Goal:
Your goal in this class is to bake a homemade pizza that either (1) makes your knees weak, (2) gets rave reviews from your entire family, and/or (3) makes you swear that you will bake at least one pizza every week until the end of time.
Bake two of the four include pizza recipes to complete the class.
What To Expect
The recipes in this class cover a wide range of difficulty; from easy pat-in-the-pan dough for the apprehensive beginner to the Chicago Deep Dish for the cook who is ready to wrangle super-soft doughs by hand. Expect to come back to this class in a few months and tackle the more difficult recipes, if they are more than you want to tackle the first time through.
The skills that you’ll work on in this class are:
Skill 1: Patting Dough Into A Shape: This skill, which is also used in making some pie crusts, will allow you to make a good pizza crust without dealing with a rolling pin. This skill in mainly utilized in the Pat-In-The Pan Crust, which is the beginning level recipe for this class. If you’re already comfortable using a rolling pin and picking dough up, then you’re welcome to skip over this skill and the related recipe.
Skill 2: Rolling Dough Into A Circle: We first practiced this skill in the tortilla class, so now we’re going to revisit it using a softer dough.
Skill 3: Dough Handling Skills: Dough handling skills are required in 3 of the 4 recipes. In this Thin Crust and Traditional pizza you’ll be rotating the dough while you roll it, flipping it over to make sure that it doesn’t stick while you roll it out, and transferring it to a baking dish or pizza stone. We’ll also start working with super-soft doughs and learning some tricks for handling those on the Chicago Deep Dish recipe and video.
Session 1: Reading and Watching
Everyone read: Ingredients, Substitutions and Equipment Recommendations for Pizza and 5 More Tips for Great Pizza.
Then decide if you want to start off at the Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced Level.
Beginner Level Recipe: Pat-in-the-Pan Pizza Crust is a malleable dough that you can pat into a cake pan. This means that you don’t have to deal with the rolling pin, or moving a rolled out crust from the countertop to the hot pizza stone. The fact that it’s easy, doesn’t affect the taste though. This is a great pizza crust!
Intermediate Level Video and Recipes:
Video:How to Make a Rolled Out Gluten Free Pizza Crust
Traditional Gluten Free Pizza Crust The traditional pizza crust is my go-to for Saturday nights. Roll the pizza crust out to different thicknesses and adjust the consistency of the dough to get it just the way your family likes it.
St. Louis Style Thin Crust Pizza This is the yeast-free recipe in the class. A very tasty super-thin crust pizza.
Advanced Level Recipe:
Video: How to Make a Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Crust
Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza This is the advanced level pizza because the dough it supersoft. Not to fear, I’ll show you some tricks to make it manageable. We also go back to using a pan for this crust. If you’re ready for a sumptuous, luxurious pizza crust, this is for you.
Bonus Video:
How to Make Gluten Free Cheese Sticks
Session 2: Baking the Pizzas (1 – 4 hours, depending on the recipe)
Time Required: For me, any of these recipes except the Chicago Deep Dish, would be an appropriate choice for a week-day meal in terms of time to prep and bake. However, recipes always take longer the first few times that you make them, so set aside at least an hour for your first few run-throughs. I think pizza makes a great Saturday night meal.
Allocate at least 4 hours for the Chicago Deep Dish pizza and break out a bottle of wine before you want to start. Being in a relaxed, rested and unrushed state of mind will go a long way for you when dealing with this soft dough. There are two 1 hour rests in this recipe and 30 minutes of baking, so the real work is limited to about 45 minutes.
Print Your Recipes and Note Sheet:
Gluten Free Pizza Recipes Printable
These recipes, especially the traditional recipe, can be customized to get the thickness and crispiness that you want. Use this notesheet as you bake so that you’ll have the data you need to tweak to your heart’s content.