I’m gonna need everyone to take a deep breath before we dive into this one…for a few reasons actually.
1) This is really exciting – I made a pizza without dairy or grain entirely in my kitchen (no fake store bought cheese) and my kids freakin’ loved it. They did not even ask me if it was “real” cheese. They DO get very occasional cheese outside the house so I was curious if they would ask me “Is this Paleo cheese,” and they did not. Bottom line, this is really exciting stuff so we are going to need to breathe through it all and contain ourselves.
2) There are no nuts in the crust, there is no grain, dairy, or egg in the crust. There is flax, thereby making it not-AIP compliant. Inhale, I have an AIP crust for you HERE and it is fantastic. We good so far?
3) There is no dairy in the “cheese”. There is no grain or egg in the “cheese”. There ARE nuts in the “cheese.” If you cannot have nuts, you cannot eat this recipe in its entirety, BUT you can make the crust and wing the toppings with whatever you CAN eat. I do not have a “cheese” recipe free of nuts at this time. Please don’t freak out. There are TONS of other things you can still load up on your pizza so please be ok.
4) The pizza crust uses Cassava flour which is a fantastic alternative to white flour. If you do not have cassava flour, you can make THIS recipe for pizza crust or THIS one. Both have very positive reviews and use different ingredients. Still doing ok?
Alright awesome, now that we’ve cleared up what you can and can’t eat and which sensitivities might be an issue, let’s enjoy some freakin’ dairy free pizza that fools even my cheese lovin’ kids!
Cheese Ingredients:
- 1 cup cashews (soaked in water for a minimum of 1 hour and drained)
- 1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 teaspoon garlic sea salt
- 2 heaping teaspoons nutritional yeast
- 1/4 cup tapioca flour
- 1 cup hot water
Pizza Crust Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup cassava flour
- 1/4 cup arrowroot flour (tapioca likely works too)
- 1 tablespoon coconut flour (if you attempt to omit this you will need to sub in another flour)
- 1 tablespoon coconut sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic sea salt
- 1/4 cup ghee, avocado oil, or preferred cooking fat
- 1/2 cup dairy free milk
- 1 tablespoon ground flax seed
**YOU WILL ALSO NEED PIZZA SAUCE AND WHATEVER OTHER TOPPING YOU PREFER
- To make the cheese, drain the cashews from the water they were soaking in and place the soaked cashews in a blender with all the other cheese ingredients
- Blend on high for a solid 2 minutes. You want the consistency to be perfectly creamy AND you want the tapioca to help thicken the cheese mixture
- After two minutes of blending, pour the cheese into a bowl and place in the fridge or freezer while you make the crust
- Preheat your oven to 350
- Now combine all crust ingredients in a bowl and kneed by hand until you have a big ball of dough
- Now divide that ball of dough into two equal sized balls of dough
- Roll out your dough between two pieces of parchment paper to desired thickness. If your dough cracks around the edges, just seal it back together by hand
- **I recommend making a thin crust with this one for optimal results
- Now bake the crusts for 8-10 minutes on each side (flipping once after the first 8-10 minutes)
- Remove and spoon pizza sauce on top followed by whatever veggie/meat toppings you prefer
- NOW…. you will want to remove your cheese from the fridge or freezer and spoon/drizzle it over the toppings. You can spoon it liberally but heads up it will be liquidy. This is normal!
- Return the pizzas to the oven and turn on your broiler for 5 minutes OR LESS!
- You want the cheese to begin to solidify and even begin to brown but you do not want to burn your crust or toppings
- Remove and slice – enjoy hot or eat leftovers which are just as yum!
You seriously rock my world!
I can not wait to get home from vacation, gather the ingredients and make pizza love!
Please keep dong what you do!
So glad!!
Perhaps our ancestors had a “Nutrtional Yeast” tree they harvested from?
No-they couldn’t do that-nutritional yeast is a “processed food”!
Uh oh it’s the paleo police!!! Feel free to omit the nutritional yeast or even better find a more militant recipe site to fit your perfect eating plan.
Love it. Way to slam that fool. He needs to get a life. I appreciate the post. I hope I enjoy this.
I don’t “do” intolerant people. The Judgy McJudgersons need to find another page ASAP 😉
Your blog does say Predominately…..
Yay! I can’t wait to make this. The yucca crust is quite awesome but we just ran out and I happen to have cassava flour left. It is nice to have pizza now and then which does not make us feel sick.
Hope you enjoy Michelle!!
I know this is the ultimate annoying question– but I have to ask- do you think macadamia nuts would work in place of cashews? I can’t do cashews.
Yes! Try macadamia, almonds, or Brazil nuts!
Anyone tried making the “cheese” the day before?? Will it keep ok?
Yes! It will keep in the fridge a few days!
Have you ever tried making the cheese with cassavs flour instead of tapioca. I was wondering how different/similar the result is since they are both yuca (tapioca is from entire plant & cassava is just from root). Thanks!
I have not made it with cassava flour; since tapioca is just the starch and cassava is from the whole root flour, I did not expect cassava flour to behave the same way. If you try it you’ll have to let me know if it works out!
This looks delicious! I have Candida and leaky gut, nutritional yeast makes me sick. Do you know what I could sub for that or if I could just leave it out?
Amy, just leave it out, it will still be good!
Hi! I really want to make this pizza for dinner tonight, and I was wondering how many people the recipe would feed. Should I double it? My family has 4 people, who eat a lot. Thanks!
Yes! I would double it if you have a hungry family!
Great, thanks!
Hi I can’t wait to try this crust. I live in eastern Venezuela where there is plenty of yuca flour (but not much else including wheat flour). There is a type of yuca-based crisp bread that is made by the Indians of this region, called Casabe. Dominos here offers casabe as a gluten free pizza crust, which is so delish. So I already know that yuca and pizza toppings go well together…. will be trying yours shortly. Thanks for your recipe.
Oh wow! That’s amazing! And here I thought I was the only one using yuca for pizza hahaa!
I made this last night and loved it! It came out crunchy and delicious, definitely the best paleo pizza crust I’ve made! I can’t do almonds so your use of yucca and cassava flour has greatly expanded my paleo baking. Last night I only made one crust after splitting the dough in half. How long could I keep the dough in the refrigerator? Could I freeze it? Thanks for a great recipe!
Wonderful, so happy to hear! Yes you can freeze it! For refrigeration, you can leave it a few days, it sometimes will dry out if you don’t have it airtight (like with plastic wrap) but it definitely will keep for awhile.
Would this work w/o the Flax?
The flax helps act as a binder. You could try without but it could end up brittle so you might need another binder.
Can I use eggs?
For the crust? I suppose but I am not sure exactly how the texture would change.
Whoops! I forgot the flax, and it still turned out fine. It was very sticky. I took off the one piece of wax paper before baking it 8 min on one side. When I flipped it, I removed the other side. It was fine when it finished baking. Doubled the batch and our family ate it all!
Thanks for the recipe!!
The flavor of this crust is awesome! But, I had a really hard time with the texture. It kept falling apart on me. 🙁 I used Aroy-D coconut milk and olive oil (I also tried coconut oil in a separate batch) and couldn’t make it work. Any ideas on why it was so crumbly? Thanks so much for your awesome recipes! This is the first one I’ve had trouble with.
Did it crumble when it was dry or after it was cooked? Try adding a bit more oil/milk if it seems like it breaks apart too easily before baking. You can also add some grass fed gelatin or ground flaxseed as a binder if needed but it shouldn’t come to that. Could it be rolled too thin?
For some reason I’ve just got around to making this crust. And of course I had nothing for toppings except cheese. But it doesn’t even matter cause this thing is so good! I can’t wait to try it when I really have toppings. Like pesto. Or chicken. Or cooked broccoli. Or all 3.
Thanks!!
Yum! That combo would be great! Glad you enjoyed it!!
Hi! Was wondering about the texture of the crust. Is it sort of bready and chewy or more like a cracker? Is there any gumminess in the insides at all? Thanks!
I wanted to let you know that I LOVE this recipe — though I’ve made a few adjustments. Here’s how I’ve been making it:
Paleo Pizza Crust
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sea salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. ground flax seed
¼ cup arrowroot flour
¼ cup tapioca starch
1 cup cassava flour
¼ cup + 2 Tbsp. palm shortening, melted
¾ cup water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease two pizza pans and set aside.
Mix dry ingredients together with a wire whisk. Add melted palm shortening and blend together with whisk. Add water & mix well with hands.
Divide dough in half and place a dough ball on each pan. Flatten and spread with hands as thin as possible without leaving holes in the dough.
Bake for ten minutes. Remove from oven and with a metal spatula, carefully loosen crusts from pan and flip, using a hot pad to catch them with your other hand. Crust will be floppy, so be careful!
Bake for ten more minutes. Remove from oven and top with whatever toppings you desire. Bake for ten more minutes.
Sounds good!
I just wanted to say thank you! This recipe had my reluctant husband and 2 toddler children swooning. The texture and flavor are fabulous. I did not add flax and I think I made the crusts slightly thicker than your image but they were perfect regardless. We are Otto’s Naturals Cassava lovers 😉
Oh yay!! That’s so awesome!
My crust was hard to flip without it breaking apart…any ideas?
Hmmm…maybe make them smaller? Or add more moisture, it shouldn’t be crumbly at all I don’t believe!
We made this tonight and it turned out GREAT! Thank you for sharing!
Goody!!!!
Made recipe and ate half. Perhaps slightly large for one serving. ? But now I know size and can adjust accordingly. I was reading the recipe from my phone, so missed the part about putting it back in the oven after the toppings went on. However I just warmed up the toppings I wanted and put them on when the crust came out of the oven and it worked great. I’m curious about the flaxseed. I only had a whole seeds, and try as I might I could not get them to grind up so they went in whole. Really like having this as a recipe option, and I’m starting to think about other ways to use it to help my sometimes boring menu.
Hi! I am wanting to make this today but would like to know if it’s okay to make it a few hours before hand, and if so, should I store it in the fridge or out on the counter? Thanks!
Hi Michelle, Yes you can make it ahead, I’d put it in a plastic bag or wrap in something air tight so it doesn’t dry out though!
So excited to try this this weekend! I’m combining it with the buffalo chicken pizza recipe from PaleOMG 🙂 One thing, as I was scrolling through recipes for cassava flour pizza dough, I found a website called keyingredient.com and they have your exact recipe on their site, though it says “adapted” from Predominantly Paleo. Which, “adapted” and “stolen” are two completely different things. They even used one of your pictures (with no credit) and copied the part of the instructions about the cheese, yet made no mention of the cheese or ingredients elsewhere. Just thought that was annoying and sloppy of them and wanted to make you aware of it!
Ugh thanks for letting me know! There are so many rip off sites out there it’s obnoxious!
I love this recipe for pizza bases! I also make extra and cook for a little longer to make biscuits (crackers). So delicious!
That’s a great idea!
OMG the style of the post had me cracking up. People are crazy. Or maybe they just have no imagination. At least you skirted MOST of the stupid comments lol… I have a bunch of abnormal allergies (various grains, egg, dairy and vegetables) and have to adjust because NO diet fits me exactly. Learn to deal.
Re: recipe–
Making this as soon as possible. Great idea for the cheese btw!!
Enjoy!
Best vegan cheese I’ve tried! Plate- licking yummy and I love that the texture firms up when baked. Would LOVE you to post links to other recipes where you use this wonderful cheese.
Thank you!
Yay! Thank you. I have enchiladas I use the cheese on too. https://predominantlypaleo.com/queso-blanco-paleovegan/
Can you replace the milk with water? I can’t really do dairy and I can’t do any nuts or nut milk minus coconut?
I haven’t tried that sub myself. Let me know if you try it!
Can I use ground chia instead of ground flax?
I haven’t tried that substitute so I can’t say for sure. Please let me know if you try!
Hi! I really wanted this recipe to work, but the dough never cooked, nor would it stay together. I couldn’t even flip it halfway through the cooking time, as it just crumbled apart. I followed the recipe to a T except for the coconut sugar: I used cane sugar instead. Why do you think that happened? Also, the recipe doesn’t mention what type of base to cook the pizza on. Was it a baking sheet? A pizza stone? Do you have any recommendations?
Thanks!
The baking surface doesn’t typically affect the texture of the dough. What brand of cassava flour did you use?
This is amazing! Thanks so much. I omitted the sugar completely and it still worked brilliantly and we now use it as a pie crust, which has literally changed my life as my kids will now eat anything inside disguised as pie…! What a find.