Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Cauliflower Pizza Crust is a delicious yet healthy veggie-packed pizza crust! It’s not only gluten-free but also grain-free, and nut-free, making it a great option for people who still want to eat their pizza without the guilt.

Cauliflower pizza is all the rage these days, you can find it in the freezer section at the grocery store but now you can make it right in your own kitchen. And let’s be honest homemade pizza is far better and anything in the frozen foods aisle. 

If you have noticed lately we have been on a pizza kick, bringing you several different low carb pizza recipes including Fathead Pizza Crust, Keto Pizza, and even a Crustless Pizza. Today we slightly shifted gears and brought you the famous Cauliflower Pizza. 

If you are a veggie-lover then I think you are really going to love this recipe for cauliflower pizza crust. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

What is Cauliflower Pizza Crust?

Cauliflower pizza crust is a pizza crust made mostly of cauliflower and without traditional flour. The dough is made, then formed into a crust, baked until nice and crisp, and finally, toppings are added. 

Does it Taste Like Cauliflower?

Weirdly enough, cauliflower pizza crust doesn’t taste much like cauliflower. For me, that’s a big thing because cauliflower is not my favorite vegetable on the planet, but I was so pleasantly surprised.

It’s especially good when you cook the crust until it’s nice and crispy.

Is Cauliflower Pizza Healthy?

Making this cauliflower pizza recipe is such a great healthy option! Simply put: when adding more veggies into your diet helps to make most things much healthier. A few ways cauliflower pizza is the healthy option: 

• Cauliflower pizza crust has way fewer carbs than a regular pizza crust. 
• It’s gluten-free which means those who have Celiac disease or gluten intolerance can enjoy eating pizza again. 
• Can be made vegan or dairy-free if you need it to be. 
• Cauliflower is a great source of fiber, vitamins, antioxidants, and minerals.
• Using a cauliflower crust is a great low-carb alternative for wheat or grains.

What Ingredients are in Cauliflower Pizza Crust?

• Cauliflower – 1 medium-large head of cauliflower, riced, then cooked in the microwave for about 4-5 minutes. 
• Spices – Combination of black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and Italian seasoning. 
• Egg – 1 egg is used to help bind all the other ingredients together. 
• Cheese – ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese and ¼ cup shredded mozzarella cheese.

Cauliflower Options

There are several options when it comes to making pizza with cauliflower crust. Honestly, I have used all sorts of cauliflower to make pizza crust and they all worked out well. 

Here are a few ways I liked best: 

• Fresh Cauliflower
• Frozen Cauliflower Florets
• Frozen Riced Cauliflower

Can I Use Store-Bought Cauliflower Rice?

Frozen cauliflower rice is actually the fastest option I’ve found. It’s already riced and ready to go, you don’t even need to cook it. Just be sure to use a cheesecloth to squeeze all the excess water from the frozen cauliflower rice.

Variations & Substitutions

Cauliflower pizza is just like regular pizza, meaning that you can add absolutely any toppings you want. Pizza is all about your personal favorites.

Here are some ideas for what you can add to your homemade cauliflower pizza. Go crazy guys…

Sauces

• Keto Pizza Sauce – The most common sauce.
• Pesto Sauce 
• Olive Oil and Garlic 
• Buffalo Sauce – Perfect for Buffalo Chicken Pizza. My favorite brand is Primal Kitchen, it’s vegan, paleo, and keto-friendly.
• Sugar-Free BBQ Sauce – Great for a BBQ Chicken Pizza

Cheese

• Shredded Mozzarella 
• Fresh Mozzarella 
• Gorgonzola 
• Feta 
• Parmigiano 
• Cheddar 
• Provolone
• Goat Cheese 

Meat

• Sausage 
• Bacon 
• Meatball
• Pepperoni 
• Chicken 
• Prosciutto 
• Ham 
• Ground Beef

Veggies

• Mushrooms 
• Broccoli 
• Eggplant 
• Onions 
• Peppers
• Olives 
• Garlic 
• Fresh Tomatoes 
• Spinach 
• Arugula 
• Basil 
• Pickles 
• Artichokes

Combinations

• Margarita: Top your crust with low carb pizza sauce, shredded or fresh mozzarella, and top with fresh basil. 
• Mediterranean: Kalamata olives, garlic, artichoke hearts, red onion, bell peppers, and feta cheese. 
• BBQ Chicken: Top the keto crust with our homemade sugar-free BBQ Sauce, shredded rotisserie chicken, caramelized onion, and shredded mozzarella cheese. 
• Meat Lovers: Sausage, bacon, meatball, and pepperoni, then topped with shredded mozzarella cheese. 
• Veggie: Broccoli, mushroom, eggplant, onion, peppers, and olives, then topped with shredded mozzarella cheese. 
• Buffalo Chicken: Buffalo sauce, shredded or grilled chicken, caramelized onion, mozzarella cheese, and drizzle ranch or blue cheese dressing. 
• Pesto Chicken: Top the keto crust with our homemade pesto sauce, grilled or shredded chicken, and mozzarella cheese.

Tools to Use

• Food Processor – This is the easiest and fastest way to rice the cauliflower.
• Box Grater – If you don’t own a food processor then use a box grater but watch out for your knuckles. 
• Pizza Pan – I love using my round 14” pizza pan, it’s easy and the pizza comes out perfectly. 
• Parchment Paper – This is to prevent the cauliflower pizza crust from sticking to the pizza pan.

Do I Need a Food Processor for Cauliflower Crust?

If you don’t own a food processor, you don’t need to go out and buy one. Instead, you can grate the fresh cauliflower by using a box grater, or you can just buy pre-riced cauliflower from the store.

How to Make Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Let’s learn how to make the best cauliflower pizza crust. Just follow these easy steps!

STEP 1: How to Rice Cauliflower

This is a brief way to make cauliflower rice, but please check out our article How To Make Cauliflower Rice for more in-depth instructions.

With a Food Processor: Cut the cauliflower into large florets. Attach the grater disc to the food processor and feed the cauliflower thru the feed tube. You could also fill the food processor bowl half-way and use the chopper blade and pulse the cauliflower until it turns into rice-sized pieces.

By Hand: Cut the cauliflower into large florets. Using a box grater, grate the florets on the medium or large side in order to get rice-sized kernels.

STEP 2: Cooking the Cauliflower

• Microwave: Place the riced cauliflower in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for 4 minutes. 
• Oven: Lay the riced cauliflower on a baking sheet and roast at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. 
• Stovetop: Saute the cauliflower rice on medium heat for about 10 minutes or until it’s nice and soft.

STEP 3: Removing the Liquid from the Cauliflower Rice

Removing the excess liquid from the cauliflower is probably the most important step in the whole recipe. 

Line a large bowl with cheesecloth. Place the cooked cauliflower in the cheesecloth and let sit for at least 10 minutes to cool.

Once it has cooled down, tighten the cheesecloth and squeeze all of the liquid out. It may take a few minutes to ensure all the liquid comes out.

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STEP 4: Mixing & Forming the Dough

In a large mixing bowl add the cauliflower, egg, spices, and cheese. Mix together with a large spoon or your hands.

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Mold the dough into a ball.

Line the pizza pan or baking sheet with parchment. This is important because you do NOT want the cauliflower crust to stick to the pan.

Place the cauliflower dough onto the middle of the pizza pan and using your hands, flatten out until you have reached the desired size and thickness. Mine was about 11-12 inches.

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STEP 5: Pre-Baking Cauliflower Crust

Anytime you are making cauliflower pizza, keto pizza, or fathead pizza you are going to want to prebake the crust. 

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. 

Bake the cauliflower crust for 20 minutes or until it’s nice and crispy. (Letting it stay in the oven for at least 20 minutes will ensure that you end up with a crispy cauliflower pizza crust.)

Remove from the oven.

STEP 6: Adding Toppings

Add ½ cup of keto pizza sauce, and spread all over the crust. Be sure to leave a small gap around the edge of the crust.

Sprinkle 1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella, and finish with adding any additional toppings of your choice.

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STEP 7: Baking

Bake for about 5 minutes or until the cheese is completely melted.

Take out of the oven and cut into equal-sized pieces.

Tips for Perfect Cauliflower Pizza Crust

• I recommend buying a pizza pan, I have found that mine has really come in handy. Plus it cooks all my pizzas just the right way. 
• Be sure to let the cooked cauliflower cool down before squeezing the liquid out. Otherwise, you will burn your hands! 
• The entire head of the cauliflower can be used, including its core. 
• Double the recipe if you want 2 cauliflower pizza crusts. 
• I bought my cheesecloth from Amazon. Here is the link.

How to Make Cauliflower Pizza Crust Crispier 

In order to make the best cauliflower crust and ensure it’s crispy, I have 2 suggestions.

1. After cooking the cauliflower rice, you must make sure you squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Using a cheesecloth is the best option, but a tea towel or dish towel can work too. 
2. You have to prebake the crust before adding toppings to it. The longer you cook it the crispier it will get.

Diets This Recipe is Good For

Gluten-Free: Made with completely zero gluten, this cauliflower pizza crust recipe is perfect for those who are gluten intolerant or who have Celiac disease. 

Keto and Low Carb: Obviously most everything we share with you guys is totally keto-friendly and low carb.

Dairy-Free: There is cheese in our cauliflower pizza dough, but you can replace the cheese with ½ cup almond flour and 1-2 tbsp of nutritional yeast. 

Vegan: Replace the egg with 1 flax egg or chia egg, and replace the cheese with ½ cup almond flour and 1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast.

Is Cauliflower Pizza Crust Really Low Carb?

Yes yes yes!!! Healthy pizza crust is very low carb! I’ll quickly show you the difference between our cauliflower rice pizza crust and a traditional pizza crust. 

• 1 Slice of homemade cauliflower pizza crust has 2.5 NET CARBS PER SLICE (NO TOPPINGS)
• ⅕ of DiGiorno Thin Crust Four Cheese Pizza has 26 NET CARBS. 

Quite the difference right?

Is Cauliflower Crust Pizza Good for Diabetics?

Cauliflower pizza crust is perfect for diabetics! We don’t use any wheat or white flour, and zero fillers. One slice of cauliflower pizza crust has only 2.5 NET CARBS. 

Keep in mind though that is without any keto tomato sauce or toppings. Still, you can’t beat that number! 

If you are diabetic then this is the pizza for you!

How to Make Cauliflower Pizza Crust Vegan?

Well, you can totally make your cauliflower pizza crust vegan and the best part is that it’s super easy. I use eggs and some cheese in my cauliflower crust recipe but here is how to replace those. But here is how to make cauliflower crust vegan: 

Replace the egg with a flax egg or chia egg: 

• 1 Flax Egg: 1 tbsp flaxseed meal + 3 tbsp hot water. Combine and let sit for 5 minutes before adding. 
• 1 Chia Egg: 1 tbsp chia seeds + 3 tbsp hot water. Combine and let sit for 5 minutes before using. 

Replace the parmesan cheese and the mozzarella cheese with ½ cup of almond flour and 1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast.

What to Serve with Cauliflower Pizza?

The first thing that comes to my mind is WINGS! There is something so comforting about pizza and wings. We have 2 great wing recipes you can check out…Keto Buffalo Wings and Garlic Parmesan Wings. 

Other things that you can make with your low carb pizza are salads. Here are a few great salads you can make: 

• Greek Salad
• Zoodle Salad 
• Watermelon Feta Salad 
• Creamy Broccoli Salad with Bacon 
• Spinach Salad with Bacon and Eggs

Making Ahead & Storing

Leftovers: To be completely honest with you, we don’t usually have much leftover cauliflower pizza dough, but it does happen on rare occasions. If you have leftovers all you need to do is wrap the remaining slices in foil or plastic wrap and place them in the fridge. 

Make-Ahead: As far as making the cauliflower pizza crust recipe ahead of time, I’m a strong believer in getting my cauliflower pizza doughs prepared and baked ahead of time. That way you can top them whenever you are ready to eat. 

After you pre-bake the cauliflower pizza crusts, you can leave them on the counter for a few hours, or just place them in the fridge until ready to bake.

How to Reheat?

To reheat your leftover cauliflower pizza crust: 

1. Microwave for 30-60 seconds.
2. Bake in the oven at 300 for about 5 minutes.

Can You Freeze Cauliflower Pizza Crust?

You can freeze our east cauliflower pizza crust without a problem. The best way to freeze it is by making the crust and pre-baking it according to the instructions below, but do NOT add any sauce or toppings. If you add toppings it will make it soggy after it’s thawed out. 

After you pre-bake the cauliflower rice pizza crust, let it cool then wrap it in plastic wrap and then foil. I like to give it double-layer protection so it doesn’t get frost. Freeze for up to 3 months.

Buying Pre-Made Frozen Cauliflower Pizza Crust

So you can buy pre-made frozen cauliflower pizza crust from stores like Target, Aldo, Costco, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Walmart…most big grocery stores actually. 

The biggest issue I have found is that a lot of them, (not every one) add many ingredients that are just not necessary and really aren’t great if you are low carb or even diabetic. When reading the labels I found that they have ingredients such as: cornstarch, cornflour, and even potato starch.

So yes, these are all gluten-free ingredients but try to stay away if you are eating low carb. I mean it’s not the worst option out there, and a little cornstarch isn’t gonna add a ton of extra carbs per serving, but making homemade cauliflower pizza dough is still the best bet.

More Cauliflower Recipes

If you are a true lover of cauliflower, then please check out some of our other delicious cauliflower recipes. 

• Loaded Cauliflower Casserole (my FAVORITE one) 
• Cauliflower Mac and Cheese (my second favorite) 
• Roasted Cauliflower
• Cauliflower Potato Salad
• Buffalo Cauliflower
• Mashed Cauliflower – Keto Mashed Potatoes 

All of them are low carb and Keto-friendly and will have your friends and family raving!

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