Sweet Potato Crust Pizza

ElaVegan is on fire! Hot on the heels of the great gnocchi recipe we tried last week, we gave this gluten-free, vegan pizza crust a shot. We love to make pizzas in our house. It's way more cost effective than ordering pizza and everyone loves getting their hands dirty with dough. So when I saw this recipe for a healthier, more nutritious alternative we had to try it.

The dough after mixing everything. This is probably a little too sticky. I should have added a little more flour.

The dough is pretty easy to make, with slightly less hassle than traditional crust. Simply cook some sweet potatoes (I chose boiling for ease, but I imagine roasted would produce a real nice flavor for the crust also), mash em up, add in your other ingredients, roll out your pizza and away you go!

Dough rolled out, ready to bake.

The kids did their traditional plain cheese and pepperoni with red sauce. Vanessa and I split ours and did two: mushrooms, onions, spinach and garlic with red sauce on one half; North Carolina mustard BBQ sauce base on the other with chickpeas, mushrooms and onions. They all turned out great! The flavor of the sweet potatoes is very mild and the crust doesn't taste too different from traditional crust.

Kiddos pizzas.

BBQ with chickpeas, onion, mushrooms on the left. Right is red with onion, mushroom, spinach and garlic

Sweet Potato Crust

Makes 1 large or two small pizzas. You'll probably want to double this for a family of four.

• 1 cup mashed sweet potato (1 large or 2 medium potatoes. Use the leftovers for sweet potato pancakes!)

• 1/4 cup rice flour

• 1/2 cup almond flour

• 1/3 cup tapioca starch

• 1 tsp baking powder

• pinch of salt

1. Peel and chop sweet potato. Place in large pot and cover with cold water. Salt well. Bring to a boil and cook until fork tender, about 15-20 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 F.

2. Drain potatoes and mash until big clumps are gone. Transfer 1 cup to large mixing bowl. Save the rest for another recipe, like sweet potato pancakes, or sweet potato bread.

3. Add all remaining ingredients and mix with a spoon. Put the dough in the fridge for 5-10 minutes until it is close to room temperature. If the dough is sticky, add almond flour. If it's too dry, add a little water. Knead dough well with hands for a minute or two and form a dough ball.

4. Place dough in center of a sheet of parchment paper. Place another sheet over dough and roll with rolling pin into desired shape, making dough about 1/4" thick.

5. Slowly remove top sheet of parchment paper and transfer crust (still on bottom parchment) to baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes.

6. Remove pizza from oven and place parchment paper on top of crust and carefully flip crust over. (I did this by placing another baking sheet over the one with crust, essentially making a baking sheet sandwich. Then, with oven mitts on of course, I flipped the whole thing over to prevent the crust from breaking.)

7. Gently remove the top (used to be the bottom) sheet of parchment paper. If it is sticking to crust a little, use a sharp knife to help scrape the dough free.

8. Add your desired ingredients and put back into oven for about 10-12 minutes, reaching desired doneness.