It's a Saturday night and nothing sounds better than pizza! Right? I thought I would share with you my favorite way to make this delicious indulgence! First of all, let me say that I have tried many other varieties before I found my favorite. I started out in the freezer section, but the frozen crusts are expensive and small! I tried a couple other mixes, but the taste was off and the texture was less than perfect. Then I tried Gluten Free Mama's Pizza Crust. You can get a pack of 5 for $23.02 on Amazon's Subscribe and Save. That makes each individual package $4.60 and it makes two 12 inch pizza crusts.
The crusts are easy to make. They come with their own yeast packet and you just need to have an egg, cider vinegar, milk (I use soy milk), and olive oil on hand. A word of caution for those allergic to tree nuts: this mix has almond meal as an ingredient. It only takes a few minutes to make the dough and to prepare it, however you need to let it rest for 15 to 30 minutes.
While the two crusts are resting, I make my own pizza sauce. I can't actually give you the recipe because it is in my head and it is one of those recipes that I don't measure anything. I do use a can of tomato paste, olive oil, water and mix it until I have the right consistency. Then I add Italian seasonings, basil, salt, sugar, minced garlic, and minced onion to taste.
After the crust is done resting, you can put the crusts in the oven for 12 minutes. During this time I get all my topping ingredients together. This is obviously not a pizza you can just bake in a quick ten minutes. You need about an hour when it is all said and done, but it is worth it!
After the 12 minutes, you can then top your pizza and return them to the oven to bake for another 12-14 minutes.
Depending on the toppings you use, you can easily make two 12 inch pizzas for less than ten dollars. It feeds our family of five when I serve it with a side salad.
If you want a less expensive crust or one that is free of almond meal, you may want to try Bob's Red Mill Pizza Crust Mix. You can find it on Amazon's Subscribe and Save for $10.95. It comes in a pack of four and makes two crusts as well for $2.74. I have used this crust mix as well and my family does like it. Although this mix is dairy free and is quicker to make, I prefer the taste and texture of the Gluten Free Mama's mix.
When we first discovered what our gluten free life entailed, one big questions was, "But, what about pizza?" I admit the prospects at the beginning looked rather grim. We tried plenty of tasteless or plain expensive alternatives. I am glad to have found one I think rivals any gluten filled crust! A couple of years later the question has become, "Can we have pizza tonight?" to which I can enthusiastically respond, "Sure!"
I used to work in a pizza parlor (for years and years...) I had a "regular" customer that used to bring in his own tofu and asked us to use that instead of cheese on his pizza. I don't know if you tried that yet or if it's even any good but I know that once a week I was in that kitchen cutting up tofu and putting it on the pizza. I always did it myself because the "kids" (I might have been 17 or 18 when this first started) didn't understand why I would go to the trouble of using a freshly cleaned knife and always put down wax paper so I didn't get any "real" cheese on the poor guys pizza!
ReplyDeleteI don't know what I would do if I couldn't have pizza! So glad companies are coming around to making the difference for people with food allergies!