find I need about 1 1/2 cups of the flour mix. Every batch will be slightly different depending on the type of potatoes you use and how moist they are.
Once you have a smooth, elastic dough, cut in to 8 equally sized balls. I like to weigh them so they are equal in size but you can eye ball it.
Put a damp paper towel or dishcloth over the dough balls so they do not dry out.
Press each ball in a tortilla press between two sheets of baking paper rotating 4 times to flatten them as much as possible. Then carefully and slowly peel off the parchment paper and place the crust on a clean piece of parchment paper cut just larger than the crust. Repeat until you have pressed all eight balls of dough and each one is on a piece of parchment paper. To store for later, stack 2 to 3 pizza doughs (with parchment paper in between each one) and place flat in a zip lock bag. Store flat in the freezer.
If cooking right away, preheat the oven to 220c.
Place the pizza dough on a ceramic pizza pan (pictured), pizza stone or baking sheet.
Cook the pizza dough for about 5 minutes. Take it out of the oven, put your desired toppings on it. I like to place thin slices of nut cheese, sliced onions, tomato sauce.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Check 15 minutes in to make sure it is cooking well and not burning.
Place on a wooden choppeing board and slice with a pizza slicer in to four pieces.
For an extra treat, top with rocket, pitted olive slices and finely chopped chilli.
You can put pesto, any sauce you like or toppings you love. Pizza is all about YOU!
