How To Make The Best Wood-Fired Gluten Free Pizza

Making Neapolitan-Style Gluten-Free Pizza Using Wood (or Gas) Fired Pizza Oven

Thaw And Prove Your Gluten Free Pizza Dough

Gluten-free pizza dough can be tricky to handle. It’s often more fragile than regular dough and lacks the elastic properties that give the traditional dough its stretch. Instead, it tends to be more like pasty dough, which can make the handling process a bit more delicate. However, with practice and the right techniques, you can still make the perfect gluten-free pizza, with soft, puffy edges and delicious flavour.

Here’s a simple method that’s suitable for everyone’s tastes. If your doughballs are frozen, first rub them with a little olive oil. Then, place them in a sealed container in the fridge to thaw overnight. About four hours before you plan to cook, remove the dough from the fridge and let it come to room temperature, still in the sealed container. Gluten free dough doesn’t have gluten to develop, so don’t expect it to puff up like traditional bread dough. It won’t double in size, but it will relax slightly and be ready for the next step.

When making the dough, ensure you’re using the right combination of ingredients. The dough should be slightly dry, but still wet enough to work with. You’ll need to combine everything in a bowl, carefully adding ingredients like mozzarella, tomato, salt, and pepperoni, depending on your toppings. It’s important to note that gluten-free doesn’t mean compromising on taste. With the right combination of ingredients, you’ll have a tasty pizza base that works perfectly with your favourite toppings.

You can also try a few alternatives if you’re looking to adjust the flavour or texture of the dough, including adding a whole range of different toppings or experimenting with gluten-free flours.

Fire Up Your Pizza Oven

While the gluten-free dough is proving get your pizza oven fired up to around 400 °C with a gentle rolling flame, ready to cook.

Stretching The Dough

We like to give the dough a rub of olive oil to soften it before stretching, which also helps to hold it together. If we weren’t aiming for a Neapolitan-style puffy crust, we could simply use a rolling pin to flatten the dough, giving you a thin, crispy edge pizza – but that’s not the goal here.

Dust your workbench with gluten-free flour and, as with regular dough, start pressing into the centre of the dough ball. Gradually shape it out into a disc, leaving about a 1/2″ crust around the perimeter. This process will take longer than with regular pizza dough, so take your time. Use your other hand to support the outside of the crust and keep it neat and tidy.

If the dough starts to stick, lightly dust it with extra gluten-free flour. Continue to combine gentle stretching with light flouring until the dough expands. With patience, a 250g doughball will stretch to around 10″ in diameter, with a nicely pronounced crust that’s ready to cover with your favourite toppings.

Par-Bake The Base

This is a step you can experiment with and may leave out entirely, depending on your pizza oven and the way gluten-free dough performs in it. 

However, a gluten-free base will take generally a little longer than a regular pizza base to cook through, meaning your cheese and toppings can over-cook, and so par-cooking the base for a short while can help the dough and the toppings reach the perfect point at the same time.

It also means that if you are cooking a load of regular pizza too, the longer process of the gluten-free pizza prep can be done beforehand and then just topped before the final cook.  The final result is still much better than buying commercially par-cooked bases, which are unlikely to give you a Neapolitan-raised crust. 

Check the base isn’t sticking on your peel and launch it into your pizza oven. You don’t want to leave it in too long at this point, just enough for the crusts to inflate and the base to seal off, but not start to brown. 

Add Your Toppings And Return To The Oven

Retrieve your base and add your toppings, returning to the oven to finish the cooking process.

With some practice, you can achieve really pleasing results, with a gluten-free pizza that has soft, puffy crusts and a great wood-fired taste. 

The picture shows a genuine image, using the par-cooking method and finished with the lovely fresh flavours of fior di latte, prosciutto and basil!