Gluten Free Pizza

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I have not missed pizza at all since I found out I couldn’t eat it, but then I know how bad I feel when I eat the gluten. So, because my husband Jim was whining about not getting to eat pizza anymore, I decided to try to make one at home for him. Now, he is not a celiac or even gluten intolerant, but since there are only two of us living here, and I am the cook, I have told him that he has to eat whatever I can eat. I am not into cooking two meals every night. And it won’t hurt him to eat what I eat.

With that in mind, I started looking at recipes for pizza crust, and found that I did not have all the ingredients listed in any of them. So, as all good FabGrandmas do, I improvised and used what I had, loosely following a recipe in the Bette Hagman’s book, “The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast And Healthy.” Here is my recipe, based on hers:

1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbl olive oil
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 cup warm water
1 pkg dry yeast

Mix together all the dry ingredients except the sugar in a bowl. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, vinegar, 1 tablespoon of the brown sugar. Put the water and yeast in a measuring cup, stir to disolve the yeast. Add the yeast water to the bowl with the liquid ingredients and beat with a mixer on low speed. Add about half of the dry ingredients and beat well with the mixer. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix in with a spoon until it is smooth. Let the dough rise for 40 minutes (25 minutes for quick rising yeast). Stir it down, and spread on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with olive oil. This will be a thin, runny dough compared to a wheat flour based dough.

I baked my crust first at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes before adding the toppings. After you add your toppings, bake for another 12-15 minutes at 425 degrees.

The texture of this was not as chewy as “real” pizza dough, but it did have a nutty, “wheaty” yeast flavor and was crispy and brown on the bottom. And not bad for a first try. Jim liked it, and ate four pieces of it. As long as he is smiling after dinner, I feel like I succeeded.