I’m not a fan of most gluten free pizza and by ‘not a fan’ I mean that I actively loathe it when it’s little more than a cardboard disc buried in toppings.  Wafer thin, limp, lacking in flavour – most gluten free pizza from the chains is sometime I do only because there isn’t really a better option.

“Make it yourself,” that’s what my mother said to me and while she’s not wrong.  Coming up with a viable gluten free dough from scratch that meets my criteria would require more than a little research.  I read a lot, I was always frustrated by the methods used or the ingredients used (flax seed and various husks aren’t my jam).  Then I came across a recipe on pinterest that fit my ‘I’ll try it for laughs’ metric.   You can find the link to the recipe here.

The ingredients it called for were things that the average ‘I can do this’ gluten free cook probably has on hand – brown rice flour, sorghum flour, tapioca and potato starches, yeast, xanthan gum, salt, water, oil, and eggs.  The method couldn’t be much simpler.  The ingredients in the recipe were listed in cups so it was the simple matter of measuring out the dry ingredients into one bowl and then combining the wet ingredients into my stand mixer.   Add the dry to the wet and mix until the ingredients are well combined.

I found my enameled bowl which has a lid that can be placed on loosely and I let the dough proof for the recommended two hours before I did anything with it.   The first batch was made into two loaves of bread, the first of which really didn’t get much time to cool before I cut into it and slathered a piece with butter.  Now, truth be told I screwed up the first batch because I didn’t have any potato starch in the house so I ended up using some random unmarked bag of gluten free flour in it.   The bread was a little chewy but that didn’t matter to me, I had a few pieces of warm bread with butter and the rest of the first loaf went into making some pretty spectacular grilled cheese sandwiches.  I love grilled cheese sandwiches with a passion second only to toasted tomato and bacon.   Until I come up with another recipe that’s as fast as this one, this is my go-to recipe for bread which left me with one question.  Would it convert to pizza dough?

I measured out half of the risen dough and placed it on an oiled sheet pan and spread the dough with wet hands since it was wanting to stick to rubber and silicon spatulas.

All said, it probably took about 2 minutes to spread the dough out like this.  I left it on the stove for a 15 minutes to rise a bit and then I baked it for 20 minutes in a 475F degree oven and then put toppings on it almost immediately.

Since this was a ‘tester’ pizza, I opted to keep the toppings as simple as possible.   A thin layer of spicy pizza sauce, handfuls of mozzarella and asiago cheese, and a nice layer of pepperoni.  The pizza went back into the oven where it baked for another 20 minutes.   After months of enduring frozen pizzas and those thing jobs from chain pizzerias, the smell coming out of that oven was almost heavenly.   It smelled great but would it live up to my expectations or even my dreams?

The short answer was, yes and no.

I doubt I’ll ever find a gluten free version of the soft, pillowy, rich pizza dough that I grew up with and so that’s the no.   What I ultimately wanted was a dough that was thicker, flavourful, had some chew and would hold up to toppings.  This pizza dough was that.  I can easily seeing it handle the kitchen sink pizza that I love – roasted red peppers, pepperoni, salami, bacon, olives, gooey cheese – and if it was a little more ‘biscuit/scone’ like in texture than I would have preferred, that was in no means a deal breaker.   One batch of dough made two sheet pan pizzas of fifteen pieces, the first pizza passed the spousal test which is no mean feat and it provided me with dinner, lunch, lunch, and a breakfast.   The second pizza was cut up and put into freezer bags for those days when I absolutely want pizza but I positively do not want to cook one.  I like freezer meals but that’s a conversation for another day.   I have received an Instant Pot for Christmas and that is a whole Pandora’s Box of culinary curiosity waiting to happen.

One caveat.  If the pizza is a little ‘biscuit’ like right out of the oven, a trip to the fridge and the microwave changes that.   My lunch the next day was reheated pizza and the combination of humidity/microwave lead to a softer, more bread like pizza crust – basically the pizza that I’d been hoping for.   I suspect that future pizzas will be made in advance and frozen which will be easy enough to do courtesy of my vacu-sealer.

I’d also like to try this as a deep dish pizza and as a true breakfast pizza down the road.  Ooo, and panzarottis.