Spicy Chicken Cauliflower Pizza - Crazy Ingredient Challenge

I am surrounded (virtually) by cauliflower. First, cauliflower (and cheese) won the vote for this month's Crazy Ingredient Challenge. A few days later; I got an email from Pinterest featuring all things cauliflower. Then a blogger posted a round-up of 10 cauliflower recipes. A few others posted their own cauliflower recipes and then I learned about cauliflower Alfredo from yet another blog post.

You know me, I live for dessert. I try to turn almost all the Crazy Ingredient Challenge ingredients into dessert . It was with some reluctance that I ditched my original ideas for pizza. Don't look at me like that. Cauliflower in dessert would definitely have worked. It's very mild tasting so it would have been easy to blend it into a quick bread or brownies and then top them with an amazing cream cheese frosting. But pizza is good too and it's been a very long time since I've had pizza. I'm pretty sure it's been about two years.

I have ZERO regrets about going for pizza instead. Sure, it helps that I also made cupcakes on the same day. But seriously, this pizza is absolutely delicious! The cauliflower sauce works perfectly here. Again, it's very mild so I am sure that no one would suspect that you topped your pizza with cauliflower sauce. They would be too busy enjoying the cheesy goodness.

Be sure to check out what everyone else made below!

Spicy Chicken Cauliflower Pizza

Recipe by: Kelly

Yield: 2 10-11 inch pizzas

Ingredients Pizza Dough 275 grams all purpose flour 152 - 182 grams water 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon oil 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast Cauliflower Sauce 3 cups cauliflower  3 cups water 1/2 cup milk 2 teaspoons minced garlic (see note) salt & pepper, to taste  Toppings 4-8 ounces pepper jack cheese 1 cup cooked chicken, cubed tomato, diced jalapeno, diced red pepper flakes

Directions Pizza Dough  Combine all the pizza dough ingredients until it just starts coming together then knead for an additional 5-7 minutes. Dough should be tacky. Start with the smaller amount of water and add water as needed.  Form into a ball and place in a large, oiled bowl. Cover tightly and immediately refrigerate for at leas 18 hours.  Remove dough from fridge and divide iinto two pieces and form each piece into a tight ball. Leave the balls to rest for 30 minutes.  Preheat oven and a pizza stone, if using, to 450 F.  Flatten each dough into a disk and gently stretch it to a 10-12 inch circle ensuring that the edges are thicker than the center. If the dough tears, be sure to patch it so that the sauce doesn't leak through.  Place a disk on a floured peel. Brush the edges with oil. Top with approximately 6-8 tablespoons of cauliflower sauce, half the chicken, tomatoes, jalapeno and then cheese.  Slide the pizza onto the pizza stone and bake for 7 - 9 minutes or until the cheese is bubbly. Let rest for 2 minutes then sprinkle with red pepper flakes before serving. Cauliflower Sauce Boil the cauliflower in the water until the cauliflower is tender. Remove the cauliflower with a slotted spoon and place in a food processor or blender. Add 1 cup of the cooking water, milk and garlic. Process until it's completely smooth. Add salt and pepper and process once more.

Notes The garlic in the sauce may be very assertive, however, it definitely mellows out after being baked on the pizza. You can saute the garlic beforehand or start with less garlic and then add as much as you like.  You may also want to add more sauce than I suggested. The recipe makes more than enough. Leftovers can be stirred into pasta or soup.

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