Gluten Free Pizza Redux!!!!

Mike, here!

We are very persistent when it comes to a thing that we really want to see succeed.  I think we both knew that, in order for a gluten-free lifestyle to be truly feasible, we would have to be able to find a way to either:

1. Find a really good recipe for gluten-free pizza dough, or
2. Enjoy a gluten-based pizza every once in a while.  

Now, I have heard it said that the longer you go without consuming gluten of any kind, the less tolerant your body becomes to it.  I do not know if this is true, but it kind of makes sense.  In much the same way you build up a tolerance to, say, alcohol, that tolerance tends to diminish when you don't maintain it.  "Absence makes the sot grow drunker," so to speak.  I can definitely speak for alcohol, and it doesn't even take that long.  Friday was the first glass of wine I had since going gluten-free, and that was only a week and a half.  And I was loopy!  I'm a 200-pound boy; I can drink a lot of people under the table.  Not Friday.  

But I digress. As usual.  The point I was trying (indirectly) to make is that, if we go a month or two without consuming gluten, and then Kelly makes her usual homemade pizza recipe (which makes not one, but two pizzas, both of which we usually snarf down), that could very well be the equivalent of a one-year AA veteran suddenly sucking back a beer bong (note: beer has gluten).  Or a reformed crack smoker suddenly deciding to cook up and mainline.  Or, or, well, you get the idea.  I don't think we'd enjoy it very much.  Or, rather, we'd enjoy the first few bites, before our stomachs exploded with all the force of a chest-burster from Alien.  OK, that's a little graphic, and most likely absurdly silly.  But without that gluten tolerance built up, I think we might become very, very sick.  I don't think I would enjoy that very much.  

No, to go gluten free means you have to really go gluten free.  For good.  Finite Glutatem.   (Yeah, I made that up.  But I wonder if Harry Potter has a spell to banish the gluten from your body?  Probably scourgify would do it).  So going back to my two options, above, Option 1 is really the only choice.  

A week ago, last Friday we tried the packaged GF pizza mix from Bob's Red Mill.  It wasn't bad, taste-wise, and the crust was OK on the edges, but we found it too dense and undercooked in the middle.  Well, Kelly wasn't about to give up after one go.  So she doggedly researched other recipes and options.  And she came across this gem from King Arthur Flour.  Made it today:

Toppings were sauteed chicken tenders (diced), sliced green and red bell peppers, sliced red onions, and Sargento Four-Cheese Pizzaria Blend (I think).  Sauce was Buitoni Pesto.  Tried to go sparingly on the ingredients, but as you can see we ended up loading it up pretty heavily.  

And it was awesome.  Obviously not as good as Kelly's homemade (gluten-based) recipe, but it was very, very good.  Texture was excellent, the buttermilk powder gave it a slight sourdough flavor, and it had a nice crunch around the edges.  This was as awesome as last week's effort was mediocre.  

OK, there's hope.  This is definitely one of the must-haves in order for us to really go gluten-free and stay there.  Kelly has one more recipe she wants to try; she just needs to get some unflavored protein powder (unfortunately, IsaPro only comes in vanilla these days, dang it).  Finding one that we trust is going to be tricky, but she has a source she's looking into.  

The other must-haves?

• Pancakes (King Arthur has a recipe for those, too)
• Sandwich Bread (got some almond flour; gonna try that soon as well).  

Not too shabby, really.