The other day, my family was invited to a party. And were told in advance that there probably wouldn’t be anything at the party that we could eat- since it would be a pizza party with baked ziti, cakes, cookies, and a few salads… and that even though they couldn’t provide a gluten free alternative for us, they still wanted us to come, and asked if maybe we could bring a gluten free, dairy free version for ourselves.
So, of course, I did that. Made gluten free pizza (came out terrific) as I’ve done many times before… but baked ziti was going to be a little more tricky. You see, I had never made gluten free, dairy free baked ziti before. And when searching for recipes online for it, almost all the recipes called for a vegan ricotta cheese made out of tofu… and the few that didn’t, called for cheeses made with a nutritional yeast base. I’m currently out of nutritional yeast, and try to avoid soy if I can help it, so those recipes didn’t help me.
What I did have was a package of Daiya brand vegan and soy free meltable cheese that I brought back from the US– but I don’t have so much of it (only 4 packages total) so didn’t want to use it all up just on the ziti. And I also had some hazelnuts…
I read a reference on a site to a homemade hazelnut ricotta cheese (which used nutritional yeast, but I decided I’d make mine without) and decided to use a combo of the daiya and hazelnut ricotta for my baked ziti. (I ended up using half the package of Daiya for the ziti, and the other half for my pizza.) It tasted terrific and was a big hit! Definitely making this again!

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Soy Free Baked Ziti Recipe with Homemade Hazelnut Ricotta Cheese

Ingredients for Baked Ziti
1 package gluten free noodles (I used Sam Mills corn pasta)
1-1 1/2 cups homemade ricotta
1 1/2 cup daiya mozerella- divided in half (alternatively, you can use a different homemade vegan cheese sauce like this one)
4-5 cups homemade tomato sauce

Ingredients for Homemade Hazelnut Ricotta
2 cups hazelnuts
1 cup water
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp lemon juice
1-1 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions:
1. Soak the hazelnuts anywhere between 3 hours and 12 hours. If you soak them for shorter, your ricotta will be less smooth.

2. After soaking, strain, and add the hazelnuts, garlic, lemon juice, and salt to a food processor. Process as much as you can, and then add a quarter cup of water, process for a few minutes, scrape down the sides, add 1/4 cup more water at a time, and scraping down the sides, until you have a consistency you like.