Chickpea Pizza Base

photo to come

Before we were a gluten-free house we had perfected a 100% wholemeal bread recipe, and had eliminated white flour from the house. We did this due to white flour being essentially a sugar, wrecking havoc with blood sugar levels and carb cravings.

Because white flour has been stripped, refined, and processed, your body doesn’t have to work to access the energy it provides. As soon as it hits the stomach and intestines the sugar molecules are absorbed as glucose into the blood, leading to a blood sugar spike. Your body goes into overdrive and releases insulin to cope with the blood sugar spike, and the insulin converts the glucose into glycogen, which gets stored in muscles and fat cells for the next time you need energy. The problem is, because the body releases so much insulin the blood sugars are quickly depleted, your body is quickly asking for more food, usually craving simple carbs, and there you are in the vicious cycle. You are also on your way to developing insulin-resistance and all the illnesses that go along with that, including pre-diabetes.

When changing to a gluten-free diet for our 4-year-old, we found ourselves buying bread, products, and flour mixes that were made with rice flour, potato and maize flours and starch, contained added sugar and gums. It didn’t sit right with us, we instinctively felt that this was not a healthy way of being gluten-free. A lot of these flours create the body to have the same response to blood sugars as white flour.

Our pantry now contains buckwheat and coconut flours, we make chickpea flour when needed (such as for this pizza base) and we do use almond flour at times, but find it too expensive for everyday use. I also occasionally use brown rice flour. These flours generally provide more protein than wheat flour, and amino acids, but I am still cautious to not over-use them, and stick to a diet mostly consisting of wholefoods. Other gluten-free flours that I plan on creating recipes with are quinoa, millet, and amaranth flours.

Chickpea Flour: also know as Besan flour, chana flour or garbanzo flour, it is available from indian and health stores, and in fact from our local Pak n Save. We make our own chickpea flour in our high-speed blender, by grinding whole dried chickpeas into a flour, and sifting twice.

The recipe for this pizza base is based on one from the Revive Café cookbook (from Revive Café in Auckland). There are two of these cookbooks available, I highly recommend them…a great array of healthy vegetarian meals. I adapt some of them to include meat, and be gluten-free (I am not really a tofu fan, it is still a processed food, but we do occasionally have tempeh which is a fermented soy food, and edamame beans).

Chickpea pizza base: called socca in Nice and farinata in Genoa, this workingman’s morning snack is traditionally baked in brick ovens in pizza pans. You can also cook the pizza base below in an oiled skillet over a moderately high heat til the bottom is crisp and golden and the top nearly set (3-4 minutes), then add toppings and finish under the grill. Depending on the size of your skillet, and how crispy or bready you like you pizza base, this would make 2-3 pizzas.

There is a video of how to make this pizza base by the Revive method here.

Chickpea Pizza Base

Ingredients:

3 cups chickpea flour
3 cups water
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp finely chopped rosemary

Method:

Preheat oven to 180c.
Put 3 cups of chickpea flour in a bowl
Add the water, 1 cup at a time, stirring to mix well.
Stir in the oil and seasonings
Pour into a well-greased non-stick tray with sides – it will be very liquid but sets nicely.
Cook at 180c for 15 mins.

You can then top as in the video, or once the base is firm enough (after cooking for about 10 minutes) top as desired and put back in the oven set to grill for 5-10 minutes. In place of cheese we sometimes make a cashew cheese sauce, we always use lots of spinach on our cooked pizzas also, and we make a yummy kidney bean and tomato pizza base sauce, but those are recipes for another day!