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I’ve never met anyone who does not love pizzas! Problem is, for us diabetics, these savory delights generally mess up our glucose readings. Pizzas average to around 30g of carbs per slice. That’s a lot, especially if you’re like us and enjoy having a whole Sunday night pizza for yourself!
Most of the carbohydrates in a pizza come from the crust. The idea then is to substitute the traditional crust by a carb-free base layer.
Whether you have diabetes, or you simply follow a low-carb or ketogenic diet, we’ve got 10 of the best low-carb pizza recipes for you to try. They’re all easy to make, and absolutely delicious! At the end of the article, you’ll find a nutrition table that compares the main macronutrients for each of our recipes.
For those who don’t have time to cook, we’ve also worked on the best low-carb pizza crusts and dough mixes you can buy, and the best diabetes-friendly oven-ready low-carb pizzas:
These are the most “pizza-like” low-carb recipes, in comparison to the crustless deconstructed pizzas we’ll deal with later. There are tons of low-carb pizza crust recipes on the internet, and they’re not all worth the try. We’ve came up with 6 of them that we think are the best, easiest, and tastiest! If you try them out, please let us know what you think and rate our recipes.
Cauliflower pizza crust is a Carb-Free crust you can use to home cook your own pizzas. It’s healthy, carb-free, gluten-free, veto, yummy, and diabetes-friendly! You can then add the toppings of your choice to the crust and enjoy your dream pizza without worrying about your blood sugars!
The most popular alternative to pizza dough is a great addition to low-carb, kept, and diabetes-friendly diets. Avoid the marketing lies and get yourself the real healthy products!
Ready to bake Cauliflower Pizza Crust
If you don’t have time to home bake your cauliflower pizza crust from scratch, you can also get one ready-to-bake. Cali’flour Foods Pizza Crust is the tastiest one we’ve tried so far. You can choose from 4 different flavours: Plain, Italian, Spicy Jalapeño, and Sweet Red Pepper.
Nutrition per servings – carbs: 1g – calories: 90 – protein: 8g
This is not a carb-free pizza option, but it is much healthier than white flour pizza crust. Whole wheat is high in fiber, which slow the digestion process down, helping blood sugar levels to keep stable. Whole wheat flour has a much lower Glycemic Index (IG) than white flour. Home-cooking your own pizzas with whole wheat pizza dough is far better than using regular pizza dough. Just take into account that there still are quite a lot of carbs even in whole wheat pizza dough, so try and make the crust as thin as possible!
You can either buy pre-made whole wheat pizza dough mix, ready-to-oven whole wheat pizza crusts, or bake your own whole wheat pizza dough following the recipe below.
Whole Wheat Pizza Crust Mix!
If you’re lacking time, here’s a great whole wheat pizza crust mix. An authentic yeast-leavened pizza crust, made with a special 7-whole-grain blend. All you have to do is mix, let rest for 15 minutes, add your toppings, and bake your pizza!
Whole Wheat Pizza Crust: Ready-to-oven!
And if you’re in a real hurry, this Ultra Thin ready-to-oven whole wheat pizza crust is your fastest choice. Add your toppings and bake for 10 minutes. Ready! Count around 23g of carbs per slice.
The perfect high-protein / low-carb pizza crust. It’s quick and very easy to make. The crust is made out of egg whites and flavored with Parmesan cheese, oregano, and salt. You can create pretty much any version of it you like, adding your favorite toppings. You’ll need a skillet and an oven! Our best side suggestion to make a totally carb-free meal of it: a mixed salad full of greens and colorful veggies!
Using almond flour instead of all-purpose flour to bake your own pizza dough is a smart choice. Almond flour is one of the most interesting flour on the nutritional side. Unlike wheat flour, it is low in carbs and has a very low glycemic index, which makes it particularly adapted to a diabetes-friendly diet. Plus, it’s packed with healthy nutrients and has a slighty sweet taste. Here’s a great easy-to-make recipe for you to try on your next pizza diner. This dough freezes easily for later pizza parties.
Do you need a sneaky way to have yourself eat extra veggies?? Here it is: a vegetable pizza crust! This totally gluten-free, low-carb pizza will delight your taste buds! The crust is made out of nothing more than fresh broccoli, eggs, and Parmesan cheese. The toppings are for you to choose. We do suggest the classic ham/mozzarella/olives combo. And if you’re vegetarian, some pesto sauce, olives, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil leaves will be perfect!
Fathead pizza crust is a completely carb-free, gluten-free, ketogenic diet (low-carb, high-fat diet) pizza crust. It’s made of Mozarella cheese, cream cheese, almond flour (or coconut flour) and eggs. It’s a great recipe to substitute regular high-carb pizza crust, and should not mess up with your blood sugar levels. For a change, we though we’d suggest this mini-calzone pizza recipe, but you can of course make flat pizzas with this dough. For the story behind it, fathead dough was created by Tom Naughton’s oldest brother’s oldest son from the Fat Head movie.
Now, for the most adventurous among us: crustless deconstructed pizzas! We thought, instead of trying and bake carb-free pizza crusts, why not take the hassle away and make crustless pizzas? If you’d like to try (it’s actually delicious and quite surprisingly pizza tasting!), here are 4 great easy recipes:
Pizza bowl is the new healthy pizza trend, and it’s about time you tried it too! A pizza bowl is kind of like a pizza casserole: a crustless pizza. The idea behind it: enjoy the taste of pizza while avoiding the unnecessary carbs. Oven-cooked into ramekins, you can imagine hundreds of pizza bowls varieties, mixing your favourite pizza toppings and creating your own recipes. Home-cook pizza bowl is extremely easy, creative, and much healthier than regular pizza.
Like pizza bowl, pizza casserole is a crustless way to cook pizza and save ourselves from the high-carb crust. It’s oven-cooked in a casserole dish, quite easy to make, and delights the whole family. Kids usually love it! You can decline this base recipe into hundreds of personalised ones. Simply follow the same principle: pre-cook row ingredients into a skillet first, and then add different layers of your favourite toppings into a casserole dish. Put into oven, broil a bit, and serve! It can easily be frozen so you can prep your week meals in advance.
This one’s for the meat-lovers among us! Enjoy this zero carb keto pizza whose crust has been substituted by … succulent cooked MEAT! Not a big fan of beef? You can find plenty of Meatza Recipes with alternative crusts made out of chicken or turkey for example. The chicken one from FastPaleo is really easy and tasty. Yummy!
For these deliciously healthy mini low-carb pizzas, we substitute the usual carb-filled pizza crust with fresh eggplant slices. They’re almost completely carb-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, and full of flavor. You can follow our directions below, but don’t forget to let your imagination lead you: you can add pretty much whatever toppings you feel like! Ideal as bite-sized appetizers.
To help you choose and see the bigger picture among all the above low-carb pizza recipes, we’ve put together the following simple yet useful nutrition table that compares the main macronutrients in each recipes.
Content is grossly graduated with an either low – medium – or high level. It gives you an idea of what you have on your plate, so you can choose accordingly the right toppings in order to balance out and reach a perfectly healthy meal.
Calories | Carbs | Fats | Proteins | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Medium | Low | Medium | Medium | |
High | High | Low | Low | |
Low | Low | Low | High | |
High | Low | High | High | |
Low | Low | Low | Medium | |
High | Low | High | Medium | |
Medium | Low | Medium | Medium | |
Medium | Low | Medium | Medium | |
High | Low | High | High | |
Low | Low | Low | Medium |
It’s a question that often comes back among people living with diabetes. Can we actually eat pizza? Of course! A diabetes-friendly diet is absolutely not about depriving yourself of things you like. Rather, it’s all about balancing out your diet, your lifestyle, and your personal tastes. If you like pizza, you should eat pizza. BUT, you should be aware of what it contains, and especially of its (very) high level of carbohydrates, so that you can balance out the rest of your meal.
Pizza can actually be a good choice, even for people with type 2 diabetes. Just be careful to get a “thin crust” pizza (remember that most of the carbs are contained in the crust – the thinner the crust, the lesser the carbs!). And think about ordering only one slice and pairing it with a side salad or some greens in order to balance your meal and keep your blood sugar levels under control.
Pizza can be a smart choice, even for people with diabetes, if it is thin-crust and paired with a side salad or some greens.
There’s no way we could give you an exact number, and people who do are lying to you. The exact amount of carbs in a pizza depends on many things.
The first one is the crust thickness and density. Most of the pizza carbs are in the crust, which is kind of like bread. The thicker the crust, the higher the carbs, and vice versa.
Then, little things add up like the sugars that may contain the tomato sauce, or any other toppings that are added (definitely try to avoid high-carb toppings such as barbecue sauce, potatoes, pineapple, etc.)
If you need numbers, you can refer to this comparison table below. It gives you an idea of pizza carb counts depending on the crust thickness. But take it as an “indicator” only.
| Thin-crust | Regular crust | Thick crust | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Average Carb per slice (110g) |
20g |
30g |
45g |
You can perfectly make a healthy diabetes-friendly meal out of pizza if you choose the right toppings and pair it with a side salad or some greens.
First of all, use a sugar-free tomato sauce for your pizzas. Ready-to-use industrial tomato sauces are generally packed with added sugars. Here’s a list of easy to find sugar-free tomato sauces that go well with pizza.
Avoid high-carb pizza toppings such as: potatoes, barbecue sauce, pineapple, beans, sweet corn, honey sauce, etc.
Prefer vegetable toppings such as: avocado, zucchinis capers, capicolla, cherry tomatoes, dried tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms, peppers, olives, onions, etc.
Limit high-fat pizza toppings such as: extra cheese, creamy sauces, bacon, sausages, extra pepperoni, high-fat meat, etc.
Choose a lower-fat cheese: avoid cheddar and high-fat grated industrial cheeses. Prefer Mozzarella, Parmesan, Goat cheese, blue cheese, etc. They have a much lower fat content.
Try different sauces options such as: sugar-free tomato sauce, Italian basil pesto, olive tapenade, roasted pepper spread, or others. They’re much healthier and will make surprisingly original pizzas.
Prefer low-fat high-protein meats and fishes: chicken, turkey, egg, tuna, salmon, anchovies, seafood in general, etc.
Try nuts toppings for a change: almonds and walnuts deliciously pair with goat cheese for example.
I’m Laura. Type 1 diabetic. Mother. Traveler. Writer. Researcher. I started this blog 5 years ago to investigate diabetes-related topics and share different views on the subject. I hope you find it useful!
