Gluten-Free Pizza with Fioreglut: The Recipe We Make in Class, Tray and Double Bake

Anyone who is coeliac knows how this usually goes: gluten-free pizza is either a thin disc that tastes of cardboard, or rubbery underneath and burnt on top. It is not the flour's fault, it is the method's. A gluten-free dough behaves differently from a wheat one, and has to be handled differently: more water, no long kneading, two rises and a bake in two stages.

This is the pizza we make in the gluten-free class at Piazza Margana 22, with Fioreglut flour from Antico Molino Caputo. For four pizzas: 1 kg of flour, 800 g of warm water, 15 g of dry yeast, 60 g of extra virgin olive oil and 30 g of salt. Nothing else. Below is the method step by step, and why the yeast is activated separately, why the dough is divided into four bowls straight away and why it goes into the oven twice.

For four pizzas you need a kilo of flour, 800 g of water and little else.

• 1 kg of Caputo Fioreglut gluten-free flour, 250 g per pizza
• 800 g of warm water, 200 g per pizza
• 15 g of dry yeast, or 30 g of fresh yeast
• 60 g of extra virgin olive oil, four tablespoons
• 30 g of fine salt
• rice flour for the tray, the lightest dusting

For the margherita: 400 g of peeled tomatoes crushed by hand, 400 g of fior di latte cut into strips and drained, 8 basil leaves. The same batch also makes three rectangular trays instead of four round pizzas: the only thing that changes is how you divide it.

Antico Molino Caputo's Fioreglut is a gluten-free blend made for leavened doughs, and among the starches and fibres it also contains dextrose, which is sugar. Two practical consequences: the dough rises fast and rises a lot, which is why it is better divided into bowls before it grows rather than left in one mass; and it has no aftertaste, the flaw that makes a gluten-free pizza recognisable at the first bite.

Water is the other difference. Gluten-free blends absorb far more than wheat flour: 800 g per kilo, 80 percent, against the 380 g for 600 g of flour in our wheat pizza. A dough this wet looks wrong the first few times, and is in fact the point: without gluten, water is what keeps the base soft, and a drier dough bakes hard.

The first move is a small bowl: about 100 g of the warm water, the 15 g of dry yeast in it, stir and wait a few minutes. If bubbles form on the surface, the yeast is active and you can start. If nothing happens, the yeast is old or the water was too hot, and the dough will never rise: better to find that out now, in a small bowl, than two hours later in front of four bowls that have not moved.

It is a step often skipped in wheat pizza, because gluten forgives and time fixes things. Not here: without a gluten network holding the gas, the rise is the only thing giving the base its structure.

The liquid ingredients go into the mixer first: the rest of the warm water, the activated yeast and the 60 g of oil. Then the flour and the salt. Knead until the dough is compact and not too sticky, and stop there.

Do not look for the smooth, taut ball of a wheat pizza: it will not come. There is no windowpane test, nothing to develop with fifteen minutes of work, because the gluten that work builds does not exist here. The dough stays soft and slightly sticky: that is correct. Without a stand mixer, a sturdy spoon and one hand are enough, because the job is mixing, not kneading.

Here comes the tip that saves the day: divide the dough straight away, into four pieces of about 470 g, and put them in four lightly oiled bowls. With dextrose the rise starts strongly, and dough left in a single bowl reaches the rim and climbs over it. Divided first, the balls are ready and there is nothing to handle again later.

Cover the bowls and put them in the oven switched off with the light on: that is the warm, steady, draught-free spot you need. At least two hours. One practical detail that always gets a laugh in class: covering plastic bowls with cling film is a fight, it will not stick and goes where it likes. A disposable shower cap, with its elastic, stays put, washes and can be reused.

Gluten-free pizza is spread in the tray, not on the counter and then moved: the dough does not hold together well enough to be lifted. Line the tray with baking paper and the lightest dusting of rice flour, which keeps the dough from sticking while you spread it. Not wheat flour, obviously, and not semolina either.

You spread it by hand, from the centre outwards, pressing with your fingertips. If the dough clings to your fingers, oil them lightly and carry on. No rolling pin: a gluten-free dough is pushed, not pulled, and the pin would also crush the air the rim needs.

Then the second rise: the trays go back into the oven switched off with the light on for about half an hour. This is where the base takes air back after being pressed flat, and it is the step that separates a pizza with a rim from a flatbread.

After that half hour, take the trays out and heat the oven to 200 degrees. Spread the hand-crushed tomato with a pinch of salt and bake for about ten minutes, with the tomato alone on top.

This first bake is the step that makes the difference. A dough this hydrated, put in the oven with all the toppings on, stays damp underneath while the mozzarella dries out and goes past its point: ten minutes with tomato alone dry and set the base. Then the tray comes out, you top it as you like, the drained fior di latte first, and it goes back until the mozzarella has melted.

On the way out, the basil leaves and a drizzle of raw oil. Basil that goes into the oven turns black and bitter, and that is not what you want on a pizza.

Kneading for a long time, looking for the network. There is none. Mix until compact and move on to the rise.

Leaving the dough in one bowl. With dextrose it grows a lot and climbs over the rim. Four oiled bowls, straight away.

Skipping the second rise. Half an hour after spreading feels like wasted time, and it is what gives the rim. Without it the base bakes flat.

Baking everything at once. With all the toppings on, the base stays raw in the middle. Tomato first, ten minutes, then the rest.

The wrong flour on the tray. Rice flour, not wheat, and not semolina: for a coeliac, one dusting of wheat flour cancels all the work.

A gluten-free dough is only safe if everything that touches it is too. Wheat flour flies and stays in the air for hours: a floured counter next door, or a tray used the evening before, is enough to contaminate a pizza made with the right flour.

In class the gluten-free station is separate: mixer, bowls, trays, spatulas and surface clean and dedicated, dusting only with rice flour, its own tray in the oven, and no wheat dough being worked alongside at the same time. At home the same principle applies: if there is also wheat pasta or bread in the kitchen, make the gluten-free pizza first, on a freshly cleaned surface, and keep the two flours in two different places.

In our kitchen at Piazza Margana 22, in the centre of Rome, a short walk from Piazza Venezia. In the gluten-free pizza and gelato class everyone activates their own yeast, mixes, spreads in the tray and tops their own pizza with Fioreglut, at a dedicated station; while the pizzas rise you make pistachio and hazelnut gelato, which are naturally gluten-free: only the cone changes, for a gluten-free version.

There is also the gluten-free fresh pasta class, where the tonnarelli are rolled with Fioreglut and the class closes with tiramisù. Shared classes are taught in English; for Italian or Spanish, book a private session. The full list is on the cooking classes page.