Full credit to the talented Dan Lepard who wrote a recipe for gluten free bread using psyllium husks. I had never used these before and they work amazingly well in gluten free doughs, helping the dough to rise naturally and giving a nice chew to the cooked base. I use both yeast and baking powder in this recipe to get as much lightness in the dough as possible without overloading on the taste of either ingredient. Another interesting addition can be to add some herbs and spices to the dough as in this gluten free pizza recipe. Maybe not for the purists but worth considering.

I have included links to some of the more unusual ingredients on Amazon, but you should be able to find them in your local health food store.

Ingredients – makes 2 bases

Method

1. Mix together all of the dry ingredients
2. Add the oil, vinegar and water and stir well for about 30 seconds. The dough should be a stiff, sticky paste.
3. Lay out 2 squares of oiled baking paper. Oil your hands to prevent sticking, and separate the dough into equal sized lumps.
4. Following the shaping technique from my previous gluten free dough recipe, press the dough into a disc shape. Drizzle with as much olive oil as needed to make the dough workable. Aim for a base about 4mm thick with a slightly raised edge.
5. Lay a piece of plastic wrap or baking paper over each base to stop it drying out and leave to rise for about 1 hour. You should also start preheating your pizza stone at this point.
6. Once the bases have risen for an hour and the oven is properly hot, add cheese, sauce and ingredients according to your recipe and slide the pizza along with its sheet of baking paper into the oven. Cook until the crust is starting to brown, rotating in the oven halfway through cooking if necessary. You can also finish it off under the grill for a minute to really get the top browned well.

NOTES: If you don’t have all of these ingredients, you could substitute the rice flour, corn flour & tapioca for a commercial gluten free flour mix. The soy flour could be replaced by millet flour, fine polenta or maize flour as it is used to add flavour and colour. If reducing the sugar at all, add a pinch more baking powder as the sugar helps the yeast leaven the bread. Salt can be reduced or eliminated completely; it is mostly for flavour.

TIP: The key to stretching out a base is to use dough that has been resting for at least 1 hour, preferably more. This gives the gluten in the dough time to relax, so that it spreads more easily. If you find the dough is too elastic and keeps springing back while shaping, cover it with plastic wrap and leave to rest for 10 minutes. If all of your dough is quite springy, do the first step of pressing out your dough into 1cm thick discs, then leave them all to rest for 10 minutes before stretching.

Method

1. Place your dough ball onto a floured surface. If it becomes too sticky to handle at any point, dust with flour again.



2. Start by pressing the dough ball into a disc shape, first with your fingertips and then with the flat of your hands. Try to get the dough as flat as possible before you start the next step. Pressing out the dough first makes it much easier to maintain a nice round shape in the finished base. You may find that you need to flip the dough over and press on the other side.



3. At this point you should have an evenly round disc perhaps 1cm thick.



4. The next step is to stretch the dough. First, pick up the dough with your thumbs and forefingers near the outer rim. Stretch gently by moving your hands apart. Once you have stretched a section, rotate the dough and stretch again, working your way around the dough. Keep rotating and stretching until the base is a fairly even thickness.



5. You may be able to achieve an even thickness just by stretching and rotating the dough as above. If not, try draping the base over your knuckles, with both hands clenched into fists in front of you. Gently move your hands apart to stretch the base out. Concentrate on any thicker areas that you might have missed. The thickness of your base may vary with personal taste, but I aim for a base around 2mm thick in most places, with a slightly thicker rim.




6. The base should now be ready to flip onto a floured peel and start topping. If you have ended up with a few minor tears in the dough, just squeeze them together – they will not be noticed in the finished pizza.



7. And that’s it! Don’t worry if this seems tricky, give it a try and you will be stretching and spinning bases in no time. Just take it slow, and start off stretching gently until you get a feel for your dough.

NOTE: If you aren’t confident to try this method, you can use a rolling pin to roll out your base. However rolling pins tend to knock more air out of the base, so stretching is the preferred method.

Recipe

• 150g White rice flour
• 80g Tapioca starch
• 30g Fine polenta
• 6g Guar or xanthan gum
• 6g Sea salt
• 10g Sugar
• 10g Baking powder
• 25ml Olive oil
• 1 Egg (this can be omitted to make a vegan base, add a little more water instead)

Method

1. In a large mixing bowl, stir all of the dry ingredients together.
2. Add the oil, egg and water and stir until the mixture is smooth. The consistency should be a thick, sticky paste.

Gluten free pizza dough

Shaping the bases

1. Place 2 squares of baking paper on a bench or peel and give them a light coat of oil.
2. Before handling the mixture drizzle some olive oil into the bowl, and rub a little into your hands. This makes the bases much easier to shape and handle.
3. Separate the mixture into 2 equal size lumps and place one on each square of paper. Drizzle a little more oil over the lump of dough.
   
4. Using the palms of your hands, start to press the dough into a pizza shape. Try to get an even thickness of about 4 millimeters.
   
5. Smooth any cracks around the edge and create a slightly raised rim.
   
6. The base is now ready for your toppings! Once topped, use a peel to lift the pizza and greaseproof paper and slide onto a preheated pizza stone to bake.

See the article on toppings to see how this pizza looked fresh out of the oven!

Ingredients (makes 2 pizzas)

• 300gm White flour (1.5 cups)
• 200ml Water (4/5 of a cup)
• 6g Sea salt (1 heaped tsp)
• 8g Instant dried yeast (2 heaped tsp)
• 8g Sugar (2 tsp)
• 15ml Olive oil (1 tbsp)

Method

1. In a large mixing bowl, stir all of the dry ingredients together.
2. Add the water and stir briefly.
3. Add the oil and continue to stir until the ingredients are well mixed.
4. Cover the bowl and allow to rest for 10 minutes
5. Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface. Knead the dough for around 5 minutes. As you knead, you will notice the dough losing its stickiness and becoming smooth and supple.
6. Separate the dough into two equal parts and shape into dough balls. Sprinkle with flour and cover with plastic wrap. Leave in a warm place to rise for one hour.
7. The dough is now ready to be used. Shape each ball into a pizza base, place on a floured peel, add toppings according to your favourite recipe and cook your pizza on a preheated pizza stone!

NOTE: Because the dough has not had much time to relax since being kneaded, these bases might spring back a bit when being shaped. If this happens, shape the base half way, then let it rest for 5 minutes before finishing.

When the dough is left overnight before using, the difference in flavour is incredible. The base will have a sweet, nutty/buttery flavour, so good that you’d be happy to eat the base with no toppings at all!

For those interested in a bit of the science, the flavour develops in this way because enzymes in the flour start to break down the starch molecules, converting them to complex sugars. These sugars give the dough a natural sweetness and help the crust caramelise to a golden brown. Incidentally, this is why there is no sugar in this dough – when other recipes call for added sugar they are in part mimicing the effect that we get by just leaving the dough be.

By leaving the dough overnight we lengthen the process of freeing up these natural sugars, further improving the flavour and colour in the base when cooked. We keep the dough cold in the fridge because the low temperatures slow down the yeast, preventing the dough from raising so much that it collapses. The low temperatures also keep the yeast from consuming all of the sugars in the dough! It is a complex topic – if you would like to read more on this, author and baker Peter Reinhart has a lot of excellent, detailed information In his book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Peter also has a great blog about his books for those interested in bread and other baking.

There is one other important benefit from the overnight rest, which is the greatly reduced kneading time. In a standard recipe the dough must be kneaded for up to 10 minutes to develop the gluten, which gives the dough strength and allows it to be shaped without tearing. But when dough is left to rest for longer, the gluten starts to develop on its own and just a short period of kneading is enough to shape a useable dough. The reduced handling also improves flavour and colour by reducing oxidation (caused by increased exposure to air ).

HOWEVER – you don’t have to know any of this to make the dough, so let’s jump in and get started!

This recipe makes enough dough for 2 medium-thin crust pizzas. You can scale up the quantities to make as many or few as you like.  It’s important to use good quality flour, but you can experiment with different brands to find one that works for you. Look for an unbleached flour with around 11% protein and you can’t go wrong, although you may have to use a tiny bit more or less water as every flour absorbs water a little differently. If you can find a good one, the traditional flour used in Italian pizza is ’00′ grade flour. 00 flour is a little finer than normal flour, and the texture and flavour is wonderful.

It’s important to weigh the ingredients when making dough, and weights are given here in grams. Kitchen scales that measure grams are ok for the yeast and salt if you don’t mind guesstimating a bit, but scales that measure fractions of a gram are a nice luxury as well. However, I have given approximate measurements in volume for those who don’t have scales.

Ingredients

• 300gm White flour (1.5 cups)
• 200ml Water (4/5 of a cup)
• 6g Sea salt (1 heaped tsp)
• 3 g Instant dried yeast (1 slightly heaped tsp)
• 15ml Olive oil (1 tbsp)

NOTE: The olive oil is not truly traditional but it is added here to make the dough slightly more tender since we will be cooking it for longer than in a wood fired oven. If making this dough for a wood fired oven, you can omit the oil.

Method

1. Weigh out the flour, yeast and salt and mix them together in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add the water and stir with a spoon just until the mixture starts to form a rough lump. This should only take 10 seconds of vigorous stirring. If there are stray crumbs of flour left in the bottom of the bowl, add another half a tablespoon of water  and mix again.



3. Pour the olive oil over the dough.
4. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave to stand for 10 minutes.
5. Sprinkle some flour on a large board or clean bench top, and turn out the dough. Sprinkle a little flour over the top, just enough to make it easy to handle without sticking to your hands.



6. Knead the dough for 8-10 strokes, just until the olive oil is mixed in and the dough feels silky and smooth.
7. Put the dough back in your mixing bowl, cover, and leave to rest for another 10 minutes.
8. The dough is now ready to divide into pieces. This recipe makes 2 x 250g pizza bases, so use your scales to make 2 even lumps.



9. Shape each piece into a dough ball, roll each ball in flour to coat well, and put them in the fridge overnight or for at least 6-8 hours. You can put them in a baking tray or plate covered loosely with glad wrap, or a large sealable plastic container. Make sure you  leave room for the balls to expand – they may grow up to double in size while in the fridge.



10. Remove the dough balls from the fridge about 1 hour before you want to start cooking, around the same time you start preheating your pizza stone in the oven. Once the oven is ready, shape your base, add toppings of your choice, and use your peel to slide the pizza into the oven!