Ahh gluten free pizza…the first option many restaurants add to their menu, but usually the worst culprit for 1) cross-contamination and 2) everyone’s favorite “cardboard” texture. Don’t get me wrong, I love that restaurants have the option, but it’s rare to find places with pizza that I actually WANT to eat.
Recently, I’ve been testing a lot of the different crust options at home to see which ones cook up the best. There are some nice mixes that you can buy, but in this post I’m just picking my favorite pre-mixed, ready to bake doughs!
Without further ado, here are my two favorite brands…and both happen to be located in Connecticut!
1. Make It GF Pizza Dough
Lori Cornett, the owner of Make It GF in Canton, CT is actually a scientist by trade…and I think that’s how she was able to formulate such an impressive dough! It comes as a ball of dough and you spread it out and bake it yourself. Lori was nice enough to add a video on her website about how to do it! You can check it out here. It also happens to be nut free, soy free, grain free, egg free, dairy free, and GMO free!
How it’s packaged
Once it’s cooked, it comes out looking like this (or at least mine did):
Look at that crust…
I have to say, for people used to New York or CT style pizza, this is the most authentically similar kind of crust I’ve ever tried! Even my husband said it was delicious and it tasted pretty much like “regular” pizza. It gets a nice crispy outside while maintaining that bite and chew of a traditional gluteny pizza inside. If you can get your hands on this crust (or any of their products), I highly recommend it!! You can order it online and have it shipped right to you if you’re living in the Northeast Region of the US!
2. Still Riding Foods Gluten Free Pizza Crust
Still Riding Foods is another brand located in Connecticut. They’ve worked hard to formulate a pizza crust that is also similar to that New York style of pizza. However, it doesn’t come as a ball of dough. Instead, it comes vacuum sealed, pre-cooked, and never frozen. So all you have to do is pop it out of the package, top it with your favorite toppings, and stick it in the oven. It’s great! Plus it’s free of the top 8 allergens and is also kosher, vegan, and non-GMO.
This crust is crispy and chewy as well and my gluten-pizza-loving-husband approved! It’s a great go-to for a quick and delicious dinner. Plus they sell various crust sizes and will ship to anywhere in the country!
I didn’t really grow up in a family that drank wine. My mom didn’t drink at all (except for the occasional gin and tonic on vacation) and my dad was and still is a loyal Irish Whiskey or Bourbon drinker. Apparently his grandfather grew grapes on his property and made his own wine and my dad made homemade wine for years….so it is in my blood! But by the time I came around, my dad was sick of wine because he drank so much of his own haha
I had an occasional sip, but didn’t really drink any of it until college. And the wine I drank in college was exactly what you’d expect…Franzia and Barefoot lol and never anything dry…it was always the sickening sweet flavors! If I did that now I’d be hungover for 6 weeks lol But back then, I couldn’t imagine drinking a dry wine. One of my best friends grew up drinking wine with dinner every night, so she always drank super dry red wine which I thought was both incredibly impressive and incredibly disgusting.
Here I am with the first wine glass I ever bought. “Glass” is a loose term, because it was actually like a hard, clear plastic lol I didn’t trust myself enough to have real glass at college but I thought it looked good enough. I really thought I was about to be the classiest god damn bitch. It was my first time living in a college apartment instead of a dorm and I was going to be drinking Franzia out of a plastic wine glass…I mean, that was the picture of sophisticated adulthood to me.
But as the years went on, just like they said would happen, the sweet wines started to taste cloyingly sweet and I slowly started to lean towards drier wines.
For a year or so after college, I’d go through a red wine phase and then a white wine phase and then back again. But about 2 years ago, my palate made its final (I think?) switch to preferring white wine. My absolute favorites are a Pinot Grigio or a Sauvignon Blanc. Although sometimes a good Chardonnay or Riesling hits the spot.
I think I got so into wine because having Celiac disease makes you feel somewhat limited. You get like 4 beer options…meanwhile the craft beer trend is taking over the world! All my friends were trying hundreds of beers and I felt left out. Once I discovered how many different kinds of wine there were, I was intrigued! It opened up a whole world of experiences for me and I wanted to learn all I could about it! I even signed me and my husband up for some wine tasting classes, just to get the basics down. I’m lucky to live in Connecticut because we have the Connecticut Wine Trail–there are TONS of wineries and vineyards all over the state. My favorite thing to do in the summer is vineyard hop and try all the different local varieties and hear the stories behind them.
My friend and I at a vineyard over the summer
As I got more into wine, I started wanting to try different wines that I didn’t usually encounter. I had read about wine clubs before and thought maybe that’d be a fun place to start. I started reading a bunch of articles about which wine clubs were both great and affordable, because I didn’t have tons of money to spend every month. Enter Winc. It had great reviews and you couldn’t beat the price, so in 2016 I decided to sign up! I’ve been getting my monthly wine ever since 🙂
You start by completing a palate profile quiz so they can match you with wines you might like! You answer questions like what kind of chocolate or fruit you like…it’s pretty cool! Then they recommend several wines for you to try. Once they ship them to you and you try them, you rate how they were on your app. As you rate more wines, the app figures out which wines are best suited to your palate. Plus every time you rate 10 wines, you get $10 off 🙂 Good incentive. Mine and my husband’s taste in wine are actually pretty similar (we both like light-bodied wine on the drier side), but he likes red wine and I like white. With Winc, that’s no problem! You pick how many whites and reds you want in each box. I usually get 3 whites and one red….my husband drinks less wine than I do haha
If you put 4 wines in your box, you get free shipping, so that’s what I always do. Many of the wines are only $13 each, so it’s pretty affordable.! And you can skip any month that you want! There are some months that we’ll want to save a little money or we’ll have gone to a bunch of vineyards and don’t need any more wine, so we’ll just skip a month or two. There’s no monthly fee or anything, so you don’t pay anything the months you skip! You only pay for the wine you actually do get. And they’re great about refunds! If you don’t like a wine that you’ve tried, they’ll give you a refund on the account! I found out about this policy like 3 months after trying a wine I didn’t like and they still gave me a refund! haha
Can you tell I like my roses?
Although, a word of advice, they don’t carry many sweet or dessert wines, so if you’re new to the wine game you might need to work up to this! But for anyone who has been drinking sweet wine for a few years and is ready to test out some drier varieties, this is a perfect entry way!
So as I was browsing the gluten free aisle at Big Y the other week, I decided to look at the instant oatmeal section. I tend to steer away from the pre-packaged single serving oatmeals because usually they have SO MUCH sugar. I’d rather just make my own and add in some natural sweetness. But, plot twist, Ancient Harvest has an Ancient Grain instant oatmeal with 0 sugar in it! So great and convenient. Plus it’s a little different than regular old oatmeal. Love.
