“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”

~ Mick Jagger

For 15 GF years I’ve thought that what Gus and our family wanted was gluten-free pizza dough sexy enough to imitate a delicious, chewy, crispy-at-the-edges conventional one. Starting in 2000  Portland Pie’s excellent conventional dough was available in markets. In 2012 they added a gluten-free version. Our review:

1.  It’s pretty easy to handle, rolling out and sliding reliably off the pallet onto the preheated stone.

2.  The taste is good, although one can faintly detect the inclusion of egg and xantham gum in the recipe.

3.  It’s attractive… don’t mind the crinkly edges that indicate “short” gluten flours are the base.

BUT…

4.  The texture of the cooked dough was mostly tough, a little (xantham gum) slippery: disappointing.

For the last few months we’ve been experimenting with a cauliflower (dough) for pizza crust.  The trials and errors have been more interesting and often more successful than gluten-free flour doughs we’ve tried. We look forward to sharing a recipe when we’ve perfected it.  Mick said it: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”

Pasta sauce on (zucchini or sweet potato) spun into spaghetti with the Paderno Vegetable Slicer has been a personal revelation. Italian dishes taste great, are healthy, and easy to digest.

What we all might need is a healthy, satisfying substitute for flour based dough, gluten-free or conventional. We look forward to sharing our recipe for cauliflower pizza crust when we’ve perfected it.

Portland Pie’s GF Dough

Used 8 ounces – note the characteristic GF texture

Rolled out nicely – floured the board with cornmeal

Beautiful sauce with tomatoes from the garden

Toppings ready to layer on

Have more success with “dotting” on the sauce

Half is chard, fig, green olive and Robusto

Scattering the cheese over all

Sliding off the board onto the stone

Out of the oven