Pizza Crust - Gluten Free

Gluten-free pizza crusts are becoming more and more popular at pizza restaurants. My wife was excited by this trend until she discovered two disturbing facts: 1) many of the gluten-free pizzas have so much cross-contamination with flour that the secondary gluten makes her sick, and 2) most of the crusts taste like crap.

We hunted online for a good pizza crust recipe, only to find most of them too grainy, gritty, or gummy. So, after much experimentation, I repurposed my gluten-free pita bread recipe to make a serviceable pizza crust.

Here it is, my new pizza crust recipe that is neither grainy, gritty, or gummy. I admit it is not as crispy as a fancy glutinous artisanal wood fired crust, but it does the job and makes pizza time a time of rejoicing rather than a time of bitter disappointment. And that’s usually all I am going for.

Ingredients

• 3 cups GOOD gluten-free baking flour (I recommend Better Batter or America’s Test Kitchen recipe) plus extra to for rolling out pitas
• 1 tablespoon powdered psyllium fiber
• 1 teaspoons xanthan gum (if not already in flour)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 cup plain Greek yoghurt or vegan yoghurt
• 1½ cups warm 1% or 2% milk (or milk substitute), about 100 to 110 °F

Whisk together 3 cups of flour, psyllium, xanthan gum, salt, yeast, and sugar in a stand mixer bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together oil, yoghurt, and milk.

With the mixer on low speed, add the milk mixture in a slow pour and mix thoroughly until completely incorporated into the flour. If you do not have a stand mixer, the dough can be mixed by hand with a wooden spoon for about two minutes. The dough should be moist and tacky, but it should hold together.

Using vegetable oil or cooking spray, liberally grease six or seven 8-inch circular pans with a lip. Using wet hands, place ½ cup of dough in the center of each pan and spread out the dough until it completely covers the base of the pan with a thickness of about ⅛ inch. Cover each pan with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for an hour.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Poke holes in the crusts several times with a fork to let steam escape when baking. Place pans in oven for 10 minutes until crusts are parbaked. Remove from oven and let cool on cooling rack.

Pizzas can now be decorated with your favorite sauce, cheese (or cheeze), and toppings. Bake pizzas at 450°F for 10 minutes.

Makes 6 to 7 small pizzas or 3 x 12-inch pizzas.

Gluten Free Challah #1

Challah, an egg-heavy braided bread, is the centerpiece of a traditional Eastern European Jewish Shabbat meal. When our family went gluten-free, I dutifully sought out a good recipe for gluten-free challah. I failed. In fact, my first version of gluten-free challah was so dense that when we tried to use it for tashlich after Rosh Hashanah, casting pieces of the bread into the creek behind our house, the fish pointedly ignored it. It was embarrassing.

After much experimentation (and stealing and modifying other people’s ideas), I have finally created a recipe for a wonderful challah that is flavorful, pretty, and about 80% the lightness and texture of traditional challah. My family even reaches for seconds now. As do the fish.

Ingredients:

Starter

• 2 ounces (⅔ cup) oat, sorghum, or brown rice flour
• 4 ounces (½ cup) warm water (110°F)
• 1½ teaspoons sugar
• ½ teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast

Dough

• 8 ounces (1¾ cups) good gluten-free all-purpose baking flour (e.g. ATK baking flour)
• 7 teaspoons powdered psyllium husk
• 1½ teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 4 ounces (½ cup) warm water (110°F)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 egg, beaten with 1-2 teaspoons water

Create the starter by combining the flour (oat, sorghum, or rice), warm water, sugar, and yeast in a bowl and letting sit until bubbly and fragrant, about 30 minutes. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 200°F. When oven reaches 200°F, turn it off. (Do not begin next step until oven has been turned off).

Using a stand mixer, mix all-purpose flour, psyllium, sugar, yeast, and salt together on low speed until combined, about 1 minute. Slowly add warm water, eggs, vinegar, and starter, and mix until combined, scraping down bowl as needed, about 1 minute. Increase speed to medium and beat until dough is sticky and uniform, about 5 minutes. (Dough will resemble cookie dough.)

Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray. Scrape dough onto a clean counter and separate dough into four pieces. With wet hands, carefully roll out each piece into a coil about 12 inches in length. Line the four pieces up next to each other, pinch one end together, braid the four pieces together, and pinch together the other end. Place the braided dough into the loaf pan and cover with a piece of plastic wrap.

Place loaf in warm oven, being sure that the plastic wrap does not touch the oven rack. Let sit for 10 minutes, remove from the oven, and let rise until loaf has risen by 50 percent, about 20 minutes. While dough is rising, preheat oven to 350°F.

Remove the plastic wrap and baste top of loaf with egg and water mixture. Bake bread for 30 minutes or until bread is just browned and the bottom sounds hollow when thumped. Let cool on cooling rack.

NOTES:

1. This challah is baked in a standard bread loaf pan instead of being a free-form braid like traditional challah. The loaf pan keeps the bread from flattening out too much, yet preserves the braid that makes it look like challah.
2. Oat flour is the best to use for the starter, but I have used sorghum and brown rice flour to good effect, particularly since members of my household also have an intolerance to oats.
3. Most gluten-free bread recipes use a table-top mixer with a paddle. I have found regular egg beaters to work just as well. However you beat it, make sure the dough is thoroughly mixed and hydrated.