Farinata Pizza Crust ~ Gluten Free & Vegan

Hi all!  I hope you’re enjoying this Canadian long weekend 🙂  I stumbled across another gluten free pizza crust, and I have to say, it is my favourite so far!  The crust is made from a farinata recipe.  Farinata is an Italian pancake or crepe made from chickpea flour, water, salt and olive oil (in France it’s called socca).  You also add chopped onions, and rosemary and I added garlic because I love garlic, especially in pizza crust.

You should be able to find chickpea flour in the grocery store.  I actually ground my own from dried chickpeas (not canned!) in the dry container with my Vitamix. It worked like a charm!So what makes me love this more than my cauliflower or spinach pizza crust? Well, this one holds together much better, you can actually pick it up and not have to eat it with a knife and fork.  It was definitely more like a pizza “dough”.  So let’s check it out!Makes 4 servings of 2 slices each

1 cup chickpea flour
2 cups water
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 Tbsp rosemary, chopped (about 2 sprigs)
2 cloves of garlic, minced (optional)

Preheat your oven to 450F. Slowly add the water to the chickpea flour whisking to remove lumps. Add in the salt. Cover and let it rest on the hot stove for at least 30 minutes or up to 12 hours at room temperature. You want the batter to be the consistency of pancake batter.  Now, I’m not gonna lie, I got really impatient (and hungry!) and did not let it fully rest, the consistency was quite thin…OK watery, but it still turned out great!

While your batter is resting, add the chopped onions to a frying pan and brown them over medium heat.  Remove pan from heat, add the chopped rosemary and minced garlic. Once your batter has rested, place a 9 x 13 pan in the oven for a few minutes to heat up, it is important to have a hot pan! Drizzle with the olive oil and spread out the onion, rosemary and garlic mixture.  Pour the batter into the pan on top of the mixture.  Bake for 20-30 minutes. If you are using it as a pizza crust, remove after 20 minutes, add your favourite toppings (I spread sun-dried tomato pesto sauce over the crust and added grilled peppers and onions, spinach, fresh basil, Daiya mozza shreds and a some goat cheese feta – divine! Omit the goat cheese if you’re keeping it vegan). Bake for another 5-7 minutes or until edges are just golden.

Let it cool for a bit (or be really impatient, devour it and burn your mouth), slice up and enjoy!!!

Nutritional Info for 1/4 of the crust (not including toppings)
155 Calories, 15g Carbs, 8g Fat, 5g Protein, 396mg Sodium, 2g Sugar