A Decidedly Different Pizza

Lebanese Pizza

The concept of stacking various foods and seasonings atop a flat, fairly resilient piece of bread is such a good idea that most culinary traditions do it.  Some breads are flatter and rounder than others, and some are more flexible than others — burritos are tidy, bread-bound packages, too — but if you’re willing to let die-hard definitions slide a bit, you can find “pizza” nearly anywhere.  Playing with your pies is just too much fun to resist!

Although this recipe features middle Eastern ingredients, you could just as easily use guacamole as your pizza sauce and queso fresco as the cheese.  (Yes, you can bake avocadoes.)  Or try coconut-curry sauce with paneer for an Indian pizza.  Once you break the traditional pizza boundaries, your options are endless.

Lebanese Pizza (you can use your own pizza dough recipe or the gluten-free one given here; the gluten-free version is easier because it doesn’t require multiple rising times)

1 recipe pizza dough
1 recipe roasted red pepper hummus
Roasted beets
Sun-dried tomatoes
Soft goat cheese
Black olives, slivered (optional)
Za’atar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Pour enough boiling water over your tomatoes to cover them, then let them sit for 15 minutes.  Drain and slice softened tomatoes into ribbons.

Build the foundation for your pizza by topping the dough with roasted red pepper hummus. Sprinkle with za’atar, beets, tomatoes, onions, and olives, then crumble on goat cheese. Bake for 10 minutes or until goat cheese just begins to soften and melt. Serve immediately.

To make roasted red pepper hummus:  In a food processor, blend 1 (15-oz.) can drained chickpeas with 3 cloves garlic that have been slivered and lightly sautéed (cook with 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil over low heat for 2 minutes, then add both garlic and oil to the chickpeas).  Add juice from one lemon, a dash of sea salt, and 2 T. tahini.  Add one roasted pepper and blend until smooth.  To roast a red pepper, place a whole pepper on the middle oven rack for about 20 minutes in a 425 degree F oven.  (You may wish to line the rack underneath the pepper with foil in case any liquid drips out.)  When the pepper is starting to blacken, pull it out, carefully drop it into a large ziploc bag, and let it sit until it’s cool enough to handle.  At that point, the skin, stem, and seeds will pull right off.

To make roasted beets: Peel raw beets with a vegetable peeler, then slice into 1/2″-thick slices and place in a glass pan.  Coat with peanut oil, sea salt, and pepper.  Roast in a 375 degree F oven for about 20-30 minutes.  (Beets will start to crinkle at the edges and shrink inwards when done.)

To make za’atar: In a spice jar, mix together 1 T. sesame seeds, 1 1/2 tsp. oregano, 1 1/2 tsp. thyme, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 T. ground sumac. Store unused portion in a cool, dark place for future use.

To make gluten-free pizza dough (this is enough for two 8″ crusts and therefore two pizzas):

Grease an 8″ round pizza pan with butter.  It’s best to use an “aerated” pizza pan — that is, the kind with holes in the bottom.  This allows the crust to cook more evenly.

Stir 1 package (2 1/4 tsp.) of active dry yeast into 1 1/3 cups hot water.  The water must be between 105 and 115 degrees F to activate the yeast without overheating it and killing it. Let yeast stand for about 5 minutes.  You’ll see tiny bubbles forming on the surface.

In a large bowl, whisk together 1 T. sea salt and 1 cup of EACH of the following flours:  brown rice, potato flour (not potato starch), chickpea/garbanzo, and corn flour (not corn starch).  Stir yeast and water mixture into the flours.  Dough will still be very dry, so you’ll have to add up to 1 cup of whole milk to get a nice consistency — dough should be fairly squishable and easy to mold, but not so watery that it’ll run out of the holes in the pizza pan.  It’s best to mix in the milk with your hands so you can feel what the dough is becoming.

With the pizza pan firmly on the counter to prevent the dough from leaking out through the holes, firmly pat dough into pan.  The dough will be sticky, so the best way to do this is to occasionally dust the surface of the dough with additional flour (any of the 4 is fine) while patting dough into place.  Cover dough with plastic wrap and a damp kitchen towel and let sit in a warm, draft-free place for 30-45 minutes while the oven is preheating to 425 degrees F.

Bake untopped crust for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.  Remove from oven, add toppings (or refrigerate pre-baked crust and use within a day), and follow above instructions for finishing pizza(s).

Enjoy!

Tags: gluten-free, goat cheese, lebanese, olives, pizza, roasted beets, roasted red peppers