Namaste Gluten Free Pizza Crust

Tonight was pizza night at our house. It's been a long time since we had pizza night here so we were PRETTY excited. I found this Namaste mix at Planet Organic which seems to be safe for just about anybody with an allergy:

You can read all about it (and lots of other interesting things) on their website. Lots of good looking recipes and some other products I'd love to get my hands on! I did take a picture for those of you interested in the nutritional information and ingredients ...

Not so bad! To make a 14" pizza, you mix half of the contents of the package with 1tsp olive oil and 1 1/4cup water. As soon as I opened the package I could smell the Italian spices! After mixing for 3 minutes in my kitchenaid, I spread it out on a pizza pan. At this point it was kind of grey-ish and really reminded me of ranch dressing but I had faith:

The crust is baked first, for about 20 minutes. It came out of the oven smelling seriously good and looking like this:

Toppings go on at this point, and back in the oven to finish off. Here is what emerged:

I thought maybe if I posted this picture of Honey sitting on the kitchen table *where we eat* she might be embarrassed of her poor behavior and become inspired to change her misbehaving ways:

In reality, I didn't even notice she was there...because she's always there.

MY REVIEW: By no stretch of the imagination did this taste like those big thick and fluffy crusts Jason used to make in the bread machine... but it was good in it's own gluten free way and I would buy it again. The crust was crisp on the outside and soft and airy once you bit in. I was expecting a rock hard crust as that's all I've experienced with gluten free pizza crusts but this was very different. The taste was nice and the extra spices baked right in the crust were flavorful. In case you're wondering, I used Unico pizza sauce, which is indeed gluten free!

JASON'S REVIEW: The pizza was delicious. It tasted like real pizza. 5 stars out of 5.

Pizza Party

Tonight we are having a planning meeting for our trip to Europe. Although we talk about it from time to time and think about it quite frequently, we really have no set plans. All we have is the flight.

So today, since I had us both down for eating vegetarian, we decided to make a pizza as it fit the theme of the evening. Jason made some whole wheat pizza dough in the bread maker:

Then he flipped it around in the air for a while:

Which actually started to work after a couple minutes:

Honey loved watching this:

Once the dough was all flattened and ready in a pizza pan, we focused on toppings. Jason had a rustic (you'd be surprised how many times he used that word while making this pizza) Italian theme in mind. The toppings included spinach, mozzarella, red onion, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives and feta.

Jason arranged them just so on the pizza. You can probably tell how much I participated in making this pizza by the number of pictures I took. This was pretty much Jason's pizza. 

Once the toppings were complete, we slid it in the oven for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

We pretty much watched it cook the entire time because we love our oven. It started to smell REALLY good after a few minutes. We are currently both suffering from that dangly burnt piece of skin you get on the top of your mouth when you can't wait for something to cool down before you eat it. That is how good it smelled.

When it was finally time to devour, we were both very impressed with how good the homemade crust tasted. I do believe that amount of pizza dough could easily make 2 pizza's of this size because it was very thick.

Now as for the Europe planning meeting, it's on hold. After 1 beer and 2 pieces of pizza, Jason decided he needed to ride his bike for 1 hour and 40 minutes which is where he currently is (at 10:08pm). He promised he would be ready to make plans when he was done!

Anyways, I'll leave you with a picture of Honey. She loves it when we're both in the same room so she doesn't have to constantly travel between rooms to check on us. I'm starting to think she must have been a security gaurd in her past life.

Pita Pizza

I just put some sauce on a whole wheat pita, threw on whatever toppings I wanted and then put it in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes. Can you guess which one is Jasons?

Shrimp & Spinach Pizza

Dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow! This is not fancy or new or risky. It's a personal pizza. We get the frozen crusts and sauce at the Italian Market and then throw whatever we have on there. Jasons pizza is usually very different from mine... his had hot pepperoni & hot pickled peppers (this combo does not upset his stomach?) and lots of cheese. On mine there was some fresh spinach, shrimp and a little mozzarella. Put them in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes and voila! I don't have any room for anything else when I eat this pizza so that is all.