We're putting boxed cauliflower pizza crusts to the test
Nearly 60 years ago, I made my first pizza. A boxed dinner roll mix worked for the crust; adding oregano to canned tomato sauce made my pizza sauce. I had to grate the cheese by hand since grated mozzarella wasn't available yet.
How was that pizza? To my young palate: terrific.
Over several summers, I delivered pizzas to support college costs (tips were far better than minimum wage). As a bonus, at the end of the night, one of those pizza places let me toss and bake my own pizza that went home with me.
With a long "real" pizza history like that, you can imagine how frustrating it's been to enjoy a pizza still when not consuming wheat flour and watching out for carbs.
Most ingredients that top a pizza (except pineapple) are low in carbohydrates. Really. For example, one ounce of mozzarella cheese delivers just 1 carb gram. It's pizza's all-wheat crust that delivers a truckload of carbs.
The best already-made, frozen, gluten-free pizza crust I found was one made by Caulipower. It comes the closest to standard pizza crusts in taste (not as yeasty) and browns nicely. One whole Caulipower 10-inch crust delivers 510 calories and 85 carb grams. When most keto food plans allow just 20 carb grams a day, that's a deal killer.
A while back, I read about Cali'flour Pizza Crusts. Cali'flour's crusts had a dual appeal: zero wheat flour and a whole crust delivering just 9 carb grams (3 net carbs). I recently found them available online from the manufacturer for $13 for a box of 2, plus delivery. Drat. That was just too expensive for my slim wallet.
Then a few local stores, including Whole Foods, started to stock them, and I bought one ($10.99 for a box of 2).
Cali'flour suggested using a vented pan for baking it. I don't own one. They also recommend using a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. The crust will stick to bare metal since cheese is the second ingredient in its crust.
Wanting to get a good bottom brown on the pizza and hoping to make it crispy, I decided to use my all-steel pizza stone. Dusting my metal pizza peel (it looks like an overgrown spatula with a long handle) with corn meal kept the crust from sticking to the peel, and the baking steel worked perfectly.
I smeared some bottled pizza sauce on the crust, ringed it with green pepper slices, laid out some high-quality thin-sliced pepperoni, and finally topped it with paper-thin sliced onion. My test pizza was still a little soft, even though the bottom and edges had browned nicely. I popped open a chilled club soda and dug in. I loved it. Yes, I did.
Is it as good as a wheat flour-based pizza? No. Nothing is. But comparing the nearly 100 grams of carbohydrates in a wheat-flour-crusted pizza to the 9 grams in Cali'flour's crust makes it a winner.
About two weeks later, I discovered that Trader Joe's sells a frozen cauliflower-based pizza crust that looks eerily similar to the Cali'flour crust, with a $4.99 price tag.
Can you make a cauliflower crust from scratch at home with the same nutritional characteristics? Yes. It's a much bigger hassle, though, compared to opening a box.
If you try these crusts or find one with similar wheat-free, very low carbohydrate characteristics, please let me know.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at 1leanwizard@gmail.com.