Pizza!

I have made worse pizza bases from wheat flour – this is good! and, as a bonus, easier/quicker to make than the old wheat yeast-risen bases I used to make. This makes a medium-thick crust. You could always make it thinner, but thicker is probably a tad safer to avoid crumbling!

Pizza dough ingredients:
1 cup potato starch flour
half cup besan/chickpea flour
half cup white rice flour
teaspoon of salt
teaspoon of xantham gum (or guar) (optional)
1 tablespoon baking powder
a big sploosh (few tablespoons?) extra virgin olive oil
up to 1 cup of water

Method:
1. Sift together flours, salt, gum, and baking powder. Stir or whisk until well combined.
2. Add half a cup of water and all the oil to flour mix. Stir unti combined, then knead, and form into a dough ball, adding more water as necessary. (Note: this won’t be stretchy like wheat dough. It will be more like pastry dough.) Only add as much water as you need. Too much and the crust will be crumbly.
3. Very lightly flour pizza stone/tray (rice flour is good for this). Put the ball of dough on your pizza stone/tray.

Flatten it gradually, pressing it into round, pizza-base shape, making sure the edges aren’t crumbly, fixing them as you go. Make sure the dough is evenly distributed as you go. Use a rolling pin to make the process faster. (If it’s not, you can patch holes up by taking dough from other areas – I didn’t have to do this, though, as the dough was quite workable).

4. Roll the edges of the pizza base over, so that the edge centimetre is twice the thickness as the rest of the base, pressing firmly.

5. Bake base for 10 minutes in preheated oven at 220degC. Remove from oven and cool a little. While the base is baking and cooling, sort out your sauces and topping.
6. Add sauces and toppings to pizza.

Using a pastry brush, brush edges of pizza base with olive oil (or spray it, if you are so inclined to use wacky modern technologies). Bake pizza in 220degC oven for 20-30 minutes, or until pastry and toppings are cooked/browning.

7. Don’t let the cat eat any pizza before you’ve had your fair share.

Comments:
- D said that the base tasted a little bit “potatoey”. I think he’s imagining it… but if you don’t like the “potatoey” flavour, swap some of the potato starch flour with tapioca – a quarter to a third of a cup should be plenty.
- The gum makes the crust a bit less crumbly. But so long as you get the water content right, you don’t really need gum (as with most baked goods!).
- You could add seeds to the base, like poppy seeds or sesame. Maybe some LSA.

Sauce and Toppings:
- My sauce is a mixture of: tomato paste, clove of garlic, powdered hot chilli, dried Italian spices – easy, fabulous stuff. A good Chinese-brand sweet chilli sauce makes an excellent pizza sauce, too, particularly with roasted pumpkin among the toppings.
- My toppings on this pizza included: red onion, spinach, kalamata olives, mushrooms, tomato, pineapple, grated Kingland soy cheese, alfalfa sprouts.
- My other favourite toppings are: pineapple, sun-dried tomatoes, kale, artichoke hearts, shallots, homemade cashew cheese, Cheezly brand soy cheese, fresh basil, oregano, silverbeet, roasted pumpkin, baby corn, birdseye chilli, zucchini, capsicum… etc…! Sometimes, after the pizza has come out of the oven, I have been known to top it with uncooked baby spinach, rocket, or sprouts (sunflower sprouts are great for this).

In conclusion:
I adore pizza! I am glad to have it back in my life in gluten-free form… Never leave me again, o glorious tasty Italian meal. xo

P.S. I’m going away for a couple of weeks, so there won’t be updates for a little while.