just like any other human worth talking to, i really, really love pizza (you can read more about my love of pizza here). unfortunately, since being diagnosed with celiac disease, the only pizza ive had since april has been eggplant pizza. now not that theres anything wrong with eggplant pizza, its just that sometimes i get really bummed out that i cant just go over to little ceasars and eat an entire $5 pizza by myself (something i did somewhat regularly while pregnant with alice). so obviously i was pretty stoked when i saw this in the clearance bin at vons a couple weeks ago:
i dont know if you can see it in the picture, but the regular price for this mix is $6.99, which normally is WAAY out of our reach for a single ingredient, but that was a particularly light week grocery-wise, so i figured i could spare $3.50 to FINALLY GET TO EAT SOME REAL PIZZA. unfortunately this was right before our apartment flooded and i had to wait until last night to try it out.
now upon closer inspection of the bag, the instructions looked really weird and it seemed to require way too m any extra ingredients for a mix, but if theres one thing ive learned about gluten free baking, its that its always super weird and you just have to trust the instructions. which i did, but despite following every single step to the letter, this dough was BY FAR the most unpleasant baking experience ive ever had. first off there was having to deal with the multitude of extra ingredients and blending them into the mix in the correct order (which is a real pain since im used to making dough out of just flour, yeast, and water), but that was nothing compared to the "dough" itself.
i put the word "dough" in quotes because this mix doesnt actually make a pizza dough, but rather an extremely sticky and weird pizza batter, the consistency of which i would describe as something like merengue, but if you had tried to make merengue out of glue. this weird gluey mess then had to be dumped directly onto a (very well greased) pizza pan and oh so gently rolled flat into a pizza-sized circle. i followed the "thick crust" directions partly because we only have one pizza pan, but also because i knew that gluten free people tend to grossly exaggerate the breadiness of their products, and im glad i did, because apparently "16 inch thick crust pizza" means a 16 inch circle of pizza dough barely a quarter inch thick.
anyways, i pushed through and parbaked the crust before adding the sauce, cheese and artichoke hearts and very impatiently awaited the moment of truth. while it was in the oven the second time i really started to worry about how this was going to turn out and how upset i was going to be if it turned out bad because it had used up the last of our cheese and i didnt have anything to serve as a replacement dinner. but much to my surprise, the pizza came out of the oven looking totally normal:
and tasting almost exactly like when something goes wrong with the normal pizza dough and its all flat and flaky and kind of chewy. which, given that i havent had pizza in a completely ungodly amount of time, was good enough for me. i definitely dont think this will be going on our regular rotation, but ill definitely keep it in mind for birthdays and special occasions.
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