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My first pizza-free pizza

By Dirk Bansch

I have recently been diagnosed as gluten-intolerant, which is a major bother, as gluten is in everything! Even in BEER!

Gluten is a protein that is found in rye, barley and wheat and can cause inflammation in the small intestine and lead to all kinds of symptoms. My symptoms were misdiagnosed for years, to the point that I was having major health issues.

Fortunately, the gluten intolerance was diagnosed by my homoeopath and I was told to avoid gluten, even in the tiniest amounts. It was so bad that I was not able to eat anything that had been touched by gluten.

I wasn't allowed to have cheese either, because I was told to stay away from casein (the stuff that makes cheese hard), as well.

There are gluten-free products available in the supermarket or in health food stores, but they are on average three times as expensive as their gluten-containing counterparts. And somehow they don't taste like the real thing.

While my partner was working abroad for the last several months, I adjusted my diet to contain all kinds of gluten-free items, especially meat and fish.

But my partner is a hardcore vegetarian and while she has no problem with me eating meat or fish, I feel it is unfair if I eat the stuff she would never touch right in front of her.

So I have decided to eat vegetarian food at home.

And she has decided to eat gluten-free food at home.

This, of course, makes it very difficult to prepare anything, but we are willing to have a go and our first experiment was a gluten-free pizza.

So, where to start? Gluten-free flour. Yes, there is such a thing. Add water, olive oil, yeast, maybe a tiny bit of sugar.

Now we add some topping:
Rules are:
- no meat
- no fish
- nothing containing gluten
- no sweetcorn (partner hates it)

So we had tomato puree, slices of pepper, pieces of tofu, and cheese-free cheese. I wanted to put some pineapple on top, but an Italian friend vowed that she would never speak to us again if we were to put pineapple on pizza. Must be a religious thing...

What can I tell you? For my first pizza-free pizza it was pretty damn good! Of course not close to the "real" thing, but much better than the gluten-free food you can buy in the health food store.

Since this worked so well, my future food plans involve brewing my own gluten-free beer (you can buy gluten-free beer, but it is similar to alcohol-free beer, meaning not very similar to beer at all!)

And then: gluten-free Schwarzwälder Kirsch Torte ! That will be my major contribution to nouvelle sans-gluten cuisine.

Dirk Bansch is Director of Learning & Development at Summit Consulting & Training Ltd.

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Yikes... The one positive thing about a household where one person is gluten intolerant and the other vegetarian is that there is no possibility of becoming overweight for either of them. By the way, has your health improved at all since avoiding gluten? Personally, I am somewhat suspicious of this 'gluten intolerance', as no-one ever mentioned it when I was growing up. It comes across somewhat like ADHD, a label applied to kids who aren't ill at all, and only need a bit of old-fashioned discipline.

Hi Nick,
I used to have a very red face and lots of spots, all that has disappeared and comes back immediately, if I eat gluten by mistake.
My energy levels have also increased noticeably.
I think that gluten intolerance and many food allergies are probably down to us modifying or engineering foods, but it might just be the conspiracy nut in me speaking...

Hi Dirk great Intel, my brother is gluten-intolerant and he was told this when he was 29 years old, he had been eating gluten all the time up until then. It makes me wonder if it is a new thing or are we just getting better at diagnosing these kind of issues.
gluten free food is very expensive, his tip is to bake gluten free bread yourself instead of buying it pre-packed

R Foreman Aug 3, 2011 11:56

appreciated

Congratulations on making your first pizza-free pizza. May you learn to make many more gluten-free meals.

Grandma Marilyn Aug 3, 2011 17:33

appreciated

Wow, changes for sure. So glad to hear you have found ways towards feeling better and things moving in the right direction for you and yours... take care.

LadyD Aug 3, 2011 21:59

appreciated

Dirk, gluten intolerance seems to be becoming an epidemic. What can they be doing to our food? I've heard it has to do with all the fiddling to produce higher yields and has really been changing the structure of the actual wheat or other grain. And pesticides -- could that be contributing, too? It's awful to realize that eating food is killing us.
Well, as Nick says, nobody ever mentioned it when we were growing up -- maybe because when we were growing up we were eating real wheat, not this fake stuff.

sheilamarie Aug 4, 2011 01:31

appreciated

Can you make gluten-free no knead dough? 'No knead' has been in the spotlight for a few years. There are lots of blogs about no knead, including mine (slowbread (dot)blogspot(dot)com. I use no knead techniques to make bread and pizza all the time. The beauty of this technique is that you can make a lot of dough and save the unused portion in the fridge until you are ready to use it. You have fresh dough 24/7/365. Can't beat that.

Thank you for the info. I will certainly check it out. Gluten is the stuff that keeps dough moist, as far as I know, so gluten-free dough is not very kneadable anyway. Will experiment, thanks!

Great. Please experiment until you have a gluten free dough that sits in the fridge until ready to use. Such a dough would be a wonderful contribution to the cuisine for people like you with gluten tolerance problems.

newyorkdude Aug 8, 2011 08:19

I'd be really pleased to see that Black Forest recipe once you've perfected it!

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