Food is Love: When the moon hits your eye…
Part I of the Gluten Free Mollie D Valentine’s Day Trio
Let’s sing, shall we? When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore… 💕
OK, maybe you’re not in the mood to sing, but you’re definitely in the mood to eat! And what better way to spread the love than by making and eating pizza! A shareable food by the sheer fact that it’s a giant pie, pizza is a food ripe for sharing the love with your favorite(s) on Valentine’s Day.
Around here, we’re fans of homemade crusts and the kind that you find in the freezer at the grocery store. No shame in either one! And while we have had luck with both options, I’m giving you the shortcut here because Valentine’s Day pizza should be easy-to-prepare and even easier to enjoy.
Much like other holidays that hope to elicit joy and smiles, Valentine’s Day should be spent eating something awesome with people you love (or like. Or just make you happy).
Allow me to offer you two, delicious, distinct pizzas. Perfect for a Valentine’s Day feast.
The Base
These pizzas feature Against The Grain Gourmet Three-Cheese Crust.
More delicious crust options:
Cup4Cup Pizza Crust Mix (make your own crust from scratch using this terrific flour blend). Of note, I use Cup4cup for all of my GF baking.
The Toppings
For our recent pizzas, we covered two corners of the pizza world: shrimp and sausage. Yes, I know we skipped the joyful veggie pizza, but for this particular pair of pies, these two proteins were calling out to me. That’s amore… 😏
Shrimp Scampi Pizza Toppings
Shrimp (small, around 50 per pound)
Scampi the shrimp before putting them on the pizza using fresh, chopped garlic, shallots, butter, lemon juice, dry white wine, and parsley.
Top the pizza with the shrimp scampi, plus mozzarella, diced tomato, and crumbled feta. Plus extra minced garlic and parsley as a final garnish.
The best part of scampi pizza? You can make it your own by mixing and matching the toppings of your choice. Not a fan of feta? Skip it. Add more mozzarella. Live. It. Up.
Sausage Pizza Toppings
Sausage (we used hot Italian links, casing removed, and broken up into pieces. Leave it raw before topping the pizza).
Tomato paste (goes directly onto the crust)
Mozzarella (lots of it!)
Sliced Green Pepper
Sliced White Onion (strips! Or squares!)
Sliced Crimini Mushrooms
Dried Oregano
All ingredients for this pizza are raw before being baked. The pizza cooks at a high temperature so everything on it will cook nicely; don’t worry! It will all cook!
Pizza Baking Tips
For these pizzas, we used our new pizza stone (brand: Nordic Ware) for the first time! What a phenomenal invention. Why did we not own one sooner? Game-changer for the quality of cooked GF crusts.
Be sure to pre-heat the pizza stone by placing it in the cold oven, then pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees for 15 minutes, and finally, place your prepped pizza on the hot pizza stone and set the timer for another 15 minutes. You may wish to add a few extra minutes depending on how much of a crispy crust you crave.
Time to Eat
Once the pizza is done, allow it to cool for a few minutes before moving it to a cutting board. Careful! It’s burning hot. But it probably smells like a dream so if you burn your fingers I understand. I hate waiting, too.
Slice your pizza into six, or eight, dreamy slices. Before taking that first, magical bite, toast the moment, and your pizza-creation-skills, with your pizza party guests. Now that’s amore… 💕
Coming up next Week
Part Two of the Valentine’s Day Trio. It’s going to be pretty sweet. 😉
Enjoy!
Mollie
A vintage shot of me about to eat an entire GF pizza (it’s on the right). Photo circa late-summer 2016. That summertime glow…