Gluten Free Pizza Dough Accidental
A week ago I made some gum-free gluten free rolls for St. Patrick's Day. I reserved some of the stretchy dough and made this amazing pizza crust pictured above. I've been using this cheese because I'm new to GF and I'm being extra careful to only eat things I can verify are gluten free, and cheese is a tough one to find. It makes a decent replacement for shredded mozzarella. Choose whatever toppings you like, though.
► First make the dough, as for the rolls recipe above. Unlike most pizza dough, this one is a quickbread. If you decide to make half of a recipe, make sure you weight the flours and use exactly half. If you want to store it, that's ok, just store it for a few days in the fridge. I've never tried freezing it at this stage (see below).
🎯 "OK I made the dough, how much dough do I use?" - this was a large handful for me, and my hands are big. The result was about 10 inches, stretched out. If you use this quick method, you'll have to suit the size of the pizza to the size of your hands. There's no pizza-size police.
► Roll a handful of the dough, like a huge meatball, in your hands (wear gloves and oil them, or just oil your clean hands) to reactivate the rice proteins and warm it back up. Watch this video if you need to convince yourself that sweet rice flour really does add stretch to a dough and it's worth it to knead it.
► Flatten it between your hands, then press it into an oiled cookie sheet, carefully using your fingers or a roller to press it out. The beauty of this dough is that it's already oily enough to be a pizza dough, and it has enough stretch and sticky behavior, so that if you tear it, you can fix it.
► Once it is generally disk shaped, use the heel of your thumb to gently make a thinner area just inside the rim of the pizza. This causes the dough to lift on the edges during pre-baking, making the pizza less likely to spill toppings over the side. It also puffs the edges a bit to form a nice crust.
► Pre-bake for 25 minutes in a 375 degree F oven. Allow to cool completely. This is important. The sweet rice flour is keeping this from "staling" (becoming hard and dry when cold), but there are other flours in there that contribute the type of starch that does become hard. I think that's what makes this dough work, for the "bready" texture needed. It should be at least room temperature, or colder, when you start baking it for pizza.
🎯 Do not cover while cooling. Once cooled, you can carefully freeze the shell(s), but protect it from cracking by stacking the shells inside another container with sides (it's an advantage to make small ones for this reason). Put wax paper between layers so you can separate them later.
► Once you have your cooled (or thawed) pizza shell, top with your favorite cheese and toppings, and bake for 15-20 minutes, while directly on the oven rack or on a pizza stone (so the bottom becomes crispy).
It's a "white pizza" because if I put sauce on it, it might disintegrate, so I didn't risk it. I just dip it into sauce, but I'm not sure the precaution is needed. When baked, garnish with any herbs you like, warm some gluten free sauce, slice, dip and eat!
