Gluten free deep dish pizza crust

As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I've been inspired, nay intrigued, to make gluten-free deep dish pizza. Tuna and I LOVE Geno's East in Chicago. I mean, obsessed. So I wanted to recreate it in gluten-free fashion. With one half covered in vegan cheese.

A typical pizza dough is made of yeast+ water + sugar mixed with flour (usually 2.5- 3 cups) + oil + salt. Some deep dish doughs also call for corn meal. I figured I could sub in a GF flour or flour blend and leave everything else the same. But there are SO MANY varieties of GF flour in my cupboard alone. And I was also worried about maintaining the texture of the crust.

I searched a bit and found this great PDF with the weights of gluten free flours per cup. Regular white flour weighs 125 grams per cup. I chose sorghum flour and oat flour because both had weights similar to wheat flour. Other options were amaranth, millet, garbanzo, teff or buckwheat. I chose sorghum because i recently bought a GF beer made from sorghum and figured if beer could be created from sorghum, surely pizza dough could as well. Oat flour made the cut because I thought the sticky nature of oats might help the dough bind and stretch. I also wanted to use some potato starch for binding. And because i just bought it and was eager to use it.

Some quick math and I knew I wanted between 317 and 375 grams of GF flour. I set my kitchen scale to metrics and started measuring.

Vegan version

Deep dish dough/crust:
1 cup + 2 T oat flour
1 cup sorghum flour
3 T potato starch
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 packet yeast
1 cup water 90-105 degrees
1 T sugar- coconut, date, white, honey, just not artificial. The yeast needs calories!
2 T oil
1 tsp salt

Other stuff you need:
Deep dish pizza pan or a 8-9 in cake pan
Mixer with dough hook. Or patience and a clear surface to hand knead.

Mix yeast and water in a large bowl. Water should feel neither warm nor cool to the touch. Or you can measure temperature with a thermometer. Add sugar. Stir and set aside for about 5 minutes.

Measure flours into another bowl. Add salt and mix. Add yeast water and oil. Use a mixer with a dough hook to knead for 6-10 minutes. Or you can knead by hand. Like this (describes the method by which I learned from Edward Espe Brown's The Tassajara Bread Book and the documentary How to Cook Your Life. Both highly recommended). But you will need to knead (giggles) for at least 10 minutes.

Cover with plastic wrap on a greased baking sheet and set aside. I put my dough in my oven. Oven was OFF.

I let my dough rest 8 hours. I can not confirm that this is necessary. To be addressed in the next version.

Press dough out onto baking pan or counter to 1/4-1/2 in thick. It might be crumbly. Wet your fingers with water if needed. Turn cake pan or deep dish pizza pan upside down and press into dough. This provides a perfectly sized circle for the bottom of the deep dish/cake pan. Use a knife to trace the outline. Then use a spatula to transfer dough to deep dish. Press dough further, towards and up the edges of the pan to create the deep crust.

Top with pizza favorites. Traditional deep dish order is cheese, other toppings, then sauce.

Vegan cheese slices/shredded mozzarella topped with mushrooms

Then pepperoni

Then sauce and Daiya shreds, to identify the vegan side of things...

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or until edges of dough appear crispy.

Tuna and I were so happy with the result! His primary complaints were more cheese and more sauce. This can only mean that the crust was great! I think it needs seasoning, either herbs and more salt in the dough. The current dough had great flavor when topped but i want to look forward to eating the crusts! I also think the addition of a wet binder like a flax egg or pumpkin to decrease the crumblies. Both to be addressed in the next attempt.

Pizza pie! Sans one slice:)