Gluten-Free Pizza Crust experiment, round 1

I love pizza, it is my favorite food and having been a carb-cutter for years it saddens me to have to forgo it. Of course I have spent years when I have said "eff it" and ate it anyway.  So my girlie Pixie and I decided we were in the mood for pizza, we had tried Bob's Red Mill GF pizza crust mix and the parts that were cooked to crispy were good but the chewier parts were like eating old sponge.  yuck.

After gathering ingredients for our two choices of pizza this week, hawaiian and pepperoni, we headed home and I realized I didn't have the crust portion thought out.  oops.  So I googled my heart out, looked over various recipes at various GF blogs.  Studying the photos and perusing the list of ingredients I finally found one that looked appetizing, pizza crust-ish and contained the ingredients I already had. (hooray!)

So I headed over to Epicurious.com and found their GF Pizza Crust recipe.  I didn't feel like wrestling my kitchenaid out so I used a hand mixer and beat until it was smooth.  As a seasoned bread maker I love the moment when the bread sighs, when you know that everything is copacetic in the dough and the gluten is doing it's thing. Well, looks as though I have to relearn this skill for gluten free bread because mixing for a set amount of time as opposed to when the dough is ready is a difficult concept for me.

This recipe mixed up like a dream, I subbed almond milk for the whole milk called for, didn't seem to make a difference as far as I could tell.  Unlike the Bob's Red Mill mix it didn't look lumpy and *curd-y*.  It mixed to a smooth, lovely dough.  Appearances are deceiving though because it is still sticky as can be.  I have found that greasing parchment paper with a tiny bit of olive oil and blopping the dough into that I spread and smooth it out with dampened fingers (cold water smooths it and makes pressing it out easier as the dough sticks less to my fingers.  After pressing it out on the parchment I slid it onto the hot pizza stone and let it bake for a few minutes to dry it out some.  I then quickly added sauce, prosciutto (ick, no hot capicola today so we went with this option. the taste was off but Pixie liked it), pineapple and cheese and slid it back in to cook.  I lost track of time and it over-cooked a bit but the crust was crispy and Pixie loved it, as did I.  There was no telling that the crust was gluten free.  Next pizza will be turkey pepperoni, I'll mind the cooking time and see how a less crispy crust comes out.

until then.