Yes, you can have pizza again!!
You have NO IDEA how excited I am about this recipe!
Honestly, I think pizza was the food I most missed when I had to cut out gluten and dairy. Most gluten free bases that you can buy also contain maize or yeast, both of which I can’t eat either! So the answer? Make my own 🙂
I hadn’t actually planned to make up my own recipe for this, I just wanted a quick solution that someone else had created for me. But it is pretty hard to find a gluten, maize, egg, oat, gum and yeast free recipe. I found two that had pretty good reviews and tried making them both… one had a lot of ground almonds in and tasted wayyyy too sweet for me to enjoy it as a pizza base, and the other was very solid – hence the creation of this recipe!
I’m not going to pretend that it’s like a hand-stretched beautiful yeasty Italian pizza base, it’s not! But the result is thin and delicious, it holds together well and you can even pick up a loaded slice! It’s a great vehicle for some amazing toppings, and I’m going to be making it a lot 🙂
Servings |
person
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- 1/4 cup brown rice flour
- 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds Can be replaced by more brown rice flour if prefered - see note
- 1 tbsp cassava flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 3 tbsp water until the dough just holds together - add a little more if you need to
Ingredients
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- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (fan) and line a baking try with baking paper.
- Put the pumpkin seeds into your blender and blend until a flour is formed. A coarse texture is fine but it may make the base crumblier than it would otherwise be...
- Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl, and mix the water and lemon juice separately in another.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and use your hands to combine it well and press it into a ball of dough.
- Place this dough onto the baking paper lining the baking tray. Take another piece of baking paper and place it on top of the dough. Roll it flat so that it is a couple of mm thick, shaping the edges with your hands so that they are not too thin or crumbly.
- Peel the top sheet of baking paper carefully off and bake the pizza base in the oven for 10 minutes.
- While this is baking prepare your toppings! I'll do a separate recipe for this, but great ones to start with are tomatoes, mushrooms, fresh basil, artichoke hearts and olives, mmm!
- Take it out of the oven and put your toppings on. At this point the top of your base will look slightly crackled, but don't worry!
- Now slide the pizza and baking paper off the baking tray (but still on the baking paper) straight onto the oven shelf and bake for a further 15 to 20 minutes, depending on your toppings.
- When it's done take a flat utensil and slide it between the baking paper and the pizza base to loosen it, then serve!
I did try this another time with more bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice to get a lighter base, but it became too crumbly to pick up (an important factor in my mind!), and a bit too much like shortbread! This version is definitely my best so far...
You can also leave out the pumpkin seeds if you like and just use an extra 1/4 cup of brown rice flour in their place. Add an extra 1/2 tbsp of water if you do this. I just like the extra nutrition and flavour that comes with the added pumpkin seeds, but the version without works brilliantly too.
This makes a small ‘personal’ pizza size – if you want a large one just double the recipe. I load mine up with A LOT of tasty toppings and the small version is just the right size for me.
If you want ideas for toppings then here are some suggestions 🙂
And you have no idea how happy I am to be able to enjoy pizza with my family again!