Low Carb Chicken and Cheese Crust Pepperoni Pizza
I am super excited today!
It’s my first recipe with The Recipe Redux and I am even more excited that my first post with them is about pizza! Who doesn’t love pizza with its warm delicious crust and tons of ooey gooey cheese? I know pizza is a long-time favorite food of mine. No matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I preplan, sometimes healthy pizzas fail me in the recipe building department.
I’ve tried everything as a crust.
For low-carb I once made a meatza pizza. The husband loved it. I thought it was ok, but the meat crust was just too greasy for me. Back in the early 200o’s when I was an avid Weight Watchers member I learned of things like cauliflower crusts and using other meats and vegetables for crusts. When trying to figure out what type of crust I wanted to make for this recipe I started to sort through some of my super old WW recipes. I looked at tortilla and thought about the possibility of a high fiber low carb variety. But, then I noticed there were a LOT of those types of pizzas out there.
Scrap that.
Then I landed on a wheat crust. I had King Arthur whole grain wheat flour and yeast. That was going to be my go-to and I had planned to make a couple at a time and freeze a few.
Well as my luck would have it, things came up and I wasn’t able to make the dough due to some time management issues I’ve been facing. So, I needed something a little quicker. I figured I would make a cauliflower crust, but I did not know if my husband was going to be a fan as I haven’t made one since my WW days. With a hungry mouth to feed this was a risk I could not take so I chopped the cauliflower for snacking. Kiddo loved it over her weekend visit, so I am ok with that.
I found my recipe for a chicken crust. It was similar to meatza, but used shredded chicken and low-fat skim mozzarella cheese. I did a little research to see how many pizzas like this were circulating. Much to my surprise, I didn’t find as many as I did with other crusts. One thing I did notice was a blogger who posted the recipe and made remarks about how she created the cauliflower and chicken recipes and how she laughed at all these people sharing them. For some reason I was amused and yet shocked by these claims and found myself completely sidetracked with my task at hand. I mean honestly, these types of crust recipes have been around for as long as I can remember.
So, I looked at different ways others were making it and compared it with my recipe. I wanted to make sure my recipe was still considered healthy and that I wasn’t missing something since my recipe was so old. I tried going through my old WW journals, but the only time I recall eating this was with a ton of vegetables as I was going through a very low meat phase. Meaning, I hardly ate it.
My crust is thin. It’s low carb. It’s fairly low in calories per serving. My pizza made 6 small pieces. It’s also low sodium and sugar-free.
My toppings I left fairly simple. Again, I needed to make sure my husband was going to eat this and I was taking a real risk on the crust. So I used low sodium tomato sauce and added my own herbs and seasonings. The topping is low sodium pepperoni and skim low-fat mozzarella cheese.
When I first picked it up I did not let it cool long enough for the cheese in the crust to harden. Once it did, it was a nice thin crust pizza that I could easily pick up and eat with my hand. No fork needed.
I have to say, it was actually pretty good and I am thrilled I was able to make it low sodium and low carb for us. The husband really needs to get better about the sodium intake.
There are things you can do to beef up the health factor like add a ton of vegetables. Green peppers would have been great on this.
Low Carb Chicken and Cheese Crust Pepperoni Pizza
Ingredients
- For the Crust: 2 chicken breasts cooked, shredded = 1 cup
- 1 cup skim low-fat mozzarella cheese shredded
- Parchment paper
- For the Pizza Sauce: 4 oz low sodium tomato sauce
- 1 TBSP Oregano
- 1 TBSP Parsley
- 1 tsp Onion powder
- 1 tsp Garlic powder
- For the Toppings: 1/4 package low sodium sliced pepperoni
- 1 cup skim low-fat mozzarella cheese shredded
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425.
- Cook your chicken and cut it into smaller pieces and place in your food processor.
- Add 1 cup mozzarella.
- Blend well.
- Chicken mixture will take on a crumbly dough consistency.
- Lay a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet.
- Put the chicken mixture on the parchment paper and press into shape.
- Place crust in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes depending on crust thickness.
- Let your crust cool for 5-7 minutes.
- Spread the tomato sauce on cooled crust.
- Sprinkle with oregano, parsley, onion powder and garlic powder.
- Layer the pepperoni and then the cheese.
- Bake pizza for 8-10 minutes, or until toppings are warm and melted.
- All pizza to cool for another 8 or so minutes so the cheese in the crust can bond.
- Cut pizza and enjoy.
Let me know if you try this crust and how it turns out for you. Would love to hear about it.
How do you make your pizza healthy? Sound off in the comments below.
If chicken crust is not your thing, check out my latest recipe using low carb tortillas. Super easy!
Now check out some of the rest of the Recipe Redux Pizza challenge!
Sounds wonderful. We’ve been experimenting with lower sodium sauces. I really need to get to making my own, but time and frankly storage are an issue. So, for know we are using jar brands and dealing.
I do make my own sauce. We can tomatoes every year and I usually use that to blend up a sauce. I was feeling a little bit of pressure with this and I knew that people outside of my website would not know how to make canned tomato and it would not be a resource they had. So I had to use what people would have available to them. It all worked out.
If you are truly on a low carb high fat moderate protein diet then you actually need MORE salt
This is not true for everyone though.
Wow I can’t believe you can make pizza crust with chicken. I’ve never heard of this. Too cool!
It works out really well too! Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment. Appreciate it!
I love this idea! Genius!
Congrats on your first post in the Recipe ReDux! You’ll love it. It’s so fun 🙂
Oh, thank you! And thanks for stopping by. First post jitters are no fun, but I do look to do many more!
This is just great! I’m trying this fo shizzle!
Let me know how it works out for you Allie! Thank you for stopping by.
I made this — and it is amazing. I didn’t exactly follow the directions (DUH!) but I will next time – I need to bake the crust a bit BEFORE using – DUH! I loaded up with veggies so I’ll need to put a little cheese on the baked crust before loading up sauce and veggies.
But I must say, PERFECT! Loved EVERY BITE! I made two small pizzas – one for me and one for hubby.
I am really glad you enjoyed it Rachael!
That looks so great, and I would have never guessed that the crust was chicken and cheese! Thanks for linking up with the Bloggers Brags Pinterest Party. I have pinned your post to the Bloggers Brags Pinterest Board!
I’ve been hearing that a lot! A friend made it and loved it. I’ll be making this one again for sure!
HomeMade pizza is the best. We love having it for dinner and do it at least once a week 🙂
Wow, I am always looking for ways to lighten up my favorite meals. I love that you made this low carb pizza without cauliflower, haha.
Now that looks delish. I’m a fan of trying new pizzas!
I too, absolutely LOVE pizza! We recently made pizza but it was just a regular crust and the toppings were cheese and pepperoni! I need to get more creative! Your pizza looks AMAZING!
My husband and I are huge low-carb fans. And pizza is his favorite food. WIN!
Sounds like a delicious pizza combo. I like to add plenty of fresh veggies to my pizza to help make it healthier.
This is really intriguing! I am definitely interested in trying the crust this way.
A cheesy crust sounds really good! I love making homemade pizza so I can top it just the way I like it.
My favorite pizzas have chicken on them! YUM! Love this low carb version.
I’m super impressed by the crust! I like to make a whole wheat crust. It takes a while to prep, though.
This sounds interesting. I am always up for trying healthier options. Thanks for the recipe.
This looks so delicious and simple to make. I am looking forward to trying this recipe this weekend.
We make a lot of pizza here and I never heard of chicken crust and of course I have to try this.
I am in shock that you made crust with chicken! Can’t wait to try this.
My kids love homemade pizza! This looks so delicious. We will try it!
OHHHH. Yum I love homemade pizza. We have decent recipe I usually stick to but this looks so good. That crust looks absolutely incredible.
Whoo Hoo. I planned on pizza today. I will be trying this.
Wow that is really cool how you made the crust out of chicken and cheese! Saves a ton of carbs that way. I think I’ll have to try this just to see what my family thinks. Looks yummy!
Chicken as a crust!? I would have never thought about that but it sounds amazing, must try!
This looks tasty, we do a lot with chicken and we love pizza but we never seem to combine them very often. That may change with this recipe.
This is a first for me! I’ve never heard of a chicken pizza crust, YUM!
I can’t even imagine how good it tastes. It looks amazing!
Wow, I have never heard of using chicken but that looks amazing! I am bookmarking this recipe to try as soon as I have some free time!
That’s awesome that you made it low sodium and low carb! I’m always looking for healthier recipes.
I made it . It’s in the oven right now. The weird thing is it looked just like real pizza dough. I rolled it into a ball and pressed it into a spring form pan. I made a good bread earlier today with almond flour. That was good too! Great low carb recipe.
Thanks for this.
Best,
Kathy Jean
Thanks for giving it a try.
PLEASE, I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW HOW MANY CARBS ARE IN A SLICE.THANKS LISA WOOD