I’ve been doing great making sure I don’t eat gluten this week! I’m being overly strict on myself and it’s paying off as I already feel a bit better after seven days of no gluten. That said, I was CRAVING pizza yesterday! Specifically, Casey’s pepperoni pizza with light sauce. Oh my word is that amazing, depending on who cooks it of course. I had enough pizza coupons for a free large pizza and as I started to weigh the decision out in my mind, should I or shouldn’t I, I decided I’d just make homemade gluten-free pizza instead.
I thawed a baggie of pepperoni slices and looked for a jar of spaghetti sauce. I didn’t have any in the pantry so I figured I’d just make sauce instead. I only had one can of diced tomatoes … I’m pretty good at making things stretch but I nixed the idea and checked the freezer for pasta sauce I’d made this summer. BINGO!
The crust I make is usually squeaky and super hard. I didn’t want that so I added a couple of egg whites to my dough, let it sit a bit, and then pressed it into my pan. WORLD OF DIFFERENCE! Still needs a bit of work but I’m getting there, slowly. While my crust baked in the oven I sautéed a chopped bell pepper and shredded my cheeses. I was getting so hungry it was unreal. Excitement grew with every minute ticked off the oven timer because I knew, soon, I’d be feasting on pizza!
I pulled my crust out of the oven and sat it on the stove top. I had all my ingredients lined up on the counter beside the stove, ready to go. I grabbed the sauce and started spooning it onto the oregano and garlic crust. It didn’t look right, the sauce. It didn’t really smell like pasta sauce to be honest but I had pizza on the brain so I scooped some more. It looked really funny but I scooped again. When the big half disc of carrots fell on to my crust I stopped.
My pasta sauce was actually leftover lentil and carrot soup I’d frozen a few months ago!
People, I didn’t let that stop me.
I figured if it was too horribly tasting I’d give the kids the coupons and tell them to order a pizza they liked while I suffered through my pepperoni and pepper, cheddar and dill havati, lentil and carrot pizza. Turns out, as long as you didn’t think “pizza” when you ate it, but instead “bread with stuff on top”, it was surprisingly good. Odd! Funky! Super wild with weird seasonings! But, good. No one used the free coupons for supper (but they did for lunch yesterday) and they ate my rustically artisan pizza without complaining.
We can now knock ‘lentil and carrot soup in lieu of pizza sauce” off our bucket lists. That said, even though it was rather tasty, I don’t ever want to do that again. I’m still debating using the rest of the sauce soup in my spaghetti squash casserole tonight, my original plans for the rest of the ‘pizza sauce’. We’ll see.
I use this recipe for making gluten-free pizza crusts. I add a teaspoon of Greek Adobe salt-free seasoning and a couple of Tablespoons of dried oregano (I love the stuff!) to the dough. I sub the water (added to the dough, not the water used to activate the yeast) with buttermilk and have to almost double the amount of oil used. Last night I worked a couple of egg whites into the dough once I had it “done” according to the recipe and let it sit for a good 10 minutes. I think I need to up the amount of buttermilk as it was a bit more dry than I wanted. This is, hands down, the best gluten-free crust I’ve tried and I highly recommend it!