Crackers and Pizza!

Say what?! Did I just say "crackers and pizza"?! I did!

I was REALLY having a craving for some pizza this last week and went hunting for a recipe. I didn't want to use nuts in the crust and so I stumbled upon this recipe. Talk about a sneaky way to get your kids to eat vegetables. The secret ingredient sure is a very versatile vegetable in the Paleo world and I am often buying two of them every time I go shopping.

The only change I made to the recipe was how I cooked the "dough." I patted it out on a sheet of parchment paper - I was a little worried it would stick to the cookie sheet and I don't use non-stick sprays anymore. I cooked it on the parchment paper on my pizza stone and had to carefully un-stick it from the parchment paper when it came out and before I put the toppings on.

BUT IT WAS FABULOUS. The person sharing it with me said they could taste the cauliflower, but I think they were just imagining things.

Oh, and yes.. cheese. My body isn't so happy with dairy anymore, but I let it slide now and then. I love cheese. As long as I am keeping gluten out of my diet all the time and processed sugar out most of the time, I am a happy girl.

Topped with olive oil, garlic, caramelized onions,
goat cheese & proscuitto - MY FAVORITE

Topped with homemade pizza sauce, gruyere,
goat milk mozzarella, italian sausage
 and roasted fennel

Next, I wanted to venture into the cracker area. I have a few trips coming up in the Napa area (in fact, I could be there right as you're reading this!) and so I wanted to make some crackers to take along and be able to enjoy with cheese and sliced salamis. I came across this recipe and kind of made it my own. To be honest, my measuring spoons were in the dishwasher getting all clean, so I eyeballed a lot of what I put in and used what I had. 

I used: 

2 cups of almond meal

2 tbsp onion salt (next time I would use onion powder and maybe 1/2 tsp salt - a little salty!)

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp dried rosemary

3 tbsp grape seed oil

1 egg

Mix all the ingredients together and press into a ball. Roll between two sheets of parchment paper until cracker thin and use a pizza cutter to cut into desired shapes/sizes. 

I also pressed the very thin edges back into the dough so they were the same thickness of the rest of the dough - didn't want them to burn!

I transferred the dough still on the parchment paper to the pizza stone in my oven - preheated to 250 degrees.

I set my time for 30 minutes and after checking, added another 15, then another 10 and another 10... all in all they cooked about 70 minutes. I'm thinking maybe on a regular cookie sheet they'd go a little faster - at least that's been my experience with a pizza stone. I bet it's a good idea to keep an eye on them because burned nuts do NOT taste good at all. Also, oven temps are different, people will roll into different thicknesses.. so what I am saying is.. don't go anywhere and check often.

Here's the final product. And not only do they smell delicious, but I bet they'll taste fab with some fancy cheese on them!