At risk of being forever banned from these forums, I'm going to share tonight's experience making a cauliflower pizza dough.
I did a bit of googling, and found a number of good blog posts about cauliflower pizza dough:
http://www.eat-drink-smile.com/2011/04/cauliflower-crust-pizza.htmlhttp://www.recipegirl.com/2012/01/16/cauliflower-crust-hawaiian-pizza/http://www.thevintagemixer.com/2013/03/cauliflower-pizza-crust-recipe/http://www.closetcooking.com/2013/02/cauliflower-pizza-crust-with-bbq.htmlI also read most of the comments on these blogs, and the recipe that I ended up using was a combination of things I had read in all of these places.
Ingredients:
about 1/2 head cauliflower
7 Tbsp egg whites (or 2 large eggs)
1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano (rubbed between fingers)
The raw cauliflower was sectioned and "riced" using the grater attachment in a Cuisinart food processor. (I've also read that riced cauliflower can be made by pulsing with the regular blade in a food processor, or with a hand cheese grater.) The raw, riced cauliflower was then put in a tea towel, and the excess water was removed by sqeezing/wringing very hard. I then measured out 1.5 cups of riced cauliflower (packed into the measuring cups), and mixed this with all other ingredients. The "dough" was then shaped into 10” round shell on an oiled cookie sheet, and baked for 20 minutes at 325 F. Next, the oven temperature was increased to 400 F and the shell was baked for another 10 minutes. The shell was then removed from the oven, and the oven temperature was increased to 425 F.
At this point, the shell was moist and flimsy. I carefully transferred the shell onto a perforated, dual-layer pizza pan and dressed the pizza with sauce, homeade raw italian sausage, about 4 ounces of cheese (1/2 mozzarella and 1/2 provolone), and chopped green pepper. The pizza was returned to the 425 F oven and baked for an additional 14 minutes.
The pizza turned out OK. It tasted really good, except it was quite salty and I would reduce the salt for next time. There was far too much sausage for this size of pizza, but I had frozen my sausage in portions appropriate for 14" pies and didn't want to waste the extra, so I threw it on.
The cauliflower crust needs some improvement, though. I think I would make it about twice (?) as thick next time. It was also much too wet and flimsy, and had a texture very similar to flan, thick pannekoek/lefsa, or some types of custard. Although it held together, I was not able to pick up the slices and had to eat them with a fork. In the blogs above, many have noted this same problem. However, some have achieved crispy, pick-uppable-crusts. It seems that the key to this may be: 1) cheese in the dough, which crisps when cooked; 2) removing water from the cauliflower (my cauliflower was raw when I squeezed out the excess water, but many cook their cauliflower first. I'm not sure if this makes a difference.); 3) baking time and temperature (this is something I would have to experiment with in my oven).
I am going to try again, but welcome any input anyone might have - especially in regards to getting a better texture in the crust. As I was typing this up, I realized that I should have weighed out my riced cauliflower so that I could express everything in bakers percents. This would be useful not only for scaling the recipe, but also for seeing how the amounts of salt and spices compare to other real dough recipes. I'm sure i can find a value for the density of cauliflower and use that to convert my volume to mass, but it might be easier to just weigh it next time. This would have to assume of course a constant water content for all cauliflower (troublesome as the water has to be removed each time and I expect this would add much variation).
I do have some photos, we'll see if I can get around to posting them.
