Step Away From The GF Pizza Crust

Dear Family with two adorable girls in Naturally Yours last Saturday morning,

I got the feeling you're new to this whole gluten free thing. What with the excited exclamation of "Oh there's more stuff over here," while circling around to aisle 2 of gluten free goodness. You came to the right store, Naturally Yours has a great selection of GF products and the certified gluten free oats in Dad's hands were a good start. However, the 14.99 for two pizza crusts Mom was carrying are going to seriously disappoint. You will get much better results with making your own. Trust me I know. My gluten free pizza crust recipe will rock your face off. If you are avoiding casein substitute bean flour for the whey protein isolate and use your choice of dairy free "milk". I am sorry my mother conditioned me not to talk to strangers otherwise I could have saved you that 15 bucks and told you about gluten free mommy and gluten free gobsmacked (check the achieves, they are both awaiting babies and are posting less frequently), and if you are casein free too gluten free goddess and book of yum have got you covered. These woman are my go to gluten free authorities. Living the life will suck at first, depending on what you're used to (if you are white bread and Twinkie people, it will suck especially hard), but it will be worth it. There is a lot of tasty food out there that doesn't involved the evil gluten.

Best Wishes,
The woman with the GF tarmari, spilling tapioca starch over by the bulk bins

An Actual Food Post

People I can't stress to you enough how awesome Gluten Free Mommy's sesame chicken is. Spring for the San J Gluten Free tamari. You won't regret it. One thing I do kind of regret about the meal, was frying onion rings in the middle of winter. My house still reeks like deep fry, gack, but the onion rings were delicious. I used equal parts sorghum, tapioca, and white rice to toss with buttermilk soaked onions. Bear and BILB both agreed, we will definatley be making the chicken for the party. I don't know if I will be making fortune cookies though. I need more practice at that. My cookies were so gross looking and never crisped up.

So I had leftover buttermilk to make into biscuits. This time for my one cup of flour I used the following formula with a part = to 1/8 cup aka 2TBS

3 pts tapioca
2 pts white rice
1.5 pts sorghum
1.5 pts whey protein isolate
.5 tsp of xanthan

I used this recipe from Epicurious. The texture was really good, the flavor eh. I won't be making it again, but the flour mix is a keeper. I like the nutritional value of teff, but it makes things so dark. I don't mind, but sometimes when you are baking things that gluten eaters are going to eat they get freaked out if it looks weird. Then they have a bad attitude about everything gluten free. So it is good to have options.

GF Buttermilk Biscuits

Had some buttermilk leftover from Christmas and really wanted to use it up. What better way than buttermilk biscuits? I have made GF buttermilk biscuits before and they were just okay. This new formulation is much better. First thing I needed to do was get over my desire to roll out the dough and use a biscuit cutter. Not happening, just let it go VBC. I did, so these are drop biscuits. Recipe is adapted from this one at Epicurious. I roughly cut it by 1/3 and got 5 decent sized biscuits.

1/4 cup teff flour
1/4 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup sweet rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
.5 teaspoon xanthun
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
.25 teaspoon salt
.5 teaspoon baking soda
4 Tablespoon frozen butter, grated
about 1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425. Sift together all the dry ingredients. Then grate your frozen butter in the same bowl. I started with a little more than 1/4 cup of buttermilk and kept adding more until I had the traditional consistency, stirring with a spatula. I am guessing I probably added about 1/2 cup. I was planning on getting 4 biscuits, but they seemed a little big. I spilt it into 5. I put them on a parchment lined baking sheet and baked for 20 minutes. I would start checking for doneness after 15 minutes. So delicious. They are dark because of the teff, but I got over that too. The flavor is great and they are more nutritious than an all rice/starch biscuit. I think even non GFers would enjoy.

Thanksgiving Prep

Today the Spanish Chorizo arrived! I plan on making this stuffing from November 2008 Gourmet. The cornbread is naturally gluten free, so that is very fun. In Peoria I could only find Mexican Chorizo, which is not cured and needs cooked like Italian sausage. Spanish Chorizo is akin to pepperoni or summer sausage. I ordered it from Amazon. If anyone in Peoria knows where I can get Spanish Chorizo locally, I would love to hear about it in the comments. It would save me 7 bucks. There are quite a few recipes that I have run across that call for it. Since it was the holidays, and Mom's first GF Thanksgiving I splurged for the real deal, but it would be nice to be able to get it locally in the future.

GF Pizza Crust

This is my favorite version of gf pizza crust. It makes 3 servings of thin crust. It makes a tastey thicker crust too, but I press it out pretty thin to get more servings in these lean economic times ;) The recipe is based on this one at Epicurious. I do not like chickpea flour. To me, it tastes like metal. I can taste it on things even after they have been washed. I can smell it in the sink after the water has been drained. Sure it is all probably in my head, but I can't handle it. The idea for replacing the chickpea flour with Whey Protein Isolate is from this post. The idea is that chickpea is a high protein flour so you should replace it with a high protein substitute. I use whole milk in my gluten free baking. I like to think that the extra fat helps. Really, recipes converted to gluten free start off behind the eight ball. So any extra help they can get, I try to give. Also really important in getting a good crust is a pizza stone. I got mine right around the time I switched to gluten free cookery. It is fabulous, even if you aren't gluten free, get one. I keep mine in the oven all the time. I cook everything on it, either in a regular pan or directly on the stone. On to the recipe.

3/8 cup tapioca flour
2/8 cup white rice flour
2T + 2t Whey Protein Isolate
2T + 2t sorghum flour
.5 teaspoon xanthum gum
.5 teaspoon salt
1t Italian seasoning
1/4 cup whole milk
2T water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 large egg white
1 T olive oil
2/8 cup flax meal
parchment paper

Heat up the pizza stone in a 500 degree oven. Sift the first 7 dry ingredients together in the bowl of your electric mixer. Add 1T of olive oil and 1 egg white to the dry ingredients. Combine the water, milk, sugar and yeast together (liquids at 110 degrees) and let it bubble for a couple of minutes before putting it in the mixing bowl too. Beat for about 4 minutes. Add in the 2/8 cup of flax meal and beat another 2 minutes. Turn the oven down to 425 degrees. Turn the batter out on to the parchment. Use a wet spatula or wet finger tips to press out thinly. I work on a parchment sheet that is the size of a quarter sheet pan. I spread the batter within an inch of the edges. Place the parchment papered crust directly on the stone and bake for about 5 min until lightly browned. Pull it out and top it as desired. Stick it back in the oven for a couple more minutes. The pizza in the pic is Gorgonzola, cream cheese, caramelized onion, and bacon and it rocked my face off.

GF Pumpkin Muffins

This recipe is based on this recipe by Ellie Krieger on the Food Network. I used one less tablespoon of molasses and skipped the pumpkin seeds. For the two cups of flour in the recipe I used equal parts, brown rice, sorghum, tapioca, and teff flours along with 1.5t of xanthan. I think that blend is originally attributed to the Gluten-Free Girl. I love it! I am so excited to try it in other recipes. The muffins seemed totally "normal." They are best the day of, they do keep in the fridge but become slightly damp. Zapping them in the microwave gets rid of that. I bet they would freeze well. It made 60 teaspoon sized mini muffins or 20 Tablespoon sized regular muffins.