Personal Pizzas with Quinoa Flatbread Pizza Crust

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These Personal Pizzas with Quinoa Flatbread Pizza Crust are tasty and easy to customize. I am pleasantly surprised by the springiness of the crust. Quinoa continues to amaze me. Even NASA is down with quinoa. Cornmeal dusted on the pizza baking sheet helps make this crust easy to handle.

Too Many Toppings

Late one drunken night in college, our friend Brian, who was both a Theatre major and a manager at Blackjack Pizza, let me and another theatre kid into his Blackjack after hours to make our own pizzas.

Brian stood there shaking his head as we loaded up our pizzas with tons of toppings. “Rookie mistake. Too many toppings,” he said, laughing. He was right. When you overload pizzas with too many toppings it makes bad pizza. It won’t bake properly and it’s super hard to eat. Additionally, if you choose all of the toppings your pizza might taste indecisive.

Even sober and at home, I am still tempted to overload pizza with a high volume of different toppings. It doesn’t stop there―I also want to drench it with sauce and get crazy with vegan cheese. Then I think about smirking Brian laughing at me and I dial it back.

Choose Your Own Pizza Adventure

The beauty of personal pizza crusts is that you get to choose what to put on it. Let your taste be your guide. Let your heart choose all of the toppings and then dial it back or Brian will laugh at you.

This pizza sauce is great, it’s very herbaceous and flavorful. It reminds us of Pizza Hut’s sauce. You could also make a rich pizza with this Vegan Garlic Alfredo sauce.

I’ve topped this pizza with combinations of sautéed mushrooms and onions, artichoke hearts, black olives, and pan-seared, thinly sliced Hot Italian Beyond Meat Sausage. If you have a favorite meltable vegan cheese (store-bought or homemade), you can bake it onto this hearty crust. Some of my favorite pizza toppings are added after the pizza is done baking.

Topping to add after The Pizza Is Done Baking

• I love adding dollops of this easy to make vegan cream cheese
• I recommend shaking lots of this 5-minute vegan hemp seed garlic parm on everything, including this pizza.
• Adding fresh basil or arugula brings a nice brightness to these pizzas.
• If you are into crushed red pepper, this is also a welcome addition.

Sil-mat or Parchment?

Sil-mats and parchment paper both work for this recipe.

I am very happy about this unbleached, pre-cut, environmentally friendly parchment paper. No more curling edges and no more trying to cut the right size for baking sheets, I cannot overstate the awesomeness of this parchment paper.

Parchment paper doesn’t get hot in the oven, but sil-mats do. This matters because after 15 minutes you will remove the crusts from the oven. If the crusts are stuck to the liner and cannot be loosened and flipped over with a large metal spatula, you might need to lift the crusts by the liner removing them from the pan. You would then place a new liner on the pan and flip the crusts over while on their original liner onto the freshly lined baking sheet. When I use sil-mats I wear oven mitts and use a butter knife to pull up the edge of the sil-mat so that I can lift it onto the cutting board before flipping it with the crust onto the fresh liner.

When I use parchment paper, I remove the crusts from the oven and twist the baking sheet while wearing oven mitts so that the parchment moves off of the pan enough to grab onto the sides. Since the parchment paper isn’t hot you don’t have to use oven mitts to handle it if you are careful not to touch the hot pan. I’ve got a wee burn on my middle finger from the edge of the hot baking sheet. Be careful and learn from my false sense of security from using not-hot parchment paper.

If you are able to pour the batter with enough cornmeal underneath, you might end up with crusts that do not need to be flipped over on the liner in order to peel the liner off. In this case, the flipping will be done with a large metal spatula and it really wouldn’t matter which liner you use.

Why cornmeal?

I like sprinkling a generous amount of cornmeal on the lined pan before pouring the crust batter onto the lined baking sheet and again before placing the flipped crust onto the new liner. It smells like a pizzeria when the crusts are in the oven and it keeps the batter from sticking to the liner. You can make this crust without the cornmeal if you prefer. However, the crusts may stick to the parchment paper or the sil-mat if you forego the cornmeal, making it more challenging to remove whilst flipping the crusts over.

Sometimes, you luck out and the crust doesn’t stick―if you get the cornmeal right. In this case, you can just flip the crusts over with a large metal spatula. If you skip the cornmeal―you’ll need to flip the crusts on the liner and peel that liner off of the top.

Food Processor or Blender?

I have made this crust using my Blendtec blender, my small 2 cup Ninja food processor, and my medium 5 cup Ninja food processor. It worked well with all of those. I have not tried it using my large 10 cup Hamilton Beach food processor because I think it would need to be a larger quantity of ingredients for it to go well.

Let’s Make Personal Pizzas with Quinoa Flatbread Pizza Crust

Preheat oven to 425° F.

Blend

Add quinoa, Italian seasonings, water, garlic cloves, nutritional yeast, and salt to a blender or a small to medium food processor.

Blend until mostly smooth but a little gritty. The quinoa should no longer appear whole. This batter should look like a thick milkshake.

Line a large baking tray with parchment paper or a sil-mat and dust generously with cornmeal.

Pour batter into two side-by-side lines vertically onto the horizontal baking sheet.

Use a small spatula to smooth out the batter evenly into two side-by-side oval shapes with the long part of the oval reaching to the top and bottom of the horizontal baking sheet.

Try not to spread the flatbread too thin. Aim for 1/4 – 1/2 inch thickness. Work from the center outwards when spreading the batter to keep as much of the cornmeal under the crust as possible.

Bake

Bake the flatbread for 15 minutes at 425° F and then remove it from the oven.

First Try The Flipper

First, try to loosen the crusts and flip them over with a large metal spatula. If that doesn’t work, use the method below to flip the crusts.

Carefully pick up the parchment paper and move the crusts to a cutting board. Sil-mats will be hot, wear oven mitts and use a butter knife to lift the edges of the sil-mat’s diagonal corners. Parchment paper will not be hot, but be careful not to make contact with your skin and the hot baking sheet.

Then place a new piece of parchment paper or a new sil-mat onto the baking sheet. Dust the new liner with cornmeal if desired. This is optional; the first round of cornmeal is the most effective in preventing sticking. Once the crust is half-baked, sticking isn’t really an issue.

Flip

Flip the parchment with the crusts over onto the new parchment, wearing an oven mitt if needed to make this happen safely. If the crusts aren’t stuck at all, just flip them with a large metal spatula instead of lifting and flipping the liner with the crusts on it. Otherwise, wait to flip until the liner with the crust is above the baking sheet you are flipping the crust onto; this will help avoid getting cornmeal everywhere.

Peel off the top layer of parchment paper or the sil-mat. It might stick a little bit, but you should be able to get it off in one piece. You may lose a thin bit of crust here. If you have used a lot of cornmeal, it might not be stuck at all and you may not lose any crust.

Bake the flipped crusts for 10 more minutes and then remove it from the oven again.

Top the crusts with a thin layer of sauce and toppings. If using vegan cream cheese and basil or arugula, add after the pizza is out of the oven. Bake the pizza for 10 more minutes.

Remove the pizza from the oven and transfer it to a cutting board using a large metal spatula, leaving the liner behind.

Cut

Press down on a large knife to slice the pizza into 6-8 slices. A really big knife works better than my pizza cutter.

After cutting, add dollops of vegan cream cheese and basil, if using.

Serve and enjoy your personal pizzas with quinoa flatbread.

For your shopping convenience, this post contains affiliate links.

Recipe adapted from Savannah Stanhope at The MicroVore Diet.

If you like this recipe you might also enjoy No-Float Vegan Cauliflower Gnocchi & Lemon Kale-Basil Pesto, Vegan Garlic Alfredo Sauce, and No-Boil Vegan Ricotta Stuffed Pasta Shells In Red Sauce.

Did You Make Personal Pizzas with Quinoa Flatbread Pizza Crust?

Would you do it again? What toppings and sauces did you use? Did you add Vegan Cashew Cheese? 5-Minute Garlic Hemp Seed Parm a.k.a. Garlic Shake? Did you and your pizza-eating companion choose different toppings? Was your pizza better? Was there even a contest? Any strong feelings about pineapple on pizza? Tell me about it in the comments below.