Despite its name, buckwheat is a gluten-free grain and a popular ingredient in many eastern European and Russian dishes. It’s also very environment-friendly, in that it needs relatively little water to produce and is resistant to insects and diseases. In this recipe for gluten-free pizza base, I used a bit of amaranth to offset the heavy texture of baked buckwheat.
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Here’s the recipe:
Recipe for no-wheat buckwheat pizza base
Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups amaranth flakes
- 3 cups buckwheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- Around 150 ml of warm water
Method:
Mix the amaranth flakes with the flour, salt and baking powder. Add warm water bit by bit to knead into a smooth dough. Separate into three balls of equal size and roll out with a rolling pin using dry flour to prevent sticking. If you’re unhappy with the shape, use an inverted plate on top of the flattened flour to cut out a regular, round shape. Once you’re done, preheat an oven to 180 degrees celsius and bake the base for about 7-8 minutes.
Take it out and garnish with your preferred topping. Bake again for about 5-6 minutes or until golden brown. I used tomato sauce for spreading over the base and topped it with cubed tomatoes and grated parmesan. Then I baked the pizza for another 7-8 minutes until the crust looked brown and crisp. This picture gallery takes you through the process step by step:
Climate notes
Buckwheat is commonly grown in Eastern Europe, Russia and parts of Germany. So, it has a low environmental impact in these places because it doesn’t need to be transported over long distances. For this recipe, I used buckwheat grown in Germany. The tomatoes were bought at a store selling local produce; the cheese was from a supermarket selling goods imported from Italy and the tomato paste was also imported from outside Germany. I have a basil plant on my windowsill and used the leaves for garnishing the pizza.
Theoretically, one could also calculate the carbon footprint for this recipe, but such calculations are usually only an estimate. They often do not consider the energy spent while growing that particular ingredient and many other factors that could contribute to carbon emissions. I am doing some research on measuring foodprints and will soon be back with another post on that. Until then, here is a website that has a list of online foodprint calculators.