NO-wheat pizza recipe ? Pizza Discuss NO-wheat pizza recipe ? in the Brick Oven Cooking forums; I have just discovered that my daughter is allergic to week and is unble to participate in the weekly home-made ...

[brokencookie]

I have just discovered that my daughter is allergic to week and is unble to participate in the weekly home-made pizza. ( She is really bummed out ) Does anyone have a non-wheat recipe for pizza ?

[Dutchoven]

Could try using barley flour in a quick bread recipe with baking soda and powder...I'll see what I can find out
Best
Dutch

[brokencookie]

Thanks Dutch

Most of the recipes I have found use rice flour and guar gum. Making a pizza shape with this dough is like icing a cake. There is just not enough structure for any kind of normal pizza shaping. I am hoping to find a recipe that uses barley flour or possibly spelt or maybe potato.


Well, I found a few things to try. I guess that Wheat Free and Gluten free and entirely different animals. I found an interesting web site with a mud oven here.

Handy Home Projects: Mud oven Spelt Pizza


This is the only recipe I have found that uses a real oven even though it is only mud. i'll give it a try this weekend and report back for others who might need a recipe.


Bruce

[Ken524]

Potato flour sounds promising. It makes really tasty bread and donuts.

[Mapleone]

My grandfather is allergic to gluten and my grandmother bakes breads, cakes and pizzas using combinations of soy, potato and rice flour. I don't think there is any way to get the texture or taste to be the same, but if you experiment you can come up with something that tastes decent.

[brokencookie]

Well I tried Spelt flour pizza yesterday. The Whole Foods store told me it was a good subsititute for people who are allergic to wheat and gluten. I have to admit I was skeptical. However, I tried it and here are the results.

I used a pretty standard recipe.

200 grams Spelt flour
130 grams water (65%)
3 grams Salt (1.5%)
2 grams yeast (1%)


Mixed 130 grams of the flour and all of the water for 3 minutes in the bread machine. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Added the remaining flour, salt and yeast. Mixed for 8 minutes in the bread machine. Poured out and let rest for 45 minutes. Formed a dough ball and into the refer overnight. It did develop what appeared to be gluten but it was a little more elastic than normal flour.

It rose nicely over night. When I started to form it into pizza I had some problems. While it had good structure it was still kind of loose. I think I may have the hydration levels too high. Next time I will cut back to about 61% and see how that does. At any rate, my extensive experience in poor quality dough handling ( learned from my early attempts at pizza) enabled me to shape a reasonable pizza crust and the loaded into my little portable pizza oven @ 650 F. Cooked for 4 1/2 minutes and then eaten.


The texture and taste was very similiar to whole wheat. Fairly dense and slightly nutty flavored. In addition, it had a decent crumb and no funny flavors like you get with many soy based products. Overall, I would rate this as the best alternative I have seen for wheat flour. I'll try and take pictures next time before the eating hides the evidence.

Bruce

[egalecki]

I was in the natural foods section of the store yesterday and saw quinoa flour- the bag said it was good to use in baked goods. Have you tried it?

[brokencookie]

Not yet.
I did a little more looking and found out that Spelt is actually the ancestor of modern wheat. As such it is wheat and does contain some gluten. However, most people who are allergic to wheat can tolerate Spelt. The exception is people with Celiac disease. Spelt has a protein content of about 17% which helps as well.
Quinoa ( Keen-Wa) is a pre-columbian grain from the andes and is unrelated to wheat. It is actually a Goosefoot plant and is closely related to Beets, spinach, Swiss chard, and lamb's quarters.

I'll look into it further. I am also looking into Buckwheat which is related to Rhubarb ( who knew ?).

I'll keep posting my results as I go.

[Frances]

I've mixed both Buckwheat and Quinoa in with bread before, but I never used either on its own (because what with not containing gluten it doesn't work properly for regular bread). I much prefered Quinoa, Buckwheat made the bread taste like crackers. But I've got a really good recipe for buckwheat pancakes if anybody's interested.

How about Rye or Oat flour? Spelt is very nice, I use it a lot.

One more thing I thought while reading through your post, Bruce: Some doughs may work better if they are rolled out with a rolling pin. I had a bad dough day today (like a bad hair day, only different) and ended up using a rolling pin... and the pizzas tasted fine. Better than they would have done with bases 1/2" thick anyway. I would guess that doughs with low gluten levels would be difficult to stretch.

[brokencookie]

The original recipe I was trying hand kneeded the spelt dough for 15 minutes. I wonder if this was to help develop more gluten. In making this I used the normal kneeding times I use for regular flour. I think I will give it some more time in the bread machine and see if it helps.
I don't know if I would admit to using a rolling pin on the forum

When I have bad dough days the pizzas just come out sort of oval and thicker on one side. If anyone complains, I take their pizza