High Protein Pizza Dough!

Pizza is a delicious bit of flattened leavened wheat-based dough, topped with tomatoes, cheese, and any kind of vegetable or meat you desire. It’s baked at a high temperature and one of the most enjoyable items you can imagine. But for someone attempting to live a healthy, low carb, high protein lifestyle, pizza isn’t always on the menu.

I love pizza. I grew up having homemade pizza close to once a week as a kid. My mom always made “Sicilian Style Pizza” – a nice thick crust pizza, versus the thin flatbread type pizza (or the floppy unsubstantial type). Since starting a healthy lifestyle, I’ve only enjoyed a pizza a few times; frozen pizza was not something that ever entered into the doors of my childhood home. As a matter of face, I didn’t try frozen pizza until I was in my twenties and dating my (now) husband. However, frozen pizza is all that I’ve had since surgery.

As of late, I am obsessed with Skinnytaste. I think her recipes are awesome, and she has come up with an awesome replacement for pizza dough, which I have further tweaked.

Pizza Dough

Pizza dough is typically made with yeast, flour, and water. While there’s nothing wrong with this, it also has about no nutritional value whatsoever. Gina from Skinnytaste has used a “WW” recipe and combined flour, baking powder, salt, and Greek yogurt to make a number of different bread-based items, including pizza dough. I’ve gone a step further, adding protein powder to the mix.

I tried a few different types of pizza dough prior to getting this one right. I tried a cauliflower crust, I tried a “fathead” pizza crust, and I tried using a tortilla.

Cauliflower crust wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. For regular cheese pizza, I thought it was fairly terrible, but with a BBQ chicken pizza, the BBQ flavor masked the cauliflower enough that it wasn’t so bad.

The fathead pizza crust just wasn’t for me. It’s essentially a cheese-based crust with almond powder. I think it’s a fairly popular option for those on Keto. However, I didn’t like the texture. I tried it a few times, but just not my favorite.

DOH!

One of my favorite books as a child (and still today) is Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola. In one of his follow-up books, Strega Nona’s Magic Lessons, Big Anthony, who never listens, takes a job at the bakery and learns that “the yeast makes the dough rise”. It’s now a longstanding phrase in my family and we say it any time we make anything with yeast. However, in this particular case, yeast has no place. I’m sure I could try a yeast-based dough and add in some protein powder, but that’ll be a recipe for another day.

The dough is quite simple. It’s a case of mixing everything together, kneading it a bit, and then spreading it into a pan. While pizza is “traditionally” round, my family always makes pizza in a baking pan (like what you would bake cookies on), which means it was a nice thick crust baked in a rectangle pan. Since I only used half the recipe to make a pizza, it didn’t fill out the whole pan, so it’s a bit more freeform. But feel free to make a bigger pizza, in any shape you choose!

Pick your toppings!

Let’s get saucy! I make my own sauce (Pastene Peeled and Crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and oregano); if you want to make your own, go for it. If you want to buy it, you can do that too! Just be careful if you’re buying something because a lot of jarred pizza sauces have sugar in them!

One of the reasons I didn’t like the fathead pizza crust is because I felt like it was too much cheese. I know that sounds crazy. But unlike a Keto diet, I am trying to limit my fat intake, and cheese is inherently fatty, even if it’s “reduced fat”. So now that I do not have cheese in my crust, I can put it on the top and not feel guilty.

What else do you like on your pizza? Onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni? Take your pick and throw it on!

Bake it. Eat it. Enjoy it!

Love your healthy lifestyle, and enjoy some pizza along the way! :o)

Other Healthier Remade Options!

Check out these remade recipes that are better for a bariatric lifestyle!

High Protein Stuffed Bagel Bites

Mini Cheesecake Bites

Frozen Yogurt

High Protein Pizza Dough

Camille

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 mins

Cook Time 28 mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Servings 6

Ingredients

  

• 1 cup All Purpose Flour (5 oz)
• 1 ½ tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Kosher Salt
• ½ oz Genepro Protein Powder (2 scoops)
• 1 cup Fage 0% Greek Yogurt (8 oz)

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 425°
• In a medium bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients.
• Add in the yogurt, and mix together. Once it starts to come together and is crumbly, you can either kneed together in the bowl, or dump onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand. It will be tacky, but it shouldn't leave dough behind on your hands
• Spread out into a pizza pan, and bake for about 8-10 minutes. You don't want it to brown much on the edges, but you want to pre-bake it so that you don't get a soggy undercooked pizza crust.
• Add your pizza sauce, toppings, and cheese. Bake for another 18 minutes, remove from oven, and allow to cool a bit before cutting.

Notes

Nutrition Facts:  Servings 6.0 * calories 127 * Total Fat 0 g * Saturated Fat 0 g * Monounsaturated Fat 0 g * Polyunsaturated Fat 0 g * Trans Fat 0 g * Cholesterol 9 mg * Sodium 264 mg * Potassium 99 mg * Total Carbohydrate 19 g * Dietary Fiber 1 g * Sugars 2 g * Protein 17 g

 

*All nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes, and more.*