Gluten-Free Pizza Crust

We have a new Friday night pizza tradition. I'm still perfecting the crust (it's more pour-able than roll-able), but for a gluten/egg/dairy-free bread product, it's pretty good. The Master Chief himself, the pickiest palate to please when it comes to gluten-free foods, even declared it so.

The Master Chief opts for pepperoni and mozzerella. (Also - are these not the largest pepperoni slices ever?!)

The babies and I enjoy chevre and broccoli.

It's a "bready" crust (we are thick crust people), with a good, chewy texture. It lacks the dense, hockey puck quality some of my earlier gluten-free creations had, and we don't miss that at all.

The Master Chief's biggest complaint in the early iterations of this recipe was that the crust had a taste. (Said with a scrunched up nose and pained expression.) I think it was a combination of him missing the flavor of the wheat flour and not being used to the way the gluten-free flours taste. I overcame this obstacle by adding some herbs and garlic to the crust, and by using more pizza sauce than I normally would. This crust can stand up to a little extra sauce!

Here's the recipe - it makes two medium-sized pizzas:

Ingredients

1 cup rice flour
1 cup tapioca flour
1 cup sorghum flour
2 tsp garlic powder
1-1/2 tsp oregano
1-1/2 tsp basil
1-1/2 cup warm water (divided into 1/2 cup and 1 cup)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp honey (or other sweetener of your choice; must be something that will activate yeast)
1 pkg yeast
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp ground flax seed

Directions

1. Combine the rice flour, tapioca flour, sorghum flour, garlic powder, oregano, and basil thoroughly in a big mixing bowl.
2. Make a "well" in the center of the dry ingredient mixture. Pour in 1/2 cup warm water, yeast, salt and honey (or other sweetener). Gently stir the liquid in the "well" without disturbing the dry mixture around it too much. (Some of the flour mixture will get mixed in anyway, and that is okay.)
3. Let it sit for five minutes.
4. The liquid in the center should be slightly frothy and resemble a heady beer. Add the rest of the ingredients (olive oil, flax seed, remaining cup of warm water) and mix well.

The crust is now ready to be transferred to parchment paper or a well-oiled pizza pan sprinkled with cornstarch or GF flour. (I use a ladle and let it spread out.) It needs to rise for 30 minutes prior to baking (more if you prefer a thicker crust). After it has risen, bake it at 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Add toppings and bake for 5-8 minutes longer, until the toppings are bubbly and lightly browned.

I am in love with my pizza stone, and someday I hope to have a pizza peel to make Friday nights a lot easier. But for now, here's my pizza peel-less method for divvying up the dough and baking it on a pizza stone:

1. Turn over two cookie sheets (round, if you have them) and cover with parchment paper.
2. Ladle equal amounts of the dough mixture onto each piece of parchment paper. I tip the cookie sheet and let the dough slide around on the parchment paper until I have the size and shape that I want. (If you try this, don't forget to hold onto the parchment paper, too!)
3. Let rise for 30 minutes and then bake for 5 minutes. (I leave my pizza stone on the bottom rack of the oven while it's preheating. I slide the upside-down cookie sheet topped with the parchment paper and crust onto the top rack to bake.)
4. I set the cookie sheet on a cooling rack while I add the toppings, but when I put the pizza back in the oven, the crust is solid enough for me to slide the parchment paper onto the hot pizza stone.
5. When it's done, I pull the parchment paper and pizza off the stone onto a cutting board, and slide the next pizza in.