Like most kids (big and small) we love pizza in our house. The versatility of a plain, soft bread base to pile on just about any combination of yummy toppings means that everyone gets their favourites, and it’s the same meal even when we’re all eating something different.
Strangely though, I have not sought to concoct my own gluten free dough base……….. until now.
We have tried a number of commercial gluten free pizza mixes and pre-prepared bases. We have also tried pretty much every restaurant offering of gluten free base in the clamour of the big chain-restaurants to finally recognise the need to cater for the gluten-free customer. I speak from a lot of experience when I say that every one of them has a different texture and flavour – some pretty good and some needing a complete re-think.
This week, I decided to finally make my own! It’s pretty good if I say so myself. I used a couple of 8 year old ‘victims’ to test it (one gluten free and one not), as well as trying it myself with my husband. Ok……. so that’s not a large sample, but everyone ate it………….. lots of it……… The kids gave it the thumbs up. Even my husband reckoned that it was the best GF base he had tried.
The dough is amazingly pliable and bread-like (once it has been gently kneaded with an extra dusting of flour), to the extent that next time I might even give it a shot as a ‘stuffed crust’.
A soft airy bread-base, it rises beautifully too and makes for a great deep-pan version if that’s how you like it. Or just roll more thinly if you prefer less bread.
I’m so chuffed with my pizza dough that I am sharing it at this month’s Family Foodies challenge, hosted by Louisa over at Eat Your Veg and Vanesther at Bangers & Mash. Themed ‘Love’, but especially with all those little people in mind, I have made my pizza’s into diddy little hearts as a special show of care and love towards my beautiful gluten-free daughter. She was very excited when she saw them…….. Mummy made her special hearts………….. Not just any old hearts, but pizza ones!!!!!
We had a whole bunch of toppings between us, but the hearts photographed here have a delicious combination of cheeses, prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts and olives. The olives are courtesy of Fragata who kindly donated them for a give-away which I recently won from Katie over at Apple & Spice. Thanks Katie! Thanks Fragata! They are delicious…….
Pizza Hearts – gluten free (makes equivalent of 4 individual-sized pizzas)
Ingredients
Method
- Line 2 to 3 baking trays with baking paper.
- Weigh and mix together in a large bowl all the flours, almonds, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt, making sure any lumps are broken down
- In a separate bowl, mix together the yeast, sugar, milk powder and warm water, whisking briefly to combine. Leave to stand for about 10 minutes until frothy.
- In a further small bowl beat together the egg and olive oil.
- Preheat the oven to 200 C/400 F/Gas 6.
- Pour the egg and yeast mixes onto the flour and using the back of a silicone/wooden spoon, gradually bring the ingredients together and ‘knead’ with the spoon until you have a smooth dough. The dough will be quite sticky.
- Liberally sprinkle a work surface with rice flour and tip out the dough. dust your hands with rice flour and gently bring the dough together, working slightly so that it feels a little less sticky and slightly more pliable.
- Making sure that there remains a sprinkling of flour on the surface to prevent sticking and also flouring your rolling pin, roll the dough to a thickness of about 3 to 7mm (depending on how thick you want your final pizza) and shape as you wish. If you want 4 even-sized pizza bases, divide into 4 balls before rolling. I used a large cookie cutter to make heart shapes.
- Place your dough bases on the prepared baking sheets and bake in the oven for about 8 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and top with your favourite toppings (I usually use a base layer of Passata and then pile the rest on top).
- Place back in the hot oven for a further 10 to 15 minutes (depending on the size of your pizza), until cooked and golden.
- Remove and enjoy.
Can I substitute the milk powder? I can’r have dairy. Thanks!
You can either sub for dairy free milk powder (soya/coconut, or any other). Or failing that, I would suggest using hand-hot dairy free milk in place of the water xx
Hi! Is the potato flour in this recipe meant to be potato starch? I used potato flour (or similar that we have here – called ‘potato threads’) and the dough was really, really dry (I had to add considerable more water to get it to even come together, let alone get sticky). The dough had a great flavour. Next time I would take more time and try to roll it out a little thinner, as it was quite dense coming out of the oven. Thank you!
Hi Ngaire.
Huge apologies. Yes… It should be potato starch.
It’s a really old recipe that I wrote before my current knowledge of GF flours and at the time, I received potato starch flour on prescription that was labelled potato flour.
I have a lot of old recipes that need updating and I am gradually working through them one by one. This one needs a retest and tweak… A tad more liquid is fine even with potato starch.
I will make this recipe a priority for update over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I have changed this recipe and I will try and go through all the recipes in the mean-time to check the wording.
Assume that if a recipe says ‘potato flour’, it means potato starch!
So so sorry.
It’s no problem, you do an amazing job creating all these recipes!!
I really can’t wait to try this with potato starch now… probably very delicious!
Thanks lovely x
Ok tried it with potato starch now, it was very nice. The crust in particular was very crunchy and had a great flavour! Thank you
Great. You’re welcome. I’ll get around to updating it this summer and may make a few improvements. xx
I’m trying this tomorrow!!!! Nice and amazing recipe shared by you, thank you so much for that.
Wonderfull. I cannot resist, I'm going to prepare it.! Thank you very much
You're welcome x
Thank you so much for posting this pizza base recipe! It was light & fluffy, so easy to make…gone are my days of buying firm chewy pizza bases from the store! I think I will attempt your dumplings recipe next…
I'm really pleased you liked it Donna. And thank you so much for the feed back.It is so good to hear that someone else has made the recipe successfully! If you do make the dumplings, let me know how you get on…..
Well done you on perfecting a gluten free pizza base, and I'm extremely impressed by your gorgeous mini hearts. My kids would go crazy for these! What a delightful Family Foodies entry, thank you so much.
Thank you Lou. They were fun to make and yum to eat!
Such a sweet idea! Looks really tasty 😀
Thanks Aimee! They were….
These look delicious and I completely agree with you about the varying quality of gf pizza in the shops and high street. Some are pretty good and others taste like sweet cardboard. Love the heart shapes.
Pleased you got the olives 🙂
Thanks Katie. Sweet cardboard is a good description! Some are also pretty slimy! But not these ones……. I think we'll be going more home-baked more often!!!!
These are so cute and it's lovely that your daughter was so excited by them.
Thanks Corina. I think we were all quite excited by them! I reckon pizza tastes even better when it's heart-shaped………..