By this Friday our newest little one will have made an entrance into the world, so our weekly pizza feast may have to wait a few days. But if you’d like to throw your own pizza party in our honor,scroll to the bottom of the post for some tips on making the perfect gluten free pizza.

By the way, the thin crust recipe is new, and if you’d like the recipe then be sure to sign up for my free gluten free newsletter via the Subscribe Box in the sidebar (click here to get to the site if you’re reading this by email or RSS feed). Most new recipes will be sent to the  newsletter readers first, rather than immediately posted to the blog. You will also get a copy of my Top 10 Gluten Free Recipes (in printable format) when you subscribe.

Those of you who are new to the gluten free diet are probably just glad to hear that there is such a thing as mouthwatering gluten free pizza. You can stop buying the incredibly expensive and incredibly gross frozen gluten free pizzas and start making your own. If the thought of rolling out a pizza crust terrifies you, then try this gluten free pizza recipe, where you just pat the pizza dough into the pan. If you’d rather roll the dough out so that you can cook it on a pizza stone, then try my recipe for gluten free pizza crust.

Check back soon for pictures of the new baby and pictures and posts of all of the yummy gluten free foods that we’re cooking. I’ve come up with a new biscuit recipe that is a perfect recipe for kids to help out with, and I’m hoping to do some more yeast roll experiments if Baby L makes us wait a few more days.

Five Tips for a Gluten Free Pizza Party:

1. If at all possible, pre-bake your crust on a hot pizza stone (just until it’s golden on top). The extra time in the oven, makes for a crisper crust.

2. Buy your pizza sauce, so that you can spend your time on prepping a few fresh pizza toppings. And have fun, a cheese pizza is great, but there really are so many possibilities.

3. Involve your family or friends. Whether it’s just family for supper, or you’ve invited a bunch of friends, you can have a lot of fun by letting everyone make their own pizzas. David is almost four now, and he loves to roll the pizza crusts out (with help from me) and sprinkle his toppings on.

4. Put Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes on the table, so that it feels like you’ve gone out for restaurant pizza. Get special cups and straws for the kids so that it feels like a special meal.

5. Make it a real party and let everyone have their beverage of choice. For us this means soy milk for David, Pomegranate Italian Soda for me (the major craving of this pregnancy), and gluten free Redbridge beer for John.

Related Posts:

• Gluten Free Pizza: Homemade Gluten Free Pizza Crust
• Gluten Free Pizza Recipe

For the past couple of years, John and I have used some special tools from Triumph Dining to make eating out easier. These tools have helped us find restaurants that understand the gluten free diet! The tools have also helped us to communicate with waiters and chefs that were not familiar with a gluten free diet, but really wanted to help us find something to eat. Until you’ve experience it, you won’t believe how nice it is to eat food prepared by chefs that really care about feeding you well and enjoy the challenge of creating a great gluten free dish.

The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide

John’s sister lives in St. Louis and when we first visited her there I was a little wary of how we would handle our food needs while staying in a hotel.  We’ve traveled enough  to know that not planning for our meals can put a damper on an otherwise great trip.  Triumph Dining had recently sent me a copy of  “The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide” so I pulled it out and flipped to the section on St. Louis.  And am I ever glad we did! We discovered the most amazing little hole-in-the-wall breakfast cafe that makes gluten free crepes.  Rooster: Crepe.Sandwich.Cafe is now one of those places that we have to visit when we’re in St. Louis.

“The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide”  is a huge listing of gluten free friendly restaurants organized by state and city. Both chain restaurants and local restaurants are included. All of the listings include at a minimum the restaurant’s name, address, and phone number. However, many of the listings also include the general price range of the entrees, the restaurant’s web address, and comments on what types of gluten free items are on the menu, as well as the restaurant manager’s suggestions for ensuring that you get special treatment from the restaurant staff.  Gluten free menus for many chain restaurants are included near the back of the guide.

Our next trip to St. Louis was for John’s sister’s wedding and the Gluten Free Restaurant Guide save the day once again. The caterer for the wedding reception was not able to provide a meal for us, so we used the Restaurant Guide to find the closest Maggiano’s. John and I slipped out after the wedding, picked up take-out from Maggiano’s, and got back to the reception before the rest of the guests finished going through the buffet.  If we hadn’t had The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide to help us find a restaurant, we probably would have had a horribly little pity party. Instead, we ate a great meal (probably better than the caterer’s) and got to spend plenty of time enjoying the  wedding party with the bride and groom.

Triumph Dining Cards

So, I know some of you are probably saying, “I live in the middle of Nowhere, Alabama, and I don’t think that a gluten free restaurant guide is going to help me eat out at either of the two restaurants in town.”

You’re right!  But, that’s why Triumph also publishes the Triumph Dining Cards.  These handy-dandy little cards (which are the perfect size for a purse, backpack, diaper bag, glove box, etc) can help you obtain a gluten free meal in any restaurant that employs at least one person who can read English, Chinese, French, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish (Mexican), Thai, or Vietnamese.

Close your eyes and just think for a moment of how amazing it would feel to walk into your favorite ethnic restaurant, whether it’s Thai or Southern Fried Everything, and not have to try to explain what gluten is. Instead, you just hand the server your Dining Card and the Dining Card explains everything that the server and chef need to know in order to provide you with food that you can actually eat. Isn’t that a nice image?

Get Out There and Explore

Now that our third kiddo is on the way, John and I are making a concerted effort to go out to eat by ourselves at least once a month. And while our favorite Thai restaurant is safe, we’re ready to explore other options. We’re going to be making use of the Triumph Dining Cards and The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide as we do. And whenever we find a product that we love, we like to share it with our readers too. While both of these tools are available on Amazon, you can only order both products at the reduced “combo” price through a Triumph Gluten Free affiliate. And since we think that the “combo” is the only way to go, we’ve signed up as Triumph Dining affiliates so that we can offer you The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide and the Triumph Dining cards at a 23% discount off of the regular price.

If you’re interested in either the Restaurant Guide or the Dining Cards, or just want to find out some more details, click the link to head over to the Triumph Dining website. Feel free to leave any comments or questions about the products in the Comments below.

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By the way, Gluten Free Cooking School now has over 2400 readers! I’d love to see how many comments we can get on this one post. Who knows, maybe if you tell the universe what you need, you’ll get an answer =)

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If you’re new to the gluten free diet, then you can click on this link to browse all of Amazon’s gluten free groceries.  They have a very wide selection of products and you’ll get a great idea of the breadth of gluten free products that are available.

Amazon also frequently runs sales on gluten free items. During the month of May you can:

• Save $10 when you spend $49 or more on eligible Prana and Boomi Bar products

• Save up to 30% on select Mrs. May’s products -These are nut and seed snacks that are more on the gourment end of the snacking scale. We’ve tried a few and liked them quite a bit. However, we thought they were a little pricey at Walmart,  so Amazon may be a good choice if you buy these often.

• Save up to 20% on select Think Thin products

• Save up to 40% on select Hillside Candy products – Did you know that hard candies are often contaminated with wheat? The conveyor belts in the plants are sometimes dusted with a fine layer of flour so that they candies don’t stick. This would not necessarily be disclosed on the food label. I’m planning on keeping these candies on hand so that I can trade them to my kids for the candy they receive at the doctor, bank, etc.

• Save up to 60% on McCANN’S Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal McCann’s oatmeal is generally considered to be safe from cross-contact with wheat because no wheat is grown in Ireland. This is one of our favorite breakfast foods year round and I just signed up to have it delivered to our home every six months with Amazon’s Subscribe and Save option.
  A reader has emailed me to let me know that McCann’s oatmeal is now shipped to the U.S. in cargo containers and packaged here. Since there is no way of knowing what else has been in the cargo containers, we can no longer assume that McCann’s oatmeal is gluten free.

• Save up to 38% on Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

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• Gluten Free Sale at Amazon: Pasta, Flour, Pretzels, Cookies

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**Special Note** Not all of the products on the sales pages are gluten free, so double-check before you buy. Also be sure to note the promotional codes at the top of each sales page. You’ll need these codes to get the discounts. Some of the products are eligible for Subscribe and Save, which will get you an additional 15% discount. I’d strongly consider this if you regularly use any of the sales products.

Save $15 and get a free Earthwise Grocery Shopping Bag when you spend $59 or more on any combination of eligible organic and natural groceries  Some of the products includes in this sales are Envirokidz Cereals and Nature’s Path Cereals.

15% off Arrowhead Flours and De Boles pasta The Arrowhead flour prices look great!

$10 off Mi-Del and Ka-Me products if you order more than $29 Mi-Del gluten free cookies are great for pie crusts, or just for snacking. I like to keep a bag on hand so that David can have gluten free cookies for snack time at the church nursery.

20% Off Kay’s Gluten Free Pretzels I haven’t tried these, but it looks like the size that you would include in a packed lunch.

15% Off of Mrs. Leeper’s Pasta and Pasta Dinners Why would you order 12 boxes of pasta at a time?  I bought that much gluten free pasta before tax season and it was a Godsend on nights that we needed a quick, but healthy supper. Just mix the cooked pasta with spinach, marinara sauce, and chickpeas and you have a great, but easy meal.

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• Our Gluten Free Beer Tasting
• Gluten Free Waffles
• Starting a Gluten Free Diet: Free Menu Plan
• Grocery Shopping for Your Gluten Free Diet – Week One
• What to Eat on a Gluten Free Diet – Week One

I’m sure there will some new recipes on the site soon. We’ve been enjoying homemade gluten free hoagies for the past couple of weekends, and we made some great gluten free cupcakes for John’s birthday. More on that later as time and energy allows =)

Happy Easter everyone.

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