My new favorite pizza crust

I now have a new favorite pizza crust.

If you saw my Times-Union column a couple of weeks ago, I talked about making pizza at home and mentioned that Udi's is my favorite pre-made gluten-free crust.

That prompted an email from Victoria Wolf, who started a gluten-free artisan baking company in Denver called the Gluten Free Explorer that features pizza crusts. She just won the gluten-free division of the International Pizza Challenge at a pizza expo in Las Vegas last month and offered to send me some of her crusts to try out.

And you know what? She was right. Her crust was fantastic, probably the best pizza crust I've had in a long time (including gluten-free pizzas at restaurants).

Hand-tossed crust

Victoria's crusts come in two types, hand-tossed and deep dish. The hand-tossed crust made a great traditional pizza.

The deep dish crusts are a little different, coming in a rectangle. That crust had to be baked longer and as you can see, that resulted in the cheese and sauce baking longer and it came out looking more like a calzone than a pizza. But it tasted great.

Deep dish crust

The deep dish package mentions that it would be good for garlic or cheese bread, and I'm thinking that might be a better use for the crusts. But whatever you use them for, I'm sure it would be great to eat.

The instructions say to put the pizzas directly on the oven rack but, given that I try to avoid messes, I always cook pizzas on a pizza stone. The instructions do say that pizza stones or a baking sheet are suitable options. I think they worked great on my pizza stone.

Unfortunately, Gluten Free Explorer products are only available in stores in the Denver area but you can order them online (glutenfreeexplorer.com). Victoria also makes baguettes, hamburger buns and sandwich bread.

They are expensive, especially when you add in the shipping costs, but I sure did enjoy those pizzas.