Gluten-free Cast Iron Skillet Pizza
Pizza is so easy. I love the fact that there are few dishes (well, at least after the crust is made). Tonight, I made the best cast iron skillet pizza. I’ve had cast iron skillets on the brain – and on the stove top ever since the latest edition of Cook’s Illustrated showed up. This edition has some easy steps for seasoning and re-seasoning cast iron skillets. A few years ago, we bought a set of three. I have never been able to convince my love that he shouldn’t use soap with it. However, this weekend, I laid claim to one of the set and made it “soap free” for good! This required a bit of reseasoning. So there it was, a perfectly seasoned cast iron skillet – begging to be used. So I did. Deliciously too.
Cast-Iron Skillet Pizza Crust
Dry ingredients:
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/3 cup tapioca flour
1/2 teaspoon. sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
2 Tablespoons dry milk
1 Tablespoon dry active yeast
1 teaspoon gelatin
2 teaspoons dried garlic/onion mix Wet ingredients:
3/4 cup of warm water
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
Pizza toppings:
1/3 cup pizza sauce (half tomato sauce, half tomato paste. Season with oregano, salt, pepper, garlic, fennel and onion.)
3-4 turkey/chicken Italian sausage links, cooked and sliced thinly. (We use Applegate brand – it’s precooked)
1 and 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese.
other toppings as desired/available.
1. Preheat oven to 425F
2. Mix together the dry ingredients. Add wet.
3. Beat on high for 4 minutes.
4. While the mixture is being worked by the mixer, lightly oil a cast iron skillet with EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
5. When done mixing, scrap dough into cast iron skillet. Using wet hands, press into the skillet and up the sides at least 2/3 – 3/4 of the way. Make sure to have the dough as evenly as possible on the bottom of the pan.
6. Bake crust for 10 minutes. It will puff up a bit while baking.
7. Remove from oven. Sprinkle crust bottom with cheese. Top with pizza sauce, turkey/chicken Italian sausages and mozzarella cheese.
8. Bake an additional 15 – 22 minutes until brown.Enjoy!
Gluten Free Gobsmacked 
That’s a great idea. I wonder if you would get a really crisp crust if you preheated the skillet in the oven and then put a rolled out pizza dough on it. It would be the same concept as cornbread – you preheat the iron skillet with oil, so that when you pour in the batter the hot skillet makes a crunchy crust.
Mary Frances @www.glutenfreecookingschool.com
I cooked it in the skillet for that reason, Mary. I didn’t preheat the skillet as I thought (1) it would be too hot to handle and (2) it would over-crisp the crust with the two different cooking times. Thus I precooked the crust for 10 minutes before filling. =)
Thanks for the comment and look – you’ve made my night!
This looks delicious- and I’m thrilled it has no eggs. I’ll be giving this a go (funny- I just made cornbread in my cast iron skillet on Sunday). 😉
I am having a new found love affair with my cast iron too. The only reason why I didn’t preheat the pan… well.. ’cause I’m a klutz and I burn myself with ice cubes. LOL. I figured the pan would retain heat well enough to crisp up the crust – and it did! Hope you like it! =) -Kate
May I suggest that along with soap-free you designate that skillet as gluten-free also. Cast iron is porous, that is why it must be seasoned, which means that gluten can hide in all those little pores. Cooking gluten-free should only be done in a pan that has not been used for cooking food containing gluten.
I have been using the cast iron to bake on the gas grill during the hot months. I used an oven thermometer to figure out how to get the temperature to the right level then have baked biscuits and hamburger buns on the grill with a cover. A large dutch oven also works well. the big plus was fresh bread eaten in a cool air-conditioned kitchen.
gfgrandma
Great idea! =) Kate
I missed this post, I wasn’t online this week.
What a great idea to use a cast iron skillet!! I have been looking for dark deep dish pizza pans; I might try this instead.
Thanks for the idea!
Hiya Slacker! I haven’t made a deep dish pizza yet…. wasn’t really one of my favorites back in the day, lol – but my love misses his Chicago pizza, so we might just have to try that. Let me know how the cast iron works for you. 🙂 -Kate
I don’t have a cast iron skillet, but I do have a deep dish pizza pan, non-stick I think. Would this crust recipe work in this pan?
Thanks
Kate
Absolutely! Go for it! -Kate
Kate –
I made this tonight for dinner and it was a hit!! I used my non-stick deep dish pizza pan (about 13.25″ in diameter on the bottom) and had to double the recipe to fit the pan. Everyone liked the crust. I didn’t cook it as long as I should have, so it was a little doughy/chewy still, but I will cook it longer next time. My 5 year old loved it. It is really a pretty easy recipe. I can also think it would be easy to make it a quick weeknight recipe if you measure out all your dry ingredients and put them in one ziplock to use later in the week.
So thanks for the great recipe!
Kate
What size pan were you using? I used an 8″ which is all I have and thought the crust too thick, but delicious anyway! I think I might try it in a cookie sheet next time. Love the fact that it has no egg in it. Thanks so much for the recipe!
I loved it sooo much that i had to post it in my blog with picture. Also I used teff flour rather than sorghum. But it was still super delicious.
We would like recipes on how to make spinach spaghetti, multi grain spaghetti, and rice spaghetti. I want recipes that will show how to make the pasta in making spaghetti.Please e-mail us back at pope.rachel@ymail.com.
Hi Chris –
You can find a spaghetti/pasta recipe here:
https://glutenfree.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/gf-homemade-pasta-two-ways/
It’s should be easy to modify to make spinach pasta or multigrain pasta without a problem!
😉
-Kate
Here is a different take on the Cast Iron Pizza concept:
He preheats a cast iron griddle-like pan on top of the stove, and when it is super hot he slides the pizza (with toppings on already) onto the pan with a pizza peel. Then he takes the pan and puts it under the broiler in his oven to cook the top. In less than 5 minutes it is cooked without preheating the oven for 45 minutes.
I think this technique does a pretty good job of simulating the intense heat of a pizza oven (which most home ovens can’t do), by the heat stored in the cast iron from the burner and the intense heat coming from the broiler.