Friday night I decided I was going to try to make gluten-free pizza, using this pizza crust recipe from Recipezaar that Debby found. I even went the store and bought vegetables and pizza. Sadly, I forgot the cider vinegar and yeast until after the store was closed. Not one to give up over such minor problems, I decided to try this pizza crust recipe from Bob's Red Mill instead since I had all the ingredients. I used the Bob's Red Mill GF flour mix instead of the garfava and tapioca flours it called for. It seemed like a reasonable substitution to me since the flour mix has a lot of garfava and tapioca flour in it.
Not that I have lots of experience, but gluten free bread is weird: it seems like most recipes call for at least one egg and they are often batter-like in consistency. I used Muir Glen pizza sauce (super yummy), grated mozzarella and parmesan cheese, and a mix of onion, mushrooms, and red bell pepper that I sauteed before adding to the pizza. The crust turned out, well, just ok. It was edible and made a good surface for the pizza toppings but I had no desire to eat the crust. It was weird and slightly egg-like. I'm sure it's a good recipe for what it was: no yeast, no gluten, but I'm going to keep looking.
So far I've been happiest with foods that are naturally gluten free like rice noodles in Asian food. I did have the most amazing chocolate chip cookies at work; apparently they buy them from a local business in Palo Alto, so I might see if I can convince them to make a special batch for me. The cookies didn't taste funky at all and were a little crisp. It's good that I miss cookies more than bread. I may try thick corn tortillas as a pizza crust next time; another blog recommended the idea and Primavera makes some nice, thick, homemade ones at my grocery store.
Here's the crust right after the initial baking: it looks more like a puffed pancake than bread (I think that's the egg effect). I should have taken a picture before baking: it's this stick batter that you spread out over the sheet.
A close-up of the tasty part of the pizza. Still, all-in-all it was nice to sit down (very late) with a slice of pizza, glass of wine, and bowl of the Rocky Road ice cream that was left after Dad's visit. And I'm sure I'll eat the leftovers.
