I've seen a couple of pizza-but-not-really-pizza recipes in pinterest, and have even dabbled with my own skinny version: The Cheat-za... get it?
The one that intrigued me the most is the chickpea base because of it's use of alternative flour. Since experimenting with vegan cheese, using soaked cashews and almonds to make various cheeses including feta, mozzarella and ricotta, I've been keen to try out alternatives to traditional ingredients such as flours and dairy products.
This base isn't as soft and chewy as a traditional base, but if you are more of a thin crispy based pizza lover then this is right up your street!
Ingredients:
1 15oz/425g can chickpeas
1 1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup water
Salt and pepper
Method:
Add the drained chickpeas to a blender along with the oil, water, salt and pepper.
Blend until smooth. Add in the chickpea flour and pulse until the mixture comes together in a thick dough.
Scoop out the dough onto a well (chickpea) floured surface and pat together into a smooth ball. There is no gluten in chickpea flour (Yay! For GF peeps!) so there is not need to kneed the dough to like you would with traditional bread dough, just bring it together in a ball.
Keep the surface and a rolling pin well floured, and roll (or pat- your preference) the dough into two 12 inch diameter pizza bases, about 1/3in / 1cm thick.
Bake the bases, without toppings, at 350F for 15 minutes until lightly golden brown, then add the toppings before returning the pizzas to the oven for another 15 minutes to finish cooking.
One of my favorite and (pretty) healthy toppings is home made tomato sauce, ricotta (which is an excellent low fat alternative to mozzarella and browns beautifully when it's baked), and a little drizzle of homemade basil pesto (try this recipe made with peanuts in the place of pricy pine nuts).... er, yum.