Home Made Gluten Free Zucchini Crust Pizza

By Amanda S., Gluten Free Edmonon

Just as the person who posted this recipe on the diabetes daily website listed, I too have found that pizza can be somewhat of a diabetes nightmare. It’s hard to know exactly what the carbohydrate content is per piece. It’s hard to know how much insulin to take to cover that piece of pizza. Pizza as we all know is generally a “high fat, high carbohydrate content” food. It takes longer than most foods to break down into sugar (energy) in your body, you don’t often eat only one piece (who’s kidding who here really!) and overall it’s just a challenge for most people. Now, you throw in the need to make it gluten free and it is, in my opinion, a full on diabetes nightmare!

To those who do not know, or haven’t had any reason to pay attention, generally speaking the combination of flours that are used to make gluten free foods taste and stand up (literally) to their non-gluten free competitors, tend to be higher in carbohydrates, and occasionally lower in fibre. This is not to say that it is always the case, but it does happen. Plus, in order to make some gluten free foods taste better the companies sometimes have to add more sugar or sweetener (even if it’s fruit or fruit juice based) to the product to ensure that it maintains the right flavour they are looking for.

All in all, gluten free pre-packaged foods tend for the most part to be higher in carbohydrates and therefore for someone like myself who also has type 1 diabetes and uses an insulin pump (thereby required to count all carbohydrates taken in) it can be an extra challenge at times to figure out how much of the item I can eat based on how much insulin I want to take.

Confused yet? You’re not alone. It’s a mess, but with practice and time it does get easier, I promise.

Here’s a recipe for a gluten free, low carbohydrate and super tasty food that I found on the diabetesdaily.com website. We tried it last night and it was awesome!

Zucchini Crust

Zucchini Crust Pizza
Adapted from Diabetes Daily

Serves 4 (or 2 hungry people)

Olive oil & gluten free flour for the pan (I used Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour)
2 cups (packed) grated zucchini
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup flour (Bob’s Red Mill gluten free flour)
½ cup grated mozzarella
½ cup grated parmesan
¼ tsp dried basil
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 F. Drizzle a little olive oil in a 10” pie pan and coat lightly with flour.

Our zucchini crust pizza smelt so
good, we ate half of it before we
remembered we needed a picture! 

Combine the zucchini, eggs, flour, mozzarella, parmesan, basil, garlic and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a bowl and mix well. Spread into the pie pan and bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown. About halfway through the baking, brush the remaining olive oil over the top.

Remove from oven, let cool about 10 minutes, and use a spatula to loosen the crust from the pan so it won’t break later.

Top with your favourite pizza toppings and bake at 400F until heated through.

Amount per serving:
Carbohydrates: 10g
Fibre: 1g


Gluten Free Edmonton - A Celiac guide and resource for gluten free information in Edmonton, Alberta