And The Verdict?...

So today I put the new oven thermometer in the oven and turned it on at 400 degrees. About twenty minutes later, the thermometer was showing 350 degrees. So THAT is why the things I have been trying to cook have not been turning out right.

After fooling around with the oven for an hour or so, I figured out that to get the oven to 400 degrees, I need to set it on 450 degrees. That should make things better as far as trying to make a cake or cookies.

And after all that, I made a gluten free pizza. The crust turned out pretty good. I baked it for 12 minutes at 400 degrees, then put the toppings on and baked for another 12 minutes. Perfect! Oh, and no picture of it because we ate it all!

Project 365 Day 24

MMMMMM Gluten Free for me!

A New Yummy Gluten Free Pizza Recipe

I have been tryng out different pizza dough recipes for a couple weeks now, trying to find one Jim and I can both eat and like. Here is the one I tried today. It was really good, so good that Jim was bragging to the people we work with that I made a de-lish-ous homemade pizza for lunch. He said it is a keeper recipe.

For the crust:

1 packet rapid rise dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
2 tsp. Brown sugar
2/3 cup white rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
2 tsp. Xanthan gum
½ tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp cider vinegar

Add the yeast and brown sugar to the water, and stir to disolve the yeast. Set aside. Measure all the dry ingredients and put in a medium size bowl. Add olive oil, vinegar, and yeast water. Stir with a fork until a ball forms. The dough will be soft. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until about double in size. Stir down the dough. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Spray foil with olive oil. Spread dough with the back of spoon til very thin, making sure you close up any tears or holes in the dough.

For the topping:

1 jar of Classico Pesto sauce, or homemade pesto sauce
black olives
2 or 3 fresh tomatoes, sliced
pepperoni or cooked Italian sausage
1 cup shredded mozzeralla cheese

Spread the pesto on the pizza dough. Add Italian sausage or pepperoni on top of the pesto. Slice tomatoes very thin, and add on top of the meat. Slice the black olives on top of tomatoes. Sprinkle cheese over all. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Let the pizza rest for abut 5 minutes before slicing.

This was very good. The bottom of the crust was a nice golden brown, and the whole crust was crispy and chewy, just the way I like pizza dough. I am going to try this again next week , but use the dough to make some bread sticks. I will let you all know how it turns out.

Gluten Free Pizza

I have not missed pizza at all since I found out I couldn't eat it, but then I know how bad I feel when I eat the gluten. So, because my husband Jim was whining about not getting to eat pizza anymore, I decided to try to make one at home for him. Now, he is not a celiac or even gluten intolerant, but since there are only two of us living here, and I am the cook, I have told him that he has to eat whatever I can eat. I am not into cooking two meals every night. And it won't hurt him to eat what I eat.

With that in mind, I started looking at recipes for pizza crust, and found that I did not have all the ingredients listed in any of them. So, as all good FabGrandmas do, I improvised and used what I had, loosely following a recipe in the Bette Hagman's book, "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast And Healthy." Here is my recipe, based on hers:

1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbl olive oil
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 cup warm water
1 pkg dry yeast

Mix together all the dry ingredients except the sugar in a bowl. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, vinegar, 1 tablespoon of the brown sugar. Put the water and yeast in a measuring cup, stir to disolve the yeast. Add the yeast water to the bowl with the liquid ingredients and beat with a mixer on low speed. Add about half of the dry ingredients and beat well with the mixer. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix in with a spoon until it is smooth. Let the dough rise for 40 minutes (25 minutes for quick rising yeast). Stir it down, and spread on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with olive oil. This will be a thin, runny dough compared to a wheat flour based dough.

I baked my crust first at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes before adding the toppings. After you add your toppings, bake for another 12-15 minutes at 425 degrees.

The texture of this was not as chewy as "real" pizza dough, but it did have a nutty, "wheaty" yeast flavor and was crispy and brown on the bottom. And not bad for a first try. Jim liked it, and ate four pieces of it. As long as he is smiling after dinner, I feel like I succeeded.