Experimenting with Gluten Free Cooking!

My finished product.  Gluten Free Home Made Hot Pockets...err...snack pacs!

Well, I love to cook (big surprise there, huh?).  Recently, I've gotten closer to some amazing people who have gluten free diets.  I really wanted to do something special for them, so I made them some snack packs (my version of hot pockets that I've been experimenting with lately).  I never realized all that would go into cooking gluten free!  So, in a way, this has become it's own little adventure.

My lovely supplies...although I ended up not using the egg.

My first thoughts were that I would only have to worry about the actual flour being gluten free.  I was wrong.  Gluten goes into so many different ingredients that I never would have guessed!  For this I focused on things that would go in a pizza hot pocket.  (I'll include my recipe for these a bit later in this post don't worry :) ) I do want to state now that I may have made some slight mistakes through this process and I apologize.  I dived in (like I always do) and took the challenge.  Thankfully I have been told that these friends (or at least one of them) are willing to be "test subjects" for these cooking experiments!  My first step was to go and look for the gluten free flour.  I went to my local grocery store and had a selection of three "flours".  There was all purpose, bread, and baked goods.  I did have a tough time trying to decide which flour would be best.  I ended up deciding on the all purpose flour since I thought if I had any left I could use it for other baking projects.  Just so everyone is prepared, I spent about $5.00 for a pound of gluten free flour.  It is more expensive than traditional flour,  but if it's what you need to enjoy baked goods, it's what you need!  Next I grabbed extra butter and some cheese.  I decided to go with the Italian blend instead of the pizza blend purely because they were constructed almost identical (the Italian blend had a few cheese types the pizza blend didn't) and the Italian blend was almost half the price.

Dry ingredients pre-mixing.

Yes...I do weigh price into my decisions.  The pepperoni was easy.  Just plain pepperoni.  The sauce was tricky.  I've never actually purchased pizza sauce I realized.  I didn't even know where to find it!  We almost picked up spaghetti sauce instead then Mike finally found a clerk and asked.  Now, while we were looking for the pizza sauce (and while we were looking over the spaghetti sauces to possibly get one of those instead) I noticed that some of them were marked gluten free.  When I found the pizza sauce, I looked but none of them were marked gluten free.  I ended up looking through the ingredients of each of them (thankfully it was a small section) and found one that had very basic ingredients (water, tomato paste, seasonings, ect).  It was the only one they had that didn't mention wheat or any gluten warning at all, so it was the one we got.  In the long run, I was just really surprised.  It never occurred to me that gluten is in so many products.  One of the other things that really surprised me was that gluten is in some baking powders, so make sure you check yours out!

The dry ingredients mixed with some cheese added in!

When we got home, I got myself started!  I added all my dry ingredients while taking small pinches to taste to try and tweak it.  Let me say it here.  In my opinion, the all purpose gluten free flour has a gross after taste.  I've been doing a little research at The Gluten Free Goddess's site and it sounds like I may have disliked the taste of the white rice flour.  Going forward, I plan on skipping out on that as much as possible (meaning I'm going to be experimenting with different types of gluten free flours to figure out my recipes).  I'd made a non-gluten free version of this dough using a recipe before.  I only changed the seasonings I mixed in as well as the type of cheese.  The flour said I could add it to all recipes cup for cup so I figured this would be easy!

My dough mound.

It didn't work like that.  I had to add extra butter (remember this was me experimenting) as well just play with the dough to get it to a somewhat dough consistency.  The all purpose mix I bought had a really gritty texture to it.  In the end (because the gluten in wheat is what makes dough flexible and I haven't had the experience with cooking this way to know how to compensate for it) I ended up with a mashed potato texture that I flattened for my dough.  Once I know more, I hope I can go back and make this a better recipe but I'll share what I have for now!  Oh, and be forewarned...baked goods using this type of flower don't seem to brown as much, so pay extra attention to the edges!

Before baking. 

Gluten Free Pizza Snack Packs

Ingredients:

For the Crust:
2 C. All Purpose Gluten Free flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. pizza seasoning
1 C. Italian cheese mix (or cheese mix of your choice)
1 C. butter (room temperature)
8 Tbs water

For the Filling:
Pizza Sauce
Cheese mix
Pepperonis

Instructions:
1. Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and pizza seasoning.  I used a whisk to ensure it was evenly mixed together.
2. Add the cheese to your crust mixture and once again mix together.  I used my whisk, but used a folding action more than a stirring action to try and get it all spread out.
3. Add in the butter.  Use your hands to make a "crumb" mixture with the butter and the dried ingredients.  (The best way of describing this motion for me is to say that you squeeze the butter into the dried ingredients the say way you fold dough over into itself.)
4. Continue in the a fore mentioned mixing technique and add in your water.
5. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  (I hate having the oven going the entire time you're working on a difficult task only to waste electricity.  Feel free to preheat before if you would prefer.  My kitchen just gets hot fast.)
6.  Stick your dough in the freezer while you get your filling ingredients together.  (The goal here is to get the dough cool.  If you'd rather stick it in the fridge and watch a movie, go for it.  I just like to do the entire project in one swoop!)
7.  Take about a three inch ball of dough and flatten into a pancake shape.  You want the flattened product to be as even as you can make it, but as thin as you can make it too.  This will take some practice.  (And it feels like playing with mashed potatoes!)  Lay your finished "pancake" on your baking pan.
8.  Using about 1 TBS of pizza sauce, spread it over the "pancake" sparring a 1/2 inch edge around the circle.  Lightly sprinkle some cheese (just remember, that cheese is going to melt!) and then place your pepperonis.  I followed this by once again sprinkling cheese and adding about a 1 tsp. dollop of pizza sauce on top.
9.  Make another pancake the same way you made the first one.  Gently drape this dough over the top of your pizza filling and lightly press the edges for an informal seal.  Take a fork and press down the dough all around the edges (see above picture) to make a tight seal.  This is also the point where I would check for any breaks in the top crust and smooth small pieces of dough over them so that my filling wouldn't bake out.
10.  Repeat steps 7-9 until your cookie sheet is full of snack packs!
11.  Bake at 400 until the edges are lightly browned.  Move to a cooling rack to let cool.
12.  To store these in the freezer (and make them more like hot pockets) let them cool on the cooling rack then wrap them in freezer paper.  My wrapping method is to set the snack pack half way down my freezer paper piece and fold the bottom over it.  I then fold my sides in like a triangle to seal the sides of the pack.  Then gently flip and fold over until you only have a small piece.  I tape that down with plain desk tape and write what they are with a magic marker.  I suggest keeping them stored like this inside a gallon zip lock bag.  To reheat:  Cook in a microwave on high for 45 seconds.

Fresh out of the oven on the cooling rack.

I hope you all enjoy them!  I'm sure my next experiments will be even better!