Making a gluten-free pizza

My daughter and I are still experimenting with gluten-free flours. Last week it was gluten-free chocolate chip cookies and yesterday we made a gluten-free pizza! We don’t eat too much pizza in our household. I can’t say why exactly, my daughter and I do enjoy preparing pizzas, but there are so many other foods that we enjoy also. We don’t eat too much processed food, the ‘processing’ that is done is conducted by us.

This is the first gluten-free pizza that we’ve made using gluten-free flour and it definitely won’t be the last. In the past, I have used veggies/mashed beans/flax to create a gluten-free crust and I love those also.

I’m slowly doing my research about gluten-free cuisine. Over the past several years here on this blog and my now defunct VeganMomma blog (started that in 2003) I mentioned that I avoided flour because it didn’t really agree with me. My reactions were slight nasal congestion and occasional stomach bloat. If I avoided it, I didn’t have that issue. But back to the pizza making. Yesterday, I was able to use three new kitchen appliances to prepare our pizza.

Here’s my brand-new customized cutting board. I’m loving this board made from exotic wood and I’m calling it Ruth. I rarely name inanimate objects and this is only the third item that I’ve ever named. The others are my Kromski Sonata spinning wheel (which I’ve named Ruth) and my Toyota Prius, which I’ve called, Naomi. I must say that it was a pleasure testing this board out for the first time yesterday.

Before I even started making my pizza dough, I washed my hands thoroughly. Handwashing is something I do often during meal preparations.

My gluten-free dough was made using brown rice flour and tapioca flour. I added all the ingredients, mixed for a few minutes with my Kitchen Aid stand-alone mixer and placed everything into a bowl. I set the dough aside for a few hours, came back and

placed the pizza dough on this cutting board.

I proceeded to roll it into a ball

and flatten it out to gain the appropriate pizza shape.

I kept the toppings very simple, just tomatoes, onions, curry leaves, and a variety of other spices and herbs.

I transferred my pizza dough to my brand-new bamboo pizza peel and added the toppings.

Once my daughter and I had added all the toppings we proceeded to place it on the steel baking stone (the last new kitchen item) but… that didn’t work. Whoops! Why did this happen? I think my sauce was too liquidy, which made the pizza crust to moist to slide off the bamboo pizza peel. My way of getting around that was transferring the pizza to my perforated pizza pan.

I placed the pizza into the oven for five minutes (baking at 500 F) and then I took it out, slid the pizza onto the bamboo pizza peel and then I was able to easily place it on the steel baking stone. I positioned the peel towards the back of the baking stone and gently shook it back and forth! Viola, the pizza slides onto the baking stone. Why did I purchase a baking stone? For the crispy crust of course. I’d been sitting on this want for several years. I must say, I was not disappointed with this purchase. The baking stone made the pizza crust very crispy, which is just the way my daughter loves her pizza crust!

Even with the minor setback of the pizza not sliding of the bamboo pizza peel (at least the first time), I must say that this small pizza turned out amazing! Although we kept the ingredients simple, it was bursting with flavor and the added bonus was the crispy crust! I could not replicate that level of crispness with my perforated pizza pan. We plan to create another pizza (or possibly a calzone) tomorrow. The main gluten-free flour I’ll be using is extra fine white rice flour.

I must say that I really enjoyed using my new kitchen appliances; handcrafted cutting board made with exotic wood, bamboo pizza peel, and steel baking stone. They will be receiving a lot of use in our household.