This recipe is for a Pear & Bacon Quinoa Pizza. If you don’t have access to quinoa flour, it’s easy to make in just a few minutes.
Today is the beginning of Week 3 of the Healthy New Years Challenge brought to you by the fine folks at California Olive Ranch and Bob’s Red Mill. This challenge has been a blast so far. I thought I’d give you a quick rundown of the past 2 weeks.
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Week 1
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Week 2 |
Baked Orange Hard Wheat Olive Oil Donuts Congrats to: Carmen!!
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Spicy Sausage, Prune and Grande Grain Stuffing Congrats to: Libby!!
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This weeks grain is Quinoa (pron. KEEN wa). Quinoa is an ancient food that has been cultivated in South American Andes since at least 3,000 B.C. and has been a staple food of millions of native inhabitants. The ancient Incas called quinoa the “Mother of all grains” and revered it as sacred. Each year at planting time it was traditional for the Inca leader to plant the first quinoa seed using a solid gold shovel! Quinoa was used to sustain Incan armies, which frequently marched for many days eating a mixture of quinoa and fat, known as “war balls”. Beginning with the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, there was a 400-year decline in the production of quinoa. It became a minor crop at that time and was grown only by peasants in remote areas for local consumption but not anymore. Quinoa is becoming a very popular grain in all types of cooking. This versatile grain can be used for breakfast as a cereal, for lunch as a delicious salad ingredient and even ground and used as flour, as was done in the recipe below. Here are some other ways that Quinoa has been used on Farmgirl Gourmet:
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| Quinoa Stuffed Peppers with Chipotle Glaze | Pork Chops with Quinoa Stuffing, Bacon & Nuts |
Are you inspired to get cooking with Quinoa? Well, Bob’s Red Mill would like to send one lucky commenter a bag of Quinoa. And that’s not all. (I love saying that) California Olive Ranch would like to send a bottle of Olive Oil to pair with the quinoa as well.
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
- 2/3 cup quinoa flour (I used a Krups coffee grinder to mill the quinoa into flour)
- 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 3/4 cup hot tap water
- 2 tablespoons Arbosana Olive Oil, plus more for brushing dough
- 2 pear, sliced thin
- 8 canadian bacon rounds, sliced into thin strips
- 1/2 cup Manchego cheese, shredded
- 1/2 cup Pepperjack cheese, shredded
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line a 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and sprinkle with a little cornmeal. Set aside. Mix the 3 cheeses together in a small bowl. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a food processor, add the flour, quinoa flour, yeast, salt and sugar. Pulse a couple times to combine. Add the water and olive oil to a glass measure and with the processor running, pour through the feed tube. Allow the dough to process for 1 minute. Remove the dough to a floured board and cover with a medium bowl. Let rest 10-15 minutes.
- Divide dough into 4 and roll or pat each ball into a circle. Place on the prepared baking sheets. Brush with olive oil and add the pear, bacon and cheese blend. Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the crust is done to your liking. Depending on your oven, you may need to rotate the baking sheets once during cooking.
Disclaimer: I was provided Quinoa and Arbosona Olive Oil from the manufacturers to review. I was not compensated for this post for a positive review. All opinions are my own.
