Gluten-Free Pizza Crust
My family loves pizza. Maybe I should say that my family is addicted to pizza. Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, Hunt Brothers, Home made. If it has marinara and cheese on it, we eat it.
Imagine my disappointment when Gabriel told me that he didn’t really like pizza. I think he purposely kept that little piece of information from me until after we were married.
As it turns out, it’s not really that he doesn’t like pizza, it’s that he did like it, and ate a lot of it before he new about his food allergies. Needless to say, all that wheat laden pizza crust made him sick, and he subconsciously began to equate eating pizza with being sick. That’s why didn’t like pizza.
So anyway, I went to work on honing my gluten-free pizza crust making skills… and it quickly became the bane of my existence. All of my crust felt like rubber. Tasted like it too. Or pancakes. I tried a crust that was like a pancake one time.
I’m not sure why I had such terrible luck, but it made me feel better to know that I’d never had good gluten-free crust at a restaurant either.
I’d pretty much given up on pizza and was planning to celebrate the day Garrett weaned with a trip to our local Pizza Hut (and then further out to papa John’s before coming home and making pizza for dinner) before my mother-in-law lent me the book Gluten-Free Baking Classics
by Annalise Roberts. If you don’t have that book, I highly recommend it. Very highly. Some of her recipes were so good that I decided to give her pizza crust a try.
You can not imagine how excited I was when the pizza crust was not just passable, but good!
Now admittedly, it’s not thick crust pizza. I’ve never actually been real big on making thick crust pizza.
BTW, did you notice how I took these pictures on top on my mom’s totally awesome wood cook-stove?
Did you? That thing heats an entire two story house. It’s awesome. When I grow up, I’m getting one.
Anyhoo, Back to the pizza recipe. I’ve made this three times in a row with excellent results. Crispy on the bottom, slightly chewy on top. Without a doubt, it’s the best gluten-free pizza crust I’ve ever had.
Gluten-Free Pizza
1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour mix*
1T. sugar
1t. salt
2 1/2 t. yeast
1t. xanthan gum (I use guar gum
*You can sub 1/2 cup of millet flour for some added flavor.
mix all of these ingredients together and add:
1T. oil
3/4 cup +1T. warm water.
Mix together until dry ingredients are incorporated, then beat for two minutes. Spread onto generously oiled pan which has been sprinkled with cornmeal (the corneal is optional). One recipe almost covers an 11×15 jelly roll pan for me. Let rise for 30-40 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 and bake crust for 10-15 minutes. Remove from oven and top as desired. Place back in oven and bake for another 10-ish minutes. Or you can take it out of the oven after the first baking and use later. I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s also supposed to freeze well. (Upate: it freezes very well).
This recipe was slightly adapted from Gluten-Free Baking Classics which I highly, highly recommend. Oh, did I already say that? Anyway…
Enjoy!
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Peg says
Forgive me for being dense…but could you please clarify the “3/4 +1T warm water” for me? 3/4 of what? 3/4 T + 1T?
We’ve been searching for a good pizza crust recipe and I’m hopeful about this one!
Elise says
ah, that would be 3/4 of 1 cup. sorry about that! I’m going to fix it right now.
Laura says
We loved this GF pizza crust – my husband couldn’t tell the difference between this and traditional crust! It had a crispy quality we haven’t seen much yet with other GF products and recipes. And you can’t beat the cost! Thank you! I am also looking for a basic everyday GF bread recipe for my son’s grilled cheese – I tried the yeast free one on your site and he had a hard time with it, he has autism and is texture sensitive (won’t eat crust, etc.). Do you have a favorite recipe you use? We are trying to be sugar free also but a T or so in a recipe isn’t going to hurt us:) He eats grilled cheese every day, so any suggestions would be helpful!
Elise says
So glad you like the pizza crust! 🙂 I find myself switching up bread recipes all the time, and it’s hard to say which one is the very best, but the first one on this list is kind of my go-to recipe. It really good the day you make it, and is passable the next day.
Trish says
I made this tonight and the crust tasted good and my kids approved of it. The main problem was it stuck to the pan and we had to scrape it up to eat it. Next time I will use parchment and my pizza stone. One tip was that it is really hard to spread until I remembered to use water to spread and smooth it out. I also used 1/2 cup of Expandex and 1/2 cup cornstarch in the gluten free flour mix instead of 1 cup cornstarch. Overall pretty good and easy to make. I will try it again.
Jerry McMillen says
This 8s the best gluten free pizza crust I have found ! So easy and everyone loved it. Ended up making 4 batches in one day it was so good.
Sandra York says
I just received her cook book and the first thing I wanted to try was the pizza crust. It says it’s better if it sets a day before. I always made my wheat crust the day before and left it in the frig, because it was better that way. Does this mean to mix it all together and let it set in the frig a day or to bake it and put it in the frig? It says to do this so that the xanthan gum has time to set.