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Darn Happy Pizza Crust
Recipe By: Darnitol
Categories: Breads & Things
4 large eggs
4 Tablespoons cottage cheese -- small curd is best
1 1/2 Tablespoons Atkins Bake Mix
1 Tablespoon flax seed -- as needed, or 2 tablespoons flax meal
1/2 Packet splenda -- or 1 teaspoon granular splenda
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Teaspoon Cream of Tartar
OTHER ITEMS YOU NEED:
An Electric Mixer (you COULD do it by hand with a wisk, but you'd hate
yourself later)
Mixer Bowl
A Second Bowl
A Fork
A Rubber Spatula
Cooking Spray
A Pizza Pan (NOT the kind with the little vent holes in the bottom)
1. Preheat your oven to 300F.
2. Separate your eggs, putting the whites into the mixer bowl and the yolks
into the Second Bowl. Be sure to get absolutely NO yolk in the whites,
whatsoever.
Beginners Tip
If you don't have an egg separator, just crack the egg into your hand and
let the whites run through your fingers into the mixer bowl. This is actually
easier than most egg separator devices anyway.
NOTE: As you follow the remaining steps, the egg whites will be warming to
room temperature, which helps them to whip better.
3. Grind the Flax Seed to meal, if you started with Flax Seed.
Beginners Tip
Any conventional electric coffee grinder works well for grinding flax seed.
Keep grinding until it's a fine, dense powder. It will be a little damp and
clumpy when you're done.
4. Add the Flax Meal to the Second Bowl.
5. Add the Salt, Splenda, Cottage Cheese, and Atkins Bake Mix into the yolks
in the Second Bowl.
6. Stir the ingredients in the Second Bowl with a fork until evenly mixed. As
you do this, crush the cheese curds with the tines of the fork. They'll still
be clumps when you're done, but try to get them a little smaller than when you
started.
7. Add the Cream of Tartar to the egg whites
8. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.
Beginners Tip
Set your mixer to the fastest setting it has. Keep rotating the bowl (or moving
your hand mixer) to evenly mix the entire contents. Pretty soon, the egg whites
turn to foam. Keep mixing. Use your spatula to scrape anything off the sides of
the bowl that isn't getting mixed in with the rest. Keep mixing. From time to
time, dip the tip of your spatula into the foam. Eventually, the little "peak"
that forms from pulling out the spatula will stay standing, and not slowly sink
back into the foam. THAT is a "stiff peak," and it means you're finished whipping.
Now be very careful with these whipped whites, because even jarring them can cause
them to collapse back into a runny mess, especially at high altitudes.
9. Use your spatula to gently push the whites to one side of the bowl, creating a
"well" beside the egg whites.
10. Use the spatula to scrape the yolk mixture in the Second Bowl into the "well"
you just created in the egg whites.
11. FOLD the yolk mixture into the egg whites.
Beginners Tip
What the heck is "folding?" Well I'm gonna tell you. The key to folding is NOT to
stir. Be gentle! Run your spatula underneath the contents of the bowl, scoop up
whatever the spatula will easily hold, then lift it straight up, out of the mix.
Turn the spatula over and lightly lay that scoop on top of the rest of the mix.
Scoop, lift, lay. Scoop, lift, lay. Keep repeating this action until you have a
fairly even mix. When the mixture has no obvious blobs of the yolk mixture left,
you're done. It will probably still be a little streaky, but that's okay, because
if you try to get it perfectly even, the whites might collapse.
12. Spray your pizza pan generously with cooking spray.
Beginners Tip
"Generously" means "get it a little wet," instead of "just dust it."
13. Use the spatula to "spoon" the mixture onto the pizza pan, evenly spacing the
blobs of mix on the pan.
14. Very gently spread the mix with the spatula, making one evenly-thick mass with
no holes. (Here's your chance to be a sculptor. Remember when you played in the
bubbles in the bath as a kid? Same thing.)
15. Place the pizza pan on the middle oven rack and bake for 50 minutes.
NOTE: The crust will rise a little, making what looks like one gigantic sugar cookie.
It won't look like a pizza crust yet, but don't fret -- we'll fix that in a few steps.
16. Remove from oven, and then set the oven up to 375F (for cooking the actual pizza
later).
17. Allow the crust to cool until warm. (Usually about five minutes.)
18. Using your fingertips, flatten the inner part of the crust firmly, leaving the
outer rim raised, to create that classic "pizza crust look."
19. Cool until... well... cool.
20. Top with your favorite toppings and bake for 20 minutes. HAPPY PIZZA!
NOTE: I'm not going to describe how to top this crust. There are so many
great ways to top a pizza, it would be wrong for me to only describe my
favorite. And I'm sure there are many other ways to use this crust that I
haven't thought of.
When choosing a sauce, read the labels to find the one lowest in carbs. I
regularly find pizza sauces as low as 5-6 carbs a serving, and I find that
it takes little more than one serving to make a whole pizza.
As a side bonus, now that you're done, you now have the skills required to
make Revolution Rolls. Which, incidentally, DO use the egg yolks, even though
the posted recipe is sort of unclear about that. Oh... and if you add a tablespoon
of Atkins Bake Mix to the Revolution Rolls recipe, you'll be much happier. That's
what lead to this recipe.
DISCLAIMER
Yes, I know that this recipe is overly detailed. If you're an experienced
cook, it will be annoyingly so. But I recall when I was first learning to
cook, recipes never went into enough detail, and it was always frustrating.
So I try to write my recipes for beginning cooks.
And hey... this is pizza crust. Everyone on a low carbohydrate diet needs to
be able to make that! Think of the cheats it will save!
This pizza crust is a variation of Atkins' own Revolution Rolls. Though it looks
complicated, it's actually easy to make once you master "Stiff Peaks" and "Folding."
And just in case you're a beginner, I'm going to give you TIPS with really clear
instruction for the tricky parts.
376 Calories (kcal); 23g Total Fat; (49% calories from fat); 32g Protein;
21g Carbohydrate; 753mg Cholesterol; 984mg Sodium |
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