Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Celiac-Friendly Pizza/Bread Dough

Nobody in our house has Celiac disease, but the neighbor kid does, and his mom bakes the most amazing treats!  I'm not much of a baker on a normal day, so I'm really impressed with her gluten-free skills.

This is a recipe she gave me for bread.  It works in a bread machine, but makes a much nicer loaf in a bread pan...so I'll let the bread machine mix the dough and then I'll bake it in the oven.  It's a soft/wet dough, so it's not as airy as traditional wheat-based breads, but it's pretty tasty.  I'm an obsessive tweaker of recipes, so naturally I had to wonder if this would also make a decent pizza crust (because hello....Superbowl Sunday a few days ago was pizza torture for me, albeit helpful for the diet!).

Guess what?  It works!  It's like this bread has been reincarnated for a more noble purpose, to hold sauce and toppings!  As someone who had perfected regular pizza crust just before going gluten-free, I'm satisfied, and now Noble doesn't have to be the weirdo eating a bowl of rice when all his brothers and sisters are scarfing down pizza.

Gluten-Free Bread Mix*
(Add ingredients to bread machine in order:)

1 c Hot Water (80 degree)
1/3 cup Rice or Hemp Milk
2 eggs Lightly Beaten
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
4 Tbs Vegetable Oil
2 Tbs Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 1/3 cups White Rice Flour
2/3 cup Brown Rice Flour
1 1/2 tsp Xantham Gum
2 tsp active dry yeast

To bake in bread machine, use Basic/Wheat setting.

To just make dough, use the Dough setting (duh, I know).

To make it by hand, mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine them together in a large bowl, cover and let rise for an hour in a warm place.  When it has almost doubled, pour into greased bread pan and cook....umm....30 minutes?  Until it looks toasty golden and done!  (heh-heh)  Sorry....I'll have to bake another loaf and see how long it took and then I'll edit the blog.
To make pizza, spread dough onto pizza stone or a greased pan or tray.  It won't ooze and spread around but remember, it's bread dough...it'll puff up a little, so spread it thin.  This one recipe made an awesome 15-in pizza.  Pre-bake the crust a good 8-10 minutes at about 400 degrees (this is why I'm not good at baking: I make things up as I go) until the crust looks pretty set and golden.  Top with whatever.... then stick it back in the oven until it look DELICIOUS.  That'll be about 10 minutes, for you people who don't know what DELICIOUS looks like on a pizza.

So there you have it.  If you try this, tell me what you think, and how it went for you.... 

Dude...you could add herbs to the pizza dough....(just modifying still, in my brain....)


*I don't know where this recipe originally came from, I just have it on a scrap of paper, taped to the inside of my kitchen cupboard.  I would give credit where credit is due, but it's been passed around too much...