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When you have to live gluten free, life is a series of experiments trying to replicate the experience of “real” food. Anyone who has a food allergy knows what I mean. You search for that perfect approximation of whatever the food is that poisons you. For me, the ultimate is sour dough bread, though I haven’t yet started on that quest. For now I’ll settle for decent pizza.
If you don’t have a gluten issue, you probably don’t realize it’s gluten that holds bread together while you spread peanut butter on it. It’s the stickiness or stick-togetheredness in baked goods. Without it, baked goods fall apart.
In my quest for better pizza I’ve tried a new product, a gluten free cheese pizza by Glutino.
In all fairness, I don’t think pizza is pizza if it doesn’t have stuff on it . . . I mean something more than just sauce and cheese. And because I’m a “must have meat” girl, it’s gotta have sausage and/or pepperoni. I also want peppers and onions and olives . . .
So here’s the latest in the pizza experiments.
This is the first Glutino product I’ve purchased. After opening the package, I was a bit dismayed to find the content in no way resembled the image on the box. At that point, I considered putting it back in the box to return to the store, but I soldiered on.
After tipping off the grated cheese and jellied “sauce”, I added a rich garlic and basil laden pasta sauce, sausage, chopped green and red peppers, chopped onions and a small mountain of shredded mozzarella. After 20 minutes in the toaster oven I had a reasonable facsimile of what a pizza should look like.
As far as taste goes, it’s okay. My body didn’t object (most important thing). The crust sticks together well (contrary to the splay-footed appearance when the crust came out of the box) and has an unobtrusive flavor. My only objection was a slightly slick texture I didn’t find appealing. though the slickness made removal of the factory added sauce and cheese effortless. The pizza is large enough for two meals (for me, YMMV).
Is this a good buy? For me, no. I think it’s too expensive for what I got. There’s a gluten free crust from another manufacturer that comes in 8″ squares, 4 to a box for the same price. Each square is big enough to feed me a serving of pizza 2 to 4 times depending on whether I add a salad or consume it alone. That’s potentially 16 meals for the same price. The crust flavor is good, though because there’s no rim to corral the goodies, the same content-falling-off problem exists.
I’d love a thin gluten free pizza crust with a nice hefty rim to hold in all the content. Sans making it myself (SO not happening), I think I’m in for a long wait.