My resolution started early this year. Back around my birthday, I intensified my fitness regimen, incorporating more yoga and even trail running. Donnie soon noticed a difference in my physique (i.e. a more toned gluteus maximus) and my physical performance definitely improved, but I really didn't feel any healthier. My brain was beginning to feel even foggier than before (which I had been attributing to work stress) and my weight actually started to go up! I was horrified when trousers continued to get tighter even though I was exercising 5-6 days a week, burning an extra 2100+ calories a week. Oh, and the stomach problems? Even worse. I went from tolerating regular discomfort and a bad flare-up once or twice a month, to counting the number of days I could go in a week without pain. A work day culminated with me curled up in a ball on the sofa and my temper was on a short fuse. How my husband managed to put up with me and my erratic moods is beyond any explanation.
On November 29th, I stopped eating gluten. Over the weekend I finally reached the point of no return when I had to cry myself to sleep. It felt as though my intestines were going to burst and it was just about the worst pain I had experienced yet with this stomach issue (maybe 3rd worst). Donnie had been suggesting an elimination diet for a while, which I had been reluctant to try as I wanted to get a diagnosis first. Unfortunately, at the time I had also just received the results from an abdominal CT scan with nothing remarkable. Blood tests apparently all normal, including thyroid.
So, after that weekend, I began the week of November 29th sans gluten with the intention of doing a month elimination trial. A month quickly turned into 2 months. I am now looking at a 6 month elimination and am strongly considering a year. At some point, retesting is going to be necessary - that is going to be an issue. By eliminating it, I may be repairing damage caused and this will not lead to an accurate diagnosis without returning to gluten for a month or so. I don't think I can do that. Not mentally, not physically. I'm looking at other testing options.
In the meantime, welcome to my new way of living! I still have to be careful with non-gluten grains, even GF-certified oats, but I have opened our kitchen to new culinary creations. Rather than focusing on what I cannot eat, we are embracing what I can eat and my diet and kitchen experiments have been becoming more creative. Naturally, with all my previous pizza adventures, that MUST include a GF pizza!
Oh yeah...check out that crust. No floppy Pizza Hut here. You're drooling.Gluten Free Pizza #1
Crust (recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour):
1 1/2 cups Gluten Free Pantry French Bread & Pizza mix
2 tb dry milk powder or soymilk powder
1 tsp guar gum or xanthan gum
packet (2 1/2 tsp) GF yeast - many are GF
1 cup warm water
2 tb olive oil
Sauce:
Use my Neapolitan sauce recipe: http://cymry-pa.blogspot.com/2007/06/im-alive.html
-or-
your preferred recipe or jarred margherita sauce
Prepare crust by proofing yeast with warm water in a 2 qt bowl with a lid. Mix in xanthan/guar gum, milk powder and GF flour mix. Mix in olive oil and cover with lid, setting aside to rise in a warm spot for 30-45 minutes. Be aware that the dough will look nothing like a traditional dough at this stage - as mentioned on King Arthur's site, it will actually more resemble plastering spackle. However, the dough will poof up and become more like a regular dough in very short time. While you are waiting for the dough to rise, prepare your pizza sauce and any toppings.
Once the dough has risen, prepare a pizza crisper pan by spraying with nonstick spray or drizzling liberally with olive/peanut oil. Scoop dough out of bowl onto pan, drizzling with more oil, and press into pan. Let dough rest for about 10 minutes, then bake at 500F for about 5 minutes. Take out of oven, add toppings, and continue baking for another 4-5 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and begins to brown. Enjoy with a bottle of Strongbow or Woodchuck cider!
Crunchy on the outside with a pillowy textureIf you're wondering about the cheese, that's a mix of Mozzarella and Daiya Cheddar. I have to be careful with dairy, so I blended the two to cut down on lactose.
13 comments:
Hi,
Thanks very much for this recipe and pics. I just stumbled across it a few days ago, and just tried my first batch last night.
I did the same recipe as you have, except I added 1 tsp of baking powder, since that is also on the original King Arthur Flour recipe. The crust came out very good, almost excellent, but just a little TOO light and fluffy. Did you use any baking powder originally? I guess I should try your recipe as written. I just was wondering if you experimented with the baking powder and decided to leave it out after trying it.
Thanks again though, this worked out really well! One of the better GF pizza recipes on the Internet (and I'm a pizza connoisseur, so believe me I've tried everything!)
Also, which yeast do you use with this? Active Dry Yeast, or Instant Yeast?
I use active dry yeast and yes, I leave out the baking powder. I've tried it with baking powder, but it always comes out too fluffy. If you're trying to do a skillet pizza, this would be a great attribute!
I've experimented with mixes and other recipes, but always come back to this one. The Gluten Free Pantry French Bread and Pizza mix is perfect for this, but if you use Bob's Red Mill Pizza mix you should use a little less mix. You'll know by the texture.
Thanks for the compliments and let me know if you need any more assistance! I love experimenting with GF pizzas.
Check out this page for more recent tips and images of this pizza: http://cymry-pa.blogspot.com/2011/05/pizza-nights.html
Have to thank you again. I just made this again, this time following your recipe exactly and not straying from the script, and it came out great! I don't have a crisper pan unfortunately, but I'm well-versed in the art of baking pizza on stones (before I was diagnosed with celiac, I made my own NY pizza on ceramic tiles lining my oven floor)...so I grabbed one of my old pizza stones and used that, after first par-baking your crust for 5 minutes to firm it up. It came out GREAT. I'm really impressed--this is the first recipe of all the GF recipes on the net that I've tried which actually works AND tastes much like regular NY pizza! (and I know NY pizza, believe me, since I'm from there and LIVED on pizza before my diagnosis).
One question--how do you manage to form the dough into the crisper pan with those holes? Doesn't the dough kind of sink into the holes? Or do you bake in a regular pan first and then move it to the crisper pan after a few minutes?
Well, the dough will go through a little as it is smoother, but here's what I do:
1) Place a 1/2 sheet pan under the crisper pan and give the pan a good rub with olive oil - not enough to pool up, but a coating.
2) Wet your hands! Otherwise, this dough will stick.
3) Get all of the dough onto the crisper pan and press just to get it to the sides. This dough will make enough to fit a 14" crisper pan.
4) Using a wet cloth or paper towel,wipe off the bottom of the crisper pan of any dough that came through prior to placing in the oven (minus the sheet pan).
Surprisingly, not very much dough comes through!
I've been giving it a 5 minute prebake, too, lately. Pizza is VERY serious business here in Northeast PA and there is strict criteria to be met. My husband is a local, so he's my biggest critic. Fortunately, he loves it :)
Thanks for the extra tips. I'll have to see if I can snag a 14" crisper pan one of these days. BTW, I just made another one of these pizzas last night and gave a slice to my non-celiac wife to try, and she LOVED it. So did I. The addition of boccocini cheese makes it a delectable treat :)
Incidentally, have you experimented at all with using this recipe while trying to recreate the GFP mix with your own home-bought flours (rice flour, potato starch, etc)? It'd be really nice to come up with a recipe that we can use without having to buy the GFP mix. If you haven't experimented, maybe I'll give it a shot one of these days (they list the ingredients, I know some basic proportions, how hard could it be? lol)
I experimented once with my own flours using a large proportion of chickpea flour. The metallic aroma was enough to put me off experimenting with dough! Oddly, I've had great success using chickpea to make muffins. Aside from that, the only experimenting with flours has been when I've been a cup short of mix and had to put something together. The base flour typically has been sorghum or brown rice flour, then equal portions of white rice flour, potato starch and tapioca. I haven't really experimented using my own flours for an entire pizza dough recipe, though - it's mostly just been playing with technique. It is a long overdue project! I'll play around with some flours; let me know if you come up with something close.
My husband makes an Old Forge style pizza that he has perfected. Unfortunately, he has only made it once at home since I had to stop eating gluten. I'm keen to come up with a dough suitable for this type of pizza, as well!
The sorghum/brown rice, white rice, potato starch, and tapioca mixture is a good base to start from I think. For some reason I can never get the proportions quite good enough, though. I can get them "okay", it comes out "okay", and it's perfectly edible...but not "delicious."
Never tried chickpea flour, although I think that Kinnikinnick uses that in many of their recpies. Perhaps the metallic odour was from using too much?
I didn't know what an Old Forge pizza was, so I looked it up. It appears to be something similar to what we used to call a Sicilian pizza in NYC. The dough had a generally more "arch" flavour, more like a sourdough. I'm not sure how to duplicate that effect with GF flours, but would love to give it a shot sometime...I'm sure there are some online attempts that could be looked at for inspiration.
Made another one of your pizzas tonight...WOW is it ever good. By the way I forgot to mention that I found out your recipe works perfectly well if you make a doubled/tripled batch of it and put some in the fridge for eating days later. Tasted just as good 24 hours after mixing the dough together.
I've been hand-mixing it, but I may try tripling the recipe and using my stand mixer (I have a DLX Magic Mill mixer).
Old Forge pizza is a skillet pizza that is typically cooked from the bottom with peanut oil. Some people use a tray pan and heavily oil the sides and bottom; my husband uses an electric skillet and it comes out perfect. The result is a crunchy bottom and a pillowy top. It is indeed similar to a Sicilian pizza in appearance, although a little thinner. The cheese tends to be Cooper, Wisconsin Cheddar or "brick cheese". Old Forge pizza comes red or white - think pizza is described as such in NY, as well? For the red pizza, it varies on the pizza shop, but the pizza will either have a sweet sauce or diced tomatoes. For the white pizzas, you can sometimes find them with thin slices of tomato on top with garlic and basil. A little Old Forge tutorial for you :) I may have to give that a try gluten free next week. A touch more yeast may help.
Flour mixing is definitely a science! You can usually determine which flours to use for a certain recipe by their characteristics and your own nutritional needs, e.g. millet for "crumb", rice bran for ruffage, tapioca when mixing with heavier flours. From there, it tends to become trial and error. Here's an interesting read on ratios: http://gfboulange.blogspot.com/2011/06/flour-eggs-butter-ratio-makes-recipe.html
GF sourdough sounds like a great experiment! You must try it.
I'll have to try freezing this pizza dough. It would be great to just pull it out of the freezer as a premade round. My husband is too afraid of glutening me to follow my recipe and there are nights I am craving pizza, but too tired to make it. The last time, he actually drove to a pizza shop in the area that makes GF pizza lol
thanks for the OF explanation...I'd never heard of it!
When I get a chance I'll definitely try to do some experimenting. This recipe is fantastic, and the only downside is having to buy the GFP mix.
As for freezing, I'm certain it'd work...what I do (and just did yesterday) is triple the recipe and put it in a tupperware container in the fridge (not frozen). It'll be okay (won't go bad) for at least a week, probably longer. If you wanted it to last longer, freezing would almost certainly work fine.
What I'd like to do next, I think, is figure out how to scale the recipe to one single box of the GFP mix, rather than 1.5 cups of the mix--would be great to not have to measure the mix, but just pour a bag of it into a bowl to start with. I'll do some calcs and get back to you on that :)
You should be able to triple the recipe if you use the whole GFP mix. We always get three pizzas from the box (don't know why I didn't remember that earlier).
I'll be posting some more GF recipes, so keep checking back!
Oh, okay, thanks. So basically just use the entire box and triple everything else in your blogpost recipe, correct?
I'll keep an eye out too for your forthcoming GF recipes (although I gotta tell ya, it's gonna be hard to top this one!)
cheers :)
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