Gluten free vegan mushroom pizza sprinkled with vegan Parmesan

I was in town the other day and passed a pizza shop. The smells there were so tantalizing- it made me really want pizza! But obviously, being gluten free and dairy free, I can’t just buy pizza from the pizzeria. So when I came home, I decided to try to find the most perfect gluten free pizza recipe. I’d had lots of pizza since I went gluten free, and they worked…but they were mediocre. They weren’t perfect, they just “made do”. But I didn’t want mediocre pizza, I wanted perfect pizza!
I asked a bunch of friends for their favorite gluten free vegan pizza recipes and came up with this recipe that looked really great. Now my criteria for choosing a pizza crust recipe is probably amusing for you, but in addition to the ingredients listed and the claims made about the pizza, I was looking for proof that its a good pizza with a good texture. One of the things a mediocre or a bad pizza crust recipe usually has is a tough to work with dough, which usually results in raggedy edged pizza crusts. You tell me- if you saw a pizza that its edges were jagged and not perfectly round, would it make your mouth salivate, or would you prejudge it and assume it is a bad pizza?
Anyhow, this recipe was a winner because of the ingredients and what the pictures showed…
Only I have no idea how that pizza tastes or what its texture is like. Because as I was putting together supper, after the store already closed for the day… I realized that I was out of potato starch, one of the two main ingredients for that recipe! Yikes! I was in a bit of a panic, because I had promised my kids pizza and I would have had some very unhappy customers if I didn’t deliver, so I tried to figure out what I could do in place of the potato starch. I decided to completely change over the flours- the starch helps the gluten free flours stick together, and I was afraid that without that, I’d have a messy crumbly pizza, not the perfection I was looking for. So I decided to use buckwheat flour and sticky rice flour (made from short grain rice) because both are naturally sticky and would decrease the likelihood of crumbling.

My experiment paid off, and this pizza is simply out of this world! It is exactly the same texture as the gluten pizza I used to have. This makes a thin crusted pizza, crispy at the bottom, but flexible enough to fold your pizza in half to eat it… As for taste- it’s absolutely delicious. Can I say it tastes exactly like gluten free pizza? I’d like to say yes, but its been 2 years or more since I had gluten pizza, so I can’t promise that, because it’s possible my taste bud’s memories are faulty, but as far as I remember… this pizza tastes like a cross between regular pizza and whole wheat.

Gluten free pizzas differ from regular pizzas in that you first need to bake the crust and then top it and bake again. I made these one day, left them out overnight, and topped them the next and baked them, and they were still terrific! I want to try making a stash and putting them in my freezer for busy days.

This recipe makes 2 family sized round pizzas.

And since people eat with their eyes (or at least I do), when I was making this pizza and the crust edges were a little jagged when I was rolling them out, I used a pizza cutter to cut off the edges to make the crust perfectly round. 😀

Perfect Gluten Free Pizza Recipe- Vegan, Starch Free

Ingredients
2 tablespoons yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon honey, coconut sugar, jaggery, sugar, or some other natural sweetener
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
2 teaspoons oil (olive or regular, doesn’t matter)
2 teaspoons vinegar (apple cider vinegar, kombucha, white, etc…) or lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cup raw buckwheat flour
1 1/4 cup sticky/sweet/glutenous rice flour (it’s all the same thing- made from short grain rice) plus more for rolling

Instructions:
1. Mix the yeast, water, and honey/sweetener together until the sweetener is dissolved.

2. Add the xanthan gum, oil, vinegar, and salt, and whisk together until no clumps remain.

3. Add the buckwheat and sticky rice flours and mix well. You should be left with a somewhat sticky but not too overly sticky dough.

4. Divide the dough exactly in half and place half on a piece of baking paper/parchment paper, pizza pan, etc….

5. Sprinkle liberally with sticky rice flour (I usually use probably 1/8 of a cup for both pizzas) and then either with your hand or a rolling pin, flatten the dough, pressing outward, until you have a flat, round pizza that is 1/4 of an inch thick. If you’re persnickety like me, trim the edges with a pizza cutter until you have a perfectly round pizza.

6. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, or until solid, then remove from the oven.

7. Store as is, or top with your favorite toppings…

And bake until the toppings are fully cooked…

Slice, and serve!

Enjoy!

If you’re gluten free, what is your favorite recipe for gluten free pizza? Do you think it tastes like and has the texture of “real” pizza? Does this look like a recipe you’d try?
What is your favorite topping for pizza?
Now be honest with me- do you care whatsoever if your pizza crust has a raggedy edge?