Just Like Any Gluten-Free Dough, This One is Going to be Wet

Attempting to simulate gluten/crumb isn’t as important here as it is with bread, but don’t assume any gluten-free flour mix will work. See here for a good homemade GF flour mix. Here’s the recipe I used for this batch:

Recipe

Makes 1 sheet pan pizza

*If you want to use sourdough starter instead, skip the yeast and look below here

If you can consume gluten, use all-purpose or bread flour instead of the gluten-free flour mix and potato starch. I’d recommend using the corn meal because that’s traditional and it tastes good. Additionally, I have used coarse corn meal and it has worked great, just a different texture. If you desire a bit more soft chew, use some egg whites (2 or 50 grams) in place of some of the water weight.

Using Sourdough Starter

In this recipe I used a gluten free “sourdough” starter, which requires a few modifications to the recipe. What I’m actually doing is what’s referred to as a perpetual dough, where you hold back a golf ball sized amount of risen dough [from a bread loaf recipe]. Important note, you cannot do this method if you use eggs in your recipe (you can however use your perpetual dough as a starter, ie. not contaminating your starter mix with egg whites in your recipe). To that held back bit of dough, I add 250g of water and 100g of GF flour, and mix thoroughly with a whisk. I usually leave it out at room temp for a few hours, then put in my fridge until I’m ready to bake again. I tried a more traditional 1:1 ratio, but my GF flour mix as xanthan gum in it which seemed to gel everything up and prevent yeast propagation; if you’re using wheat flour, 1:1 should be fine. So I’m not necessarily using a full sourdough starter, as I started off with dry instant yeast, but I’m getting more sourdough flavor the more I propagate and use it. And true to sourdough starters, it does rise much slower than dry instant yeast. I’ll make a full post about this at some point soon.

In short, add whatever mass of sourdough starter to the dough, replacing the appropriate amount of flour and water by weight. For example, I added 350g of sourdough starter, which is comprised of 28.6% of flour (100g) and 71.4% of water (250g) by weight, therefore add 100g less flour and 250g less water from the above recipe.

If using instant yeast, mix and let rise (covered) for 2 hours (slightly shorter if using wheat flour). If using a sourdough starter, let rise all day (>4 hours) or overnight in your fridge (or room temperature for more sourdough flavor)

Sheetpan Shaping is Superior to Hand Shaping Thin Crust Gluten-Free Pizza

Another popular lie from gluten-free cooking blogs or books is that gluten-free dough is compatible with pizza peels & stones. Maybe it is if you use psyllium husk instead of xanthan gum, but I haven’t tried that yet, and I don’t feel like making a completely separate GF flour mix just for pizza. Just use a pan. It works just as well and is 100x easier to deal with, plus your oven isn’t going to get hot enough to replicate brick oven pizza anyway. If you have a brick oven in your backyard and are handy with a pizza peel, have at it. Also what are you doing here, and where do you live, so you can make me tasty fire baked pizzas all the time?

• For shaping, I like to keep a bowl of cool water nearby to dunk my hands in often. This dough is sticky.
• If you get too much in one area and need some in another, just pinch some off and add it to the area that needs it. This is a great advantage that Gluten-Free doughs have over traditional gluten doughs

Baking

Since focaccia is baked around 425F and pizza is baked around 500-550F (not including brick pizza ovens), I decided to split the difference and start at 450F. This probably could have been 475F, as I bumped it up to that in the last third of the bake anyway, but see what you like. Lower temps are going to give a softer crust.

• Bake at 450F for 30 min.
• What I actually did: 450F for 20 min, raise to 475F for 10 min
• What you should probably do: 475F for 25 min

Results

I’ll update this post if someone sends me a good sheetpan style glutinous pizza dough recipe, but in a pinch, find a focaccia recipe, skip the salt water brine, add tomato sauce and toppings and bake and I’m positive you’ll make something really good.

And that’s my take on a sheet pan gluten free pizza! It’s our new preferred way to make gluten-free pizza, as it gets the crust thin enough without too much work. I will make a deep dish gluten free pizza work, but no attempt has come close to how good and easy this sheetpan method is.

Comment down below or use any of my contact links to ask questions! Thanks for reading. Enjoy!