My son has been gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free for about 18 months now. We eat really healthfully now -- fresh vegetables, quinoa creations, fish and poultry. I've enjoyed the necessity to be creative, particularly to create a new take on family favorite recipes. During these weeks and months, we've tried the gluten-free pizzas at a couple of local pizza restaurants, but we've found the crusts a sadly lacking substitute for delicious wheat bread. Not only did we miss the wheat, but we also missed the cheeses. A few days ago my son reminded me that substitutes were just that -- pale imitations of the real deal. I took his words as a challenge to find not a substitute but to create a new way to make pizza. Last night, I succeeded.
I found a variation on this recipe at several spots on the internet. I'm grateful to the other families who have shared on the internet their struggles with diet, so here I share a solution to the void left by the loss of pizza. Enjoy!
1 cup of quinoa
Cover the quinoa with an inch of water and soak overnight. I let my quinoa soak from about 9pm until I prepared it at about 3pm the following day.
Preheat the oven to 425 to 450, depending on how hot your oven runs. Brush a 12" cast iron skillet with olive oil and set in oven to preheat.
Drain the quinoa and rinse. Add the quinoa, olive oil, water, salt, garlic powder, and Italian seasonings to a blender and mix well. The batter should be the texture of pancake batter.
When the oven reaches 450 degrees, pour the batter in circles into the skillet and spread it evenly across the skillet. Caveat: the skillet is so hot the batter will stick where you pour it. Aim well! Put the skillet back in the oven and bake for 9-10 minutes. Remove from oven, flip crust, and bake 8-9 more minutes. Remove from oven and cool crust on a rack while you make more crusts.
As toppings for our pizza, I used roasted garlic and spread the crust with the garlic. I added fresh tomatoes (seeds removed), pine nuts (added both great texture and taste), more of the roasted garlic, and arugula. I sprinkled Daiya Mozzarella "cheese" over the toppings. The big splurge for us was to add Bilinski's Organic Sweet Italian Chicken Sausage -- perfection! Remember to avoid overloading your crust because that will make the crust soggy. Heat in 450 oven about 5 minutes on a rack or pizza stone.
The recipe above makes one pizza crust, so soak a lot of quinoa. You're gonna love this one!
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