PIZZA TIME!

Last night I tried my hand at the pizza dough made by the lovely and wonderful Shauna and Danny from Gluten Free Girl and the Chef. A couple of things first-- the flavor is great, the crust is chewy, and it is TASTY. I genuinely believe you should keep these 3 key things in mind if you decide to embark on a gluten free pizza making adventure. Another thing to keep in mind is that gluten free pizza dough does tend to be a bit sticky-- it is better to go into this baking adventure NOT expecting it to behave like a wheat based dough (remind yourself as you work!) despite your mind veering into the "I need to add more flour/use less water next time" train of thought you may find yourself mentally meandering through.

While I do have their fantastic cookbook where this recipe comes from, Shauna and Danny were generous enough to share their gluten free pizza dough recipe with Michael Ruhlman on his blog so you can taste test one of the many (and really, there are many) fantastic recipes these two have created.

The lead-in to the recipe will probably also make those of you living with celiac and gluten sensitivity a case of the chuckles... sometimes it's just funny to read about other people who are in the same boat. Anyway, enough blathering from me-- go check out the recipe here.

In terms of our experience with this dough, we rolled it out between two layers of waxed paper but I have read that other people have had more success rolling this out between layers of saran wrap. Next time we do this, we're going to try shaping the crust on parchment paper that we can put directly onto the pizza stone. We tried a couple of different ways to flip the dough onto our pizza stone and wound up with two pizzas with lots of... character. Another tip from Shauna and Danny is to let the dough hang out in the fridge overnight to help further develop some extra flavor. While we were both totally tickled with the flavor on the crust, we figure it's worth a shot! Also, this is critical, be sure to do a prebake on your crust-- it's a pretty important step in making a chewy and well cooked crust.

YUM.