Here is my first attempt at gluten free pizza. I used my regular pizza recipe here, and simply substituted “Live G Free” flour from Aldi. which was on clearance for $1.99 a box. One 1.5 lb box makes two pizzas.
Regular flour is still a lot cheaper, but this line is very affordable. Most of what we’ve tried has been good- the pasta, rice cakes, etc. Just steer clear of the mac n cheese. It’s pretty awful, but then again, regular mac n cheese isn’t that great either. I guess I’m burnt out on it. I haven’t tried the cake mixes. I don’t tend to cook with many mixes. I usually just cook from scratch if I’m going to bother, which is rare these days.
Anyhow, I have never done any gluten free baking. I had no idea what to expect. Would it rise at all? Would it taste bad? No clue.
So I prepared both a regular pizza and a GF pizza side by side and and took pictures through the entire process. I was happily surprised with the results! The gluten free pizza didn’t rise like the regular one, but I really didn’t expect it to. I might try adding baking powder next time and seeing how it turns out. (I’ll take better pictures too. My “good” camera was recharging, so these are from my iPhone.)
Taste wise, you actually could not tell the difference between the two pizzas. I made the gluten free one exactly the same, with all the other usual ingredients except of course, the flour. I was afraid the gluten free flour would taste weird and gritty or something. It didn’t. In fact, the only thing noticeably different was the more cracker-like texture of the outer crust. You can see how it cracks along the edges. It tasted great though. The crust beneath the cheese and sauce was almost identical to the other one. Moisture might be key here, so next time I’ll bake it with a pan full of water beneath it to see if that helps.
And I felt great after eating it!
I still want it to be more bread-like, as my regular one is, but I’m not sure how realistic that is. And this isn’t a bad start. A little more tinkering is needed, but I’m really very happy with the results so far! Apparently, so is my family! There wasn’t much left!
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