Five-Minute Hypoallergenic Pizza

     Most pizza contains a plethora of allergens: wheat, yeast, corn, and dairy at the least. It is, though, entirely feasible to make a crisp, thin-crust pizza at home in a matter of minutes with your particular allergens either eliminated or dialed way back. 

Making a minimalist but tasty pizza with a crisp crust on the griddle: rice tortilla, griddle-roasted tomato, sprinkle of Italian seasoning, Applegate pepperoni and green onions

Step 1: Get your ingredients ready

The tortilla

     The only essential, irreplaceable ingredient for this recipe is a tortilla. (For an alternate pizza crust see Pizza crust in the Glossary.) If you can find a tortilla that's sufficiently nonallergenic for you, you can make thin-crust pizza. Corn tortillas are generally gluten-free and yeast-free; most wheat tortillas contain some amount of yeast.  Right now I'm relying on Food for Life brown rice tortillas.  The one questionable ingredient these do contain is "vegetable gum (xanthan, cellulose)"; the xanthan probably came out of a vat of fermenting corn, and they don't specify what kind of plant the cellulose came from. I also wonder about the waxy stuff on the sheets of paper separating these tortillas (corn? soy? dairy?) 

The sauce

     The simplest pizza sauce is tomato sauce topped with a sprinkle of Italian seasoning. Most canned tomato sauce, though, contains citric acid (corn or soy). Homemade (corn-free, soy-free) tomato sauce is delicious, but there are quicker options:
    
 1.  Grilled tomato.  Peel one vine-ripened tomato (See Produce in the Glossary), slice it and grill it (both sides) on the griddle. The tomato quickly cooks down, gets very soft, and acquires a nice roasted flavor. It can then be smeared on the tortilla.

  2.  Pesto with Pecorino Romano or dairy-free pesto (click here).

  3.  Any other sauce you happen to like and aren't allergic to. Some people put "white sauce" on pizza, the French sometimes put an egg on it, and the Japanese make pizza with mayonnaise. Pizza is versatile: explore your options.

Cheese

     Cheese is not absolutely essential to pizza:  it can be thought of as one of many possible toppings. Leave it off if you need to.  You can try soy mozzarella or rice mozzarella if you like (read the labels).  Personally I think they taste nasty and would rather just skip them. If you can eat sheep or goat's milk cheese, feta tastes amazing with a handful of chopped parsley leaves. To avoid yeast or mold, use a cheese that is not aged, such as fresh mozzarella. To use fresh mozzarella, slice it and squeeze it between a couple of paper towels to remove excess moisture. Note that pregrated aged mozzarella is likely to contain corn products to prevent clumping: grate your own if corn is an issue.

Toppings

     Most of the meat products in the grocery store contain corn, soy and/or other allergens. Read the labels.  Applegate makes a variety of meat products (pepperoni, genoa salami, bacon, turkey, etc.) that don't contain the usual allergens.

     Pick out a veggie or two that you're not allergic to, and you're ready to assemble your pizza.

Step 2: Assemble and cook the pizza

     Plug in your griddle, set it to high, and let it heat up. Roast your tomato on the grill if that's what you're doing for sauce. Grease the griddle with a bit of butter or palm oil shortening if you want to. Put the tortilla on the griddle and immediately coat it with a bit of sauce, sprinkle on some Italian seasoning if you want (See Spices in the Glossary), then add the cheese if any. (Cheese needs to be under the other toppings to be close enough to the griddle to melt.)  Arrange the remaining toppings and cook until the cheese is melted and the tortilla is browned and crisp.