A few weeks ago, we received the news that my daughter could try four nuts based on her latest blood tests: pecans, walnuts, almonds and pine nuts. She still tested very allergic to peanuts, pistachios, cashews and hazelnuts.

I was excited about this news, because our options are rather limited on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet without the ability to cook with nut flours.

I went to Whole Foods to buy nuts only to find out that all packaged and most bulk nuts have warnings about possible contamination with peanuts and other tree nuts. I did not want to risk my daughter ingesting any peanut or tree nut particles, so I found almonds and pecans that have not come in contact with other nuts.

I drove to Anna, TX to get pecans from Foster Crossing Pecans and I ordered almonds through JustAlmonds.com. A quick note: JustAlmonds.com‘s January special is 25% off natural almond flour, and you can get 10% off your first order if you subscribe to their newsletter.

Unfortunately my daughter had a series of allergic reactions to the pecans and a small reaction to the pine nuts, but she seems to be tolerating the almonds so far. I am so happy about this!

Since my daughter seemed okay with the almond test, I made this pizza for her:

It was so easy to make!

I put a handful of almonds into my Magic Bullet blender and was surprised how easily they converted to almond flour. When I did the same thing with pecans, the pecans became pecan butter quickly, but because the almonds are so hard, I could repeatedly grind them and never got butter.

Ingredients

CRUST

1/2 cup almond flour (I ended up using a full cup to get a dough-like ball)
1 egg
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt

TOPPINGS

Italian tomato paste – $1.99 at Dallas Whole Foods Market
Grated Parmesan cheese
Cooked hamburger
Dried basil
Dried oregano

How to Make

– Mix all of the crust ingredients together in a bowl. Start with 1/2 cup almond flour and add flour until you get a dough-like ball.
– Oil a pan with olive oil. I used a Williams Sonoma cake pan that I found on clearance last year. I love it for making pizza.
– Place the dough ball in the pan and flatten it with your hands into the shape of a small pizza.
– Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and immediately place the pizza dough in the oven. By the time the oven is pre-heated, the dough will be ready for the toppings.
– Once the oven reaches 350 degrees, remove the pan and place your toppings on the crust. I spread tomato paste, then added the dried oregano and basil, then grated the Parmesan on top and added the hamburger last. You can get creative with your toppings!
– Drizzle olive oil on top (it is the green-looking stuff in the photo above).
– Place the pan back in the oven and cook for 10 minutes. I took it out at around 9 minutes because it looked like it was done. You can gauge the timing based on what toppings you use.

My daughter loved this recipe. I loved it because it was easy to make. The crust tastes a bit like a wheat crust and it is very filling. The small pizza was more than enough for my daughter and me to share.

Recipe Credit: John Higgins, John’s Pizza – SCDRecipe.com. Visit the site to get the original recipe.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 12:55 am and is filed under What We're Eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.