Socca Pizza with Pesto and Mushrooms – Vegan Richa

Socca Pizza with Pesto and Mushrooms. This Chickpea Flour Pizza Crust is gluten-free, grain-free! Vegan Socca Pizza with veggies and chimichurri or pesto. GF soyfree Recipe. Easily made nut-free. Jump to Recipe

Socca, a type of thin unleavened pancake, flatbread made with chickpea flour, is naturally gluten-free and grain-free and can easily be used as a pizza base. The Socca Bread needs just 2 main ingredients, chickpea flour and water. Just mix, and cook a bit on the skillet or bake. Then add your favorite toppings and bake again.

I top it with pesto or chimichurri and veggies. You can also add some vegan cheese if you like. Add other toppings such as microgreens before serving. Easy, protein filled and delicious!

Ingredients for Socca Pizza

• Socca Pizza crust uses Chickpea flour or garbanzo bean flour as the main ingredient. Chickpea flour is now easily available in grocery stores, or you can buy it online on amazon
• Salt, herbs and pepper flakes add flavor. You can change up the herbs and spices for variation.
• Water is used to make the batter. Adjust consistency to preference
• Vegan Pesto or Chimichurri sauce make a great herbed sauce for the pizza.
• Sliced Mushrooms, peppers, onion, zucchini or other quick cooking veggies make for a great topping as the pizza is baked for a shorter time.
• pepper flakes, herbs, vegan cheese, micro sprouts or baby greens make a great topping on the baked pizza.

What is the difference between Besan and Chickpea flour?

Besan and chickpea flour are not the same. Indian Besan, is the flour of brown chickpeas or chana dal (split brown chickpeas), or sometimes a mix of split chickpeas and split peas. It is a flour of some type chickpeas, so sometimes it is labeled as chickpea flour. Besan is usually much finer ground and needs much less water than chickpea flour.

Chickpea flour is the flour of white chickpeas and usually will need more water to make same consistency batter. Socca uses Chickpea flour.

They taste slightly different. Sometimes, you have to take these differences into account, when substituting one for the other in a recipe. You can easily use besan in this recipe, just add less water, 3/4 cup water and add more only if the batter is thick.

How to make Socca Pizza

Mix the ingredients for the socca crust in a bowl. Chickpea flour can sometimes be too packed or too fluffy. Depending on the measurement, you will need all of the 1 cup of water or a bit less to make the batter. You can adjust the batter later by adding more water or more chickpea flour.

Let the batter sit for atleast half an hour. This helps the flour absorb moisture evenly for a smoother batter and an evenly thick bread result.

Pour the batter on a well heated cast iron or other skillet and cook until the top is dry. Then use a spatula to loosen the flatbread. If it is still sticking, then the batter has not fully cooked yet, let the bread cook longer and then try again.

Flip, Then spread the chimichurri or pesto.

Toss the mushrooms with a tsp of olive oil and herbs of choice. Then spread mushrooms and veggies. Add shredded vegan cheese if you like.

Bake for another 6 to 7 mins. Remove from the oven, slice with a pizza cutter, garnish with pepper flakes or micro greens and serve.

Skillets to use for Chickpea flour pizza crust, Socca Pizza,Chickpea batter based pancakes/crepes

• Chickpea flour batter is a flour batter and will stick to most pans and skillets, it sticks even more than regular flour batter.
• Seasoned cast iron when heated well is the best option for cooking chickpea flour based batter or other flour based batter for pancake or crepe like result.
• Good non stick skillets with thick bottom also work well. If you use the non-stick pan for anything else that is not of the same format, like stir fry, frying, or other cooking that uses veggies, has stirring etc, then the non-stick coating of the pan gets affected. Even if it feels non-stick while cooking, it wont be a sufficient enough non-stick for the chickpea flour batter. For best results, Keep a dedicated non stick skillet for batter based pancake and crepe cooking, i.e, that pan will always be used for pancakes and crepes and nothing else. If you get a sticky mess, you know you need a new pan.

More Gluten-free Pizza Crusts from the blog