Tag: gluten intolerant

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Chickpea Flatbread Pizza Base

This weekend just past I whipped up a chickpea flour flatbread as seen on James Wythe Instagram, to have with my Lentil Dahl on Friday night. They were so amazing and easy, just chickpea flour, salt and water mixed together and thrown in a pan, fried for three minutes either side and bam! Done! Taste so good! I also added some spices and nooch to jazz them up. I noticed that James also recommended that they work as gluten free vegan pizza bases too, and so we set about to have a Saturday pizza night.

During relaxed Covid times post lockdown, we bought a pizza stone. We saw it in the foodie section of a big garden centre on a day trip out to said centre. Back when the lockdown rules were relaxed and we used a trip to a garden centre as our ‘day out’ experience.

Upon seeing said pizza stone we got so excited! We both love pizza and we were buzzing at the idea of making our own pizzas – every weekend right? We were going to practically turn into pizza we would make SO MUCH PIZZA.

About a month, maybe more after buying it we finally used it once…and had obviously never used it again. Until the weekend just gone!

We’ve become so much more aware of what we eat and our potion sizes that we just didn’t allow ourselves to make pizza every weekend. Plus, who uses a pizza stone that much? It’s such a novelty really. Anyway I tried making the flatbread (pizza stone in the oven heating up) and added Italian herbs and nooch too. Topped it with my homemade tomato base, sun-dried tomatoes, plant based mince which we make up like ‘spicy beef’ cuz Ryan loves it and creamy organic mozerella style vegan cheese. And obviously rocket, and siracha mayo because it pluses everything.

Genuinely I feel like I’ve tried all the homemade pizza bases to be fair, this was before the pizza stone came into our lives, and they’re just all a bit average. The best I had wasn’t homemade and it was the Bfree ready made gluten free vegan base you can buy in the supermarket. It’s prettt decent but still a little dry.

For some reason this chickpea flatbread is soft, moist, flavoursome and more important holds well so you can actually hold your slice of pizza if you want to. Heaven! For me – this is the most perfect vegan gluten free pizza base.

Here’s how you make them:

I’m always experimenting and trialling different things as I live this ‘gluten avoiding’ vegan life. One of the issues is a lot of gluten free recipes still use egg, cuz it works. But that doesn’t work for my veganism so it’s challenging to find the right swaps and replacements but also keeping things wholesome and free of chemicals and weird ingredients. Shop bought gluten free breads are often full of strange preservatives and rising agents and sadly just taste like sawdust. Bfree as a brand are one of the better ones but I still believe that homemade is best. When it’s homemade you know what you put in it 100% and you can avoid any dangerous ingredients, keep it organic and my big thing these days is to cut out refined sugars.

Anyway! I digress… the consensus is if you’re looking for a great gluten free vegan pizza base this is the easiest, best texture and hold and best taste, hands down!

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Gluten Sensitivity and Me

I have been avoiding gluten and wheat for almost a year now, not because I was diagnosed coeliac or with a wheat allergy, but simply because of the agonising pain I get when I eat it. I’ve had the allergy tests and they all came back clear, so my GP chalks it up to IBS.

After turning vegan some years ago, the omission of dairy in my diet really changed my life, but wheat and gluten still cause an issue. So last year I decided to cut it out altogether, it’s been challenging, but the relief is undeniable. No more crippling pains, cramps or feeling sick and bloated.

I’ve been making my own baked goods at home, especially breads. Shop bought gluten free bread is almost all horrible! I’m very proud of the breads I’ve been making and I enjoy them as much as their wheat counterparts. It was around October 2020 when I mastered my artisan gluten free loaf that I’ve been making. But, it still uses ‘quick yeast’ which I keep reading isn’t always the best thing for the flora of ones gut.

During Covid times, I’ve seen the sourdough craze take hold of everyone and in classic me I resisted for two reasons. One: I hate following the crowd. Two: I can’t eat ‘real bread’ anymore… or can I? Safe to say – I’ve been both curious and jealous!

After much research and reading I’ve discovered there are many out there like me who aren’t allergic but suffer at the perils of wheat and gluten… however they’ve found they can eat sourdough! Apparently this is because the sourdough breaks down some of the gluten in the flour so it is easier to digest, plus sourdough yeast and bacteria is healthy for your gut!

And here we come to this… behold this sourdough loaf from my local artisan baker, The Bakehouse. Marvel at it’s majesty!

I have decided to give it a try, eating sourdough I mean… I ate one tiny end slice at the start and I was terrified, but I had no pain, no issue. So on Sunday we had our usual Sunday brunch and a decent slice of this sourdough was my toast. No issues again. I haven’t eaten anymore yet, but I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!

The Bakehouse (Sherwood)

I have also spoken to the baker from my local artisan bakery and they said:

“We’ve had hundreds of conversations with customers over the last few years who seem to be in the same situation as you and we have always managed to work with them to build up to eating all of our breads and even our other baked goods. 99% of the time people who believe they have a gluten intolerance (not coeliac) are actually suffering from bloating reactions to mass produced breads which contain additives, improvers and other nasty processing agents… this is why our bread is fine for them as we only use flour (mostly organic), salt, water and yeast.”

Does anyone else have my same ailments and have you tried sourdough? Please share your experiences in the comments, I really want to know more about others who have found they can eat sourdough but not other wheat, gluten products.

Falcore xXx