But making pizza from start to finish seemed so... daunting.. boring.. hard.
However, my intense pizza cravings caused me to cave in and I decided to go all out with my pizza making.
and I only I cheated a LITTLE bit.
The thing about GF baking is that you can't really just use one type of flour like regular baking. Typically you have to mix 4 o 5 types together to get the consistency and taste right and to get it to work like flour should regularly. Part of my exciting pizza day didn't include searching all over Manhattan for 5 weird kinds of flour.
So I cheated.
I went downstairs to the health food shop and bought an ORGANIC gluten free pizza mix. So in my mind the organic factor balanced out the cheating factor, its healthy!
Plus it looked delicious and herby.
The next big step was making tomato sauce.
What do I know about tomato sauce?
1. it contains tomatoes
2. it comes in a can
3. its really hard to make from scratch
Lies!
(well, maybe except for the tomatoes part, those really are in there no matter what.)
Turns out there are many things that can go into tomato sauce, mine had garlic, basil, salt pepper and red wine, and olive oil. I wish I could say that I was aiming for the light fresh tasting sauce that I got, but it was just a lucky surprise because I didn't know what other ingredients to add.
But the important part is that after doing weird things that I would have never though necessary (PEELING tomatoes!? who knew!?) The sauce was actually AMAZING! It tasted like tomatoes and sauce, which was the goal after all.
The sauce was the perfect accompaniment to my FAVORITE pizza toppings, lots of fresh basil and fresh mushy mozzarella, as well as more fresh slices tomatoes for extra tomato goodness.
The crust was the scary part.
Primarily, I realized that I don't own a cookie sheet or pizza pan.. as a matter of fact I don't have anything flat besides glass baking dishes. The package said that it was CRUCIAL that the pan be larger than 16" for the crust to bake.. with my pizza's life in danger I wasn't going to jilt it's extra required inches and bake it in a cake dish, pluheeeaaseee.
So I made ever so handy boyfriend bring me a cookie sheet from his place. ( I am the only one who ever bakes cookies there so I didn't think anyone would miss it for one evening.)
Once armed with an appropriately sized pan the pizza crust was a complete breeze to bake. The dough was simple enough to whip up, i only needed to add a bit of oil water and eggs. There is no yeast in GF pizza dough so I didn't need to wait around for it to raise. I just plopped it onto the pan and let it cook.
My pizza might not be a perfect pizza shape but it was so so so so so amazing. We finished the entire pizza that night. I can't wait to make it again, next time I will try to make a more complicated sauce and try other toppings (pineapple and ham perhaps!)
The life lesson I got form this experience was that some (one) of the daunting-boring-hard things I have kept putting off can actually end up being exciting-easy-and-fun. I am now excited to tackle other "major" feats, who knows.. someday I might even make BREAD
Maybe it wasn't the most beautiful pizza ever, but it was defiantly one of the tastiest :)
Your first sentence is exactly what went through my mind tonight! I was enjoying my pizza and thinking about my friend who is on a gluten-free diet and I thought, that must really suck because she can never eat this stuff!!
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