GF Pizza Crust and Hamburger Buns Beta

UPDATE: Riley made these and wasn't watching the oven closely and it got up to 500 degrees after she put the pizza crust it. It turned out the best ever. Apparently, the key to getting a chewy crust with some bite to it is to bake it fast and hot.

We were planning on having a Celiac Pizza Party tonight. Hildegard knows another celiac in the music department, who was jealous when we had pizza the other night. Then there is the little girl in the Maestro’s pre-school class gets rides with Riley every other week. Her Dad has Celiac disease, and is a scientist here. He also teaches flute, and the Mom is a Double-Bass player. So, there are a lot of intersecting lines that all lead to pizza. Unfortunately, the other girl from the music department is in The City today, the Mom has a cold, and the Scientist Dad is teaching a yoga class until after bed-time. So much for the party.

On a side note, the floutist yoga scientist dad has run some biological assays, (ELISA, I think) that verified that Gulten antibodies react with the gluten-like protein in SOME strains of oats, and not others. That is why the literature on oats tends to be contradictory; they don’t specify what strain they are using and some are yes and some are no.

The lack of party today didn’t stop me from getting ready for it over the week-end. Last time Hildegard brought a crust mix that was very good, but too “crisp” for Hildr and the Maestro. We needed some softer crust, more similar to my favorite, Papa John’s. As I mentioned last week, I had an idea for gluten free pizza crust and hamburger buns that I wanted to try out, based on the yeast-free bread recipe I had come up with for Hildegard. The pizza party is the perfect time to give it a shot.

The recipe is what I used before, except that Hildegard isn’t good on Soy, so I used Rice milk, and took out the soy flour.

Yeast Free Bread

1 ¾ c 2:1 Jowar/Tapioca Flour Mix
¼ c Additional Tapioca Flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
1 tsp xanthan gum
2 tsp sugar, (or 1 tsp stevia, if making for Hildegard)
2 eggs
1 c milk or rice milk
1/3 c vegetable oil

I’ll give away the ending before you look at all the pictures. I need some brown rice flour in the mix, I think, to firm up the final product.

It turned out pretty runny, like pudding. I like pudding. Pouring it into an oiled cookie sheet and spreading with a spoon gave the following pan cake looking thing:




Cooking it provided this:

The bottom is a little light. I was looking for a softer crust, but this is a little too soft for my tastes.

Pouring the batter onto a sheet (like cow pies) gave the following:


which baked into these:

The inside texture looks good to me, but like the pizza crust, they are still too soft. You know the floppiness of a pancake? These are kind of like that. Floppy, like if you aren’t holding them well enough, the bottom half of the bun is going to sag down. Tasty, yes, but not exactly what I am looking for.

They also didn’t come out symmetrically rounded on top. I was looking for something with C(infinite) symmetry, and these look more like fried eggs from the side.


I cooked this crust in a frying pan with more oil, and sprayed the top lightly with oil. This is closer. Notice that it browned a little better, and the bottom is definitely crisper.

The bottom view:


What do I need to do? Well, they need to be more firm after baking, and a little crustier. What I will try next is to try the addition of some brown rice flour. That improved the structure of my muffins considerably. I’ll keep you posted.