Gluten-Free Pizza Crust

One of the things prevalent in both the Down syndrome community and the Autism community is the presence of people on gluten-free diets.  In the Ds community, a lot of our kids are gluten intolerant.  The bear cub is not one of these fortunately since she seems to be drawn to every wheat product in sight.  In the Autism community there are a few that are gluten intolerant, but the greater reason a lot of kids are on the diet is because it often affects behavior.  In this case I'm not sure that I'm fortunate that the nerdlet's symptoms aren't affected by diet because I would love some control of her issues.  I have, however, been trying to eliminate a large amount of the gluten in all our diets simply for the health benefits, so I have been checking out a number of books on the subject from the library, and just recently I have started checking out cookbooks (and possibly I might have bought a few).

I finally broke down and started buying some of the ingredients because it seems that all the recipes require a ton.  I started with the cookbook "the diary-free & gluten-free kitchen", and yes, the title is in all lower case which has sort of been driving me nuts since I've had it.  For a couple of years while we lived in Panama, we lived next door to a family that had pizza every Friday and I always thought that was very cool and lately I've been thinking that I'd like to implement that tradition in our family so I figured that was a really good way to try out gluten-free recipes.  If anyone has their own gluten-free suggestions for cookbooks, recipes, flour mixtures, or binders, I'd love to hear/read them.

First, the gluten-free flour mix from the cookbook:
     1 1/4 cups brown or white rice flour
     3/4 cup potato starch
     1/2 cup tapioca flour
     1/2 cup sorghum flour
Combine and mix with whisk until thoroughly combined.  Keep in airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 months.

Making this was interesting.  First potato starch and potato flour are two different things and not only do Whole foods employees all the way up the chain not know this, apparently even some manufacturers of the products do not know this and you will find one company label their box with both names.

Next, I decided to be cheap and ground both the brown rice flour and the tapioca flour in my Vitamix.  Grinding the flours isn't difficult.  The tapioca flour requires no instruction really.  I simply put the tapioca in the dry container and started at low variable speed and slowly went up until it was on high and left it there until a flour.  It didn't even take that long, maybe a minute.  The brown rice flour took a little more work.  I did a cup at a time (this wasn't the only flour mix that I was making with brown rice) and maybe if I did a 1/2 cup like the tapioca, it would have worked slightly better.  I started a variable low and slowly raised it to 5 and left it there for about a minute.  Then I raised it slightly again and left it there for a few minutes.  When it got to the top variable speed, I left it until I started seeing that there was flour flying around and the bigger pieces were being left behind.  Then I shut off the machine, banged the container around, and started over as needed, until I had a nice consistent flour.  The vitamix was pretty warm when I was all done.

Since this made 3 cups of flour and the crispy and traditional pizza crusts in the cookbook required close to that, I decided to try both recipes out.  I only took pictures of the crispy crust, but here they are.

They were pretty well received. Darth Baby ate two pieces herself, half of the bear cub's and most of the bear cub's toppings, and bites of Q's. The nerdlet ate a whole piece herself and a bit of the crust from mine. Teh bear cub only ate half of her piece (the half with the crust). Q liked the thin crust better, but I liked the traditional crust better.  I will say that I normally love cold pizza for breakfast and I found the traditional crust leftovers tolerable but I couldn't eat the crispy crust version cold.

Crispy Pizza Crust:
     1 1/2 gluten-free flour mix
     2 tsp gluten-free baking powder
     1/4 tsp xanthan gum
     1/4 tsp thyme
     1/4 tsp oregano
     1/4 tsp garlic powder
     1/4 tsp salt
     1 cup water
Preheat oven to 425.  Line a metal pizza pan with parchment paper (I used silicon sheets).

Mix dry ingredients with a whisk thoroughly.  Add water and stir to combine with rubber spatula.  Work quickly to spread batter less than 1/2 inch thick on parchment paper.  Pre-bake crust 15 minutes.  After adding toppings, bake another 8 minutes.  (My suggestion is to not underbake at either point).

Traditional Pizza Crust:
     1/2 cup dairy milk alternative, warmed to 110 or 115 (I used pre-made almond milk but the book has a recipe)
     1/2 teaspoon date syrup (1 1/4 dates, 1 cup water, 1 tsp lemon juice blended in vitamix)
     1 package quick-rise yeast (I used 2 1/4 tsp of my bread machine yeast)
     1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour mix
     1 tsp xanthan gum
     1/2 tsp dried oregano
     1/4 tsp dried thyme
     1/4 tsp garlic powder
     1 Tbsp olive oil
     1 tsp apple cider vinegar
Preheat oven to 425.  Line a metal pizza pan with parchment paper (I used silicon sheets).

In small bowl, combine milk and date syrup and stir.  Add yeast and stir until dissolved.  Set aside until mixture doubled in volume, about 10 minutes. 

Mix dry ingredients with a whisk thoroughly.

Add oil and vinegar to milk mixture and stir.  Add this to flour mixture and stir to combine with rubber spatula.  Spoon dough onto prepared pan, smoothing out center and building edge slightly.  Cover with damp ktich towel and place in warm area to rise for ~20 minutes.  Pre-bake for 15 minutes.  After adding toppings, bake another 8 minutes.  (Again I would suggest not underbaking at either point).

Jalapeño Cheese Pretzels

My mom made pepperoni pizza pretzels using the recipe on Ciao Italia a few weeks ago.  I told her they were fine, but that I think I would appreciate having jalapeño cheese ones more.  She came down this week to see the girls off to school since they started this past Monday - the bear cub for another year of preschool and the nerdlet for kindergarten, and since she was saying she was going to leave yesterday, I talked her into staying another night and put out all the ingredients on the counter last night.  This morning while I walked the nerdlet to her bus stop, my mom started to put them together.

Didn't they come out beautifully?  They are tasty, too.

Here is the modified recipe:

1 1/2 cups warm (110°F) water
1 tablespoon honey1 package Fleischmanns pizza crust yeast2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil4 to 4 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt 2 4oz containers of pickled jalapeños
8 oz grated cheddar
8 cups water1/2 cup baking soda

In a large bowl combine the water, yeast, honey, butter, and olive oil. Add 4 cups of the flour a cup at a time, the salt, and mix with the dough hook until the mixture is well combined and moves around the blade and begins to form a ball. Transfer the dough to a work surface and knead it a couple of times.

Preheat the oven to 450°F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces (we did 16).  Roll each piece of dough under the palms of your hands into a 24-inch rope. Make a U-shape with the rope, holding the 2 ends of the rope, cross them over each other twice and press them into the center of the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place on the parchment-lined pans, spacing them about an inch apart.

Bring the water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in a soup pot.  Use a wide face flat spatula or skimmer and boil the pretzels a few at a time until they float in the water. Drain them well and place them on the parchment lined pans, at least 2 inches apart. 

You can brush the pretzels with the egg wash and sprinkle them with coarse salt and cheese, but we skipped this step.

Bake until they are deep golden brown, about 15 minutes. Cool on racks. Best eaten warm.

Zendala Dare #70

I recently discovered zentangle and I found a site with templates called The Bright Owl.  Apparently each week she posts a template with a dare.  So I decided to make an entry this week.

Here is my entry.

And the original template:

I'm not sure what the normal procedure for getting the template on to your paper, but I'm clearly not using the same technique since I simply printed it out on card stock.  I know that this is not what other people are doing because they do not end up with all the lines on their drawings.  I probably should read through some of the older entries to find out.

I did do another, but the nerdlet wouldn't let me shade it because she said it was perfect the way it is.

Wordless Wednesday

Fiesta Honors the Military

Yesterday, Q and I took the girls to the Witte Museum in San Antonio and they currently have an exhibit of gowns for the 'Duchesses of the Armed Forces'.

My pictures of the gowns didn't come out as well as I liked because we hadn't eaten yet and I was shaking a little and you aren't allowed to use flash in the museum.  Still, I thought you might enjoy them anyway.

Jalie 2805 and McCall's 6500

The girl that I've been tutoring, who I have nicknamed Rumplestiltskin's daughter because her dad is an evil troll that kept her trapped in a hovel and didn't give her any care or even take her to school, has been working really hard at catching up with her schooling.  I've created a learning plan and schedule for what we need to cover each day to catch her up for school when it starts.  After she finishes her day's plan, she is more than willing to do a craft with my girls and their cousin or to work on learning to sew.  This past week she sewed her first skirt and t-shirt.

The skirt is a simple tube made to her measurements.  She cut and sewed it with my guidance.  It's part of a costume that she's making.  I've been posting updates about it as she finishes pieces on Facebook and then I was telling my mom about what a great job she was doing and I got in trouble.  Apparently it is a secret so don't tell her that I'm bragging about her progress in studying and sewing every chance I get.

I think the only reason that I get pictures is because she doesn't realize that she can tell me no yet.  She didn't take off her denim capris before trying them on so it looks tighter than it is.  The picture is blurry because I forget sometimes to turn back on autofocus for things like this and I didn't want to ask her to change into it again.

Then she made the Jalie 2805 t-shirt in size T.  She traced it and pinned and cut it.  She sewed all but the hems for the bottom and the sleeves, which I did on the coverstitch machine.  I helped some with the collar, too.

She is so lovely and the shirt fits her well, but she is really self conscious in it that we may make the next one in a larger size.  It's actually really close fitting with little ease so I'll definitely take that into account when I make this pattern for me or my girls.

The other thing I was going to show is MIL UFO #6, which is McCall's 6500.  I actually bought this pattern and a couple like it to compare the different companies peasant style dresses, and I may or may not have even paid for the fabric, so I'm not really sure that this is really an MIL UFO so much as a dress I was going to make that I ended up making after all.

The dress was made for the bear cub, but the nerdlet is modeling it to earn enough Mommy faction to stay up late today.  There were a couple of changes.  I used 1/8 inch elastic instead of 1/4 inch elastic.  The trim was cut in half because when I received the pieces only half the ruffle was cut and I didn't have any extra fabric so I simply sliced the ruffle in two and used that.  I also removed the two folds.  After those changes, this is what it looked like.

I didn't really care for how gigantic it looked so I took 10 inches out of the elastic for the neckline.  This was the final dress.

It's definitely too short for the nerdlet to wear out without leggings, but it should be a fine length for either the bear cub or Darth baby.

MIL UFO #5

This isn't really MIL UFO #5, but I'm not counting the ones that don't get shown.

My SIL posted the following on facebook about the Drama Princess:
"My daughter has just informed me the reason why she has so many stuffed animal is because grandma will buy her anything..."

We actually already knew this.  The reason that I'm mentioning it is because while my daughters don't get anywhere near as many stuffed animals, my nerdlet likes to ask for fabric.  When we go to the fabric stores, my MIL often comes home with fabric to make one or more of the girls clothing, especially the nerdlet who likes to handpick her fabric.  This is one of the fabrics that I would have tried to talk her out of, but my MIL just said okay and picked up a yard.  It actually has grown on me a lot since making the dress.  You can't see it but it sparkles from some sort of glitter in the fabric, which is quilting cotton.

I learned something making this dress.  When making piping, either make the trip to the store that has piping cord or order it online and wait for it to show up.  I decided to improvise by braiding 1/16" nylon crochet thread and while it works, it really is not worth the time and hassle.  I only braided about 100 inches and it took forever and I kept having to untangle knots.  I really felt the fabric needed something more to really look like a dress for a little girl.

Here the nerdlet is in action in her new dress.  The bear cub is wearing another finished MIL UFO that was made for the nerdlet, but was handy this morning so on the bear cub it went.

The girls were dancing around to this guy, who was one of the entertainers hired by Six Flags.  He was quite good and played a song just for the nerdlet upon request.

And here is a glimpse of the back.  There was no matching of design because that would a)take more fabric and b) wasn't cut out by me anyway.

I really like how much the piping adds to the dress and I'll likely pick up some cord the next time I hit Jo-Anns, or I might just try using the 1/16" crochet thread in a single piece and see how that goes.  I probably won't do it though until I make my way through the current UFO pile.