Italian Sausage Pizza

My first adventure in Paleo cooking!  This recipe comes from the 40 Top Paleo Recipes - Quick and Easy Paleo Diet Recipes.  I have to say, I was a bit skeptical with making my own pizza dough with no real flour and using almond butter in it, but let's just see how it went.

I mixed the almond flour, almond butter, eggs, and salt in a bowl until it was mushy.  Yes, you read that right, almond butter.  It's not regular butter, it's kind of like peanut butter.  The recipe says to knead it, but I never got it to a doughy consistency.  I just mixed it up and pushed it out onto my pizza stone.

Kind of a mushy mess before baking it.  350 for 10 minutes to firm it up.

 I sauted Italian sausage, onions, and mushrooms in olive oil for a few minutes, then added some fresh garlic.  I omitted the pepper in the recipe because we didn't have any fresh peppers on hand.  I spread 1/2 cup of marinara on the crust, leaving 1/2" of room around the edge then topped with the vegetables and sausage.  I sprinkled some oregano and fennel seed on top then baked for 25 minutes.

Pizza going into the oven, ready to be baked.

I was hesitant to add the fennel because I am not a fennel fan.  It smells too much like black licorice to me.  But the mix of all the flavors was done well and I couldn't even taste the fennel in the finished pizza.

Finished pizza after adding the tomatoes.

After the pizza came out of the oven, I added 1/2 cup of sliced cherry tomatoes.  By the time the pizza was sliced and ready to eat the tomatoes heated up and were tasty.

Slices of Paleo Italian Sausage Pizza.

Verdict: The pizza toppings tasted delicious.  This is a no cheese pizza but artisan cheese could be added and this recipe would still be Paleo.  The mix of sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic was very tasty.  The crust held up well and I think it helped that I cooked it on a pizza stone.  The recipe itself says the crust will be soft due to being made with almond flour, but ours was firm and solid.  The edge with no toppings was rather crispy, like a thin crust pizza.  However, the pizza crust tasted a little like peanut butter due to the 3 TBSP of almond butter in it.  I will admit, it might have been our almond butter.  The almond butter I used was fresh ground almond butter from the Market District in Pittsburgh, and when I say fresh ground, I mean I ground it myself at the store.  I use fresh loosely since I was in Pittsburgh in June.

The meal itself wasn't very filling.  It serves 8, and by that it was cut into 8 slices.  I ate 2 myself and was still hungry after.  Definitely needed to make a second pizza or serve it with something else.  I'm not sure what since I usually eat pizza with breadsticks, and those are obviously off my radar now.  We will figure it out next time.  For now, the pizza was well liked by the hubby and both kids, so we will keep this recipe for the future.

Italian Sausage Pizza

Serves 8

Ingredients:

Fennel seed

Oregano

½ cup cherry tomato halves

½ cup marinara

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 Italian sausage, sliced

4 ounces mushrooms, chopped

½ onion, chopped

1 TBSP olive oil

2 eggs

3 TBSP almond butter

1 cup almond flour

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease baking tray or pizza stone.

Mix in a bowl, salt, eggs, almond butter, and flour. (*No salt amount was listed in recipe so I just shook some in.)  Knead into a dough and press flat, on to prepared tray. (*I couldn't knead it, just mixed it and pressed it on the stone.)  Bake 10 minutes.

Lightly saute sausage, mushrooms, and onion.  Add pepper and garlic, saute 1 minute.

Spread marinara on to crust.  Sprinkle with sauteed vegetables and sausage.  Sprinkle with fennel seed and oregano.  Bake about 25 minutes.

When cooked, top with cherry tomatoes.

*Tips:  Almond flour pizza dough is soft, be careful with transferring slices to a plate.  My crust was crispy, possibly because of cooking on a stone rather than a metal pan.