Yesterday I had pizza envy. I had dinner plans and wasn’t going to be home for dinner, so Maureen decided to have Katie over for dinner and order pizza. God, I miss pizza, and I was home while they were trying to figure out where to order it from and what toppings to get. I went to my dinner, had fabulous food, and came home still somehow jealous of the pizza. So I decided to try my hand at pizza today. But you have to realize, I’m nothing but an ambitious girl. Gluten-free pizza recipes don’t excite me. I’ve tried a few recipes, but nothing has come close to what I want. I’m convinced that to find a pizza crust I love, will require major innovations on my part, so I turned today, to the Sullivan Street Pizza recipe that the Baking Babes have been struggling with. I tried this particular recipe because it is a very wet dough, and you need an extremely wet dough in gluten-free bread making. So this recipe already bore a striking resemblance to gluten-free recipes, but with a few distinct differences. First, it used very little yeast, and second it had a very long rise time.
As I planned my attack, I realized that nothing I did was likely to approximate the recipe. For awhile I played with protein percentages in gluten-free flours, trying to match their 11.5%, only to realize that it wouldn’t really matter because gluten-free flours have the wrong type of protein. But, I decided to still go pretty high percentage on high-protein flours, using primarily sorghum and teff (at 10% and 11%). When I mixed the dough, mine quickly turned into that familiar looking batter that lies somewhere between cake batter and cookie dough, and no amount of mixing caused my batter to pull away from the edges of the bowl. At this point, I almost gave up, but I figured I might as well see what happened.
I let my batter rise for four hours, spooned it into a prepared pan (yes, spooned… no stretching was involved), scrambled to make the topping and settled in for failure. I hoped that it would be thin and crispy, but looking at the dough it really didn’t seem possible.
50 minutes later, I pulled this baby out of the oven, and immediately sawed into it with my knife. The crust was definitely crunchy, and the flavor was good, not exceptional but good. I wouldn’t make this the exact same way again, but I might try it again with an even split between teff, sorghum, and tapioca starch.
As far as the topping goes, the purple potatoes were fun, but the combination didn’t really satisfy my pizza craving. I also felt slightly guilty about the ridiculous carb overkill and the severe lack of protein. Still, with salt sprinkled on top, this would be amazing with eggs, and it was rather compelling even on its own.
Does anyone have a gluten-free pizza recipe that they think will revolutionize my understanding of the genre? I would love some help!
Gluten-free Gastronaut 