Low-Sin, High-Pleasure Pizza: gluten-free, low sodium, and still tasty

Pizza. Philly cheese steak. Food of the gods.

My folks went away for a month, leaving me to clean out the deep freeze unit to the best of my abilities. Due to my having been hit with a little upper respiratory bug, though, the only thing I really made a dent in was the stock of stock -- chicken stock, that is. I have, for now, had my fill of chicken soup and its many variations on a theme. I arrived at that point long before I had recovered my energy and ability to cook again.

The trouble with reaching curative foods saturation point before you can get back to playing in the kitchen, and craving variety you don't have the strength to cook for yourself, is that you start thinking about establishments which deliver prepared foods to your home. In this town, the only foods available for delivery are pizza, pizza, and...no, that's it. Two pizza places. Everything else you have to fetch for yourself.

What with my suddenly having to cut out wheat and aged cheeses, that's really not a great set of options. But it's a great way to develop a little obsession -- an undying craving. I needed pizza.

At last, my energy mostly returned, as did my accountant/personal shopper (the Bat). Also arriving, my mail-order shipment of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Biscuit AND Baking Mix.

Note: I like Bob's Red Mill products. They're versatile, as well as relatively affordable (as gf products go, they're almost dirt cheap!), and they taste quite nice, with a balance of flours so you don't suffer from too sweet or too beany an aftertaste, as many other brands I've tried in the past year. [If you prefer another brand of biscuit mix, though, go for it, and follow the package instructions for a single batch of basic rolled biscuit dough.] 

So anyway, I had my biscuit mix, and now I had other ingredients and a mommy to help me out in case of crisis, so it was PIZZA TIME!

I chose to combine a couple of cravings, too, to kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. I went for the Philly Cheese-Steak toppings, to the best of my abilities.

Fair warning: this is not a throw-together-at-the-last-minute pizza. You need time for the meat to arrive at a workable state, even if you have a deli slicer. It helps if you get a nice lean roast of beef, cut it with the grain into 1 or 1 1/2 inch wide strips, then freeze the strips for an hour or two, until they are frozen firm, but not rock-hard. If they get too hard, you'll only have to allow them to start to thaw before applying a blade to them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is how to make a gluten-free cheese-steak pizza.

Half of this one was without onions, for the sake of the digestion of somebody I love.

Gluten-Free Biscuit-Crust Philly Cheese Steak Pizza

Ingredients:

Toppings:

2 lbs lean beef roast, cut with the grain into 1- to 2-inch thick strips, semi-frozen, and then sliced very thinly
5 Tablespoons butter, divided

12 ounces fresh mushrooms, stems removed, sliced thinly.
1 cup sweet onion, sliced as you prefer - rings or simple splinter-style
1/2 cup sweet bell pepper (optional), sliced

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 (4-6 ounce) ball fresh mozzarella*, sliced thinly into circles

Crust:

2 1/2 cups Bob's Red Mill GF Biscuit & Baking Mix, chilled
1/2 cup butter, chilled
3/4 cup cold water
Gluten-free flour of your choice for rolling out (about 1/3 cup)
Corn meal for pizza pan (about 1 Tablespoon)

Directions:

Starting well-ahead of when you need your pizza, firm up your beef in the freezer. When it is quite stiff but not yet frozen solid (it will take a couple of hours, depending upon your freezer), take out a section at a time and shave it as thinly as you can, across the grain of the muscle (cutting with the grain will leave you with too chewy a strip when cooked. You want it to fall apart so you don't have to struggle to get it into your mouth). If you are not going to cook the pizza right away, toss the meat back in the freezer before it thaws, so the slices don't stick together. If you are going to make the pizza now, set the meat aside in the fridge until you have made the biscuit crust.

Preheat oven to 375° F.

In a medium bowl, with a pastry blender, combine biscuit mix and 1/2 cup chilled butter until the mixture has the consistency of coarse cornmeal. Add water, mix in by hand -- start with a wooden spoon, but finish literally with clean, bare hands, until it begins to hold together. While it is still in the bowl, lightly knead it into a ball.

Place out on flat, lightly-floured work surface and roll to 1/4 inch thickness.

Sprinkle 14-inch round pizza pan or flat cookie sheet with cornmeal. Gently place biscuit dough on top (I use the rolling pin to transfer it from the counter top to the pan, the same way I transfer pie crust to the dish). If you wish, crimp edges a little, to give crust a rim. With a fork, pierce the dough at intervals of about one inch, across the entire sheet of dough.

Bake at 375° F for about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

Reset oven to 425° F.

In a large frying pan or wok at high heat, place a Tablespoon of butter. As soon as it is melted, toss in sliced mushrooms and stir regularly to flash fry. When the mushrooms begin to turn golden-brown and slightly crisped, remove from pan and set aside. Add butter to the pan, flash-fry sliced onions until the edges begin to brown. Remove from pan and set aside. Add another small amount of butter to the hot pan, lay in beef -- only enough at a time for a single layer to cover the bottom of the pan (a handful should do just fine). Cooking quickly, lightly brown each handful and then set aside, continuing to cook the next handful of meat.

When all the meat is cooked, generously spread butter over the top of the biscuit crust, including the edges. Sprinkle all 2 cups of shredded mozzarella over the top of that. Pile on the meat on top of that, then the onions, mushrooms, and raw sweet peppers (optional). Arrange sliced cheese over top.

Bake about 13-15 minutes, until top cheese is melted. Turn off oven and allow pizza to stand in cooling oven about 5 minutes.

Slice and serve hot. Makes 8 servings.

*you may choose to substitute cheddar, provolone, or Cheez Wiz for authenticity, both in the base layer of cheese and the topping, all or part, in your own choice of proportions. I use fresh mozzarella because I have an allergy/intolerance problem with aged cheeses, and because I think fresh mozzarella is just awesome on this. 

Muffin Doin': cornmeal muffins

My young friend Asteroidae has, for the past couple weeks, been asking to make some muffins. (I guess I shouldn't have left the bright red silicone muffin pan on the table all this time, after using it to sort items for a Christmas project. It's too big a reminder.) Too often, when she arrives here after school, there is not quite enough time to do a serious project after she finishes with her homework, so her disappointment had been building. Finally, this time, we managed to work a little muffin up in the schedule…

At any rate, our households also have a serious weakness for cornbread, cornmeal, polenta, and the occasional bowl of grits, so we combined the two cravings into one solution. Today, we make cornbread muffins. And we make them blue.

If you don't have any blue cornmeal in your refrigerator (and, seriously, if you have it, it should be chilled unless you just bought it this afternoon), any other good quality cornmeal or non-quick-polenta will do, but the blue cornmeal lends its own subtle flavor to the bread. (If you are serious about making this gluten-free, though, remember to check the labels of your ingredients, first, to see that they are clearly marked as GF. Many corn flours and cornmeals are processed alongside wheat and other gluten sources, and cross-contamination may occur. I find Bob's Red Mill is always reliable.)

Also, a good gelatin-free, plain Greek yogurt is best, so check the ingredients in your preferred brand. I like the house brand from Aldi, but you may prefer somebody else's best (if you have none at all, skip it and raise the amount of buttermilk to 2 cups).

These muffins freeze fairly well, and can be stored in an aritight container for about two days – reheat to serve.

Beyond that, the real goal is to have a good time making muffins from maize.

Cornmeal Muffins* †

Ingredients:

2 cups corn flour (masa harina)
1 1/2 cups corn meal (preferably blue)
4 Tablespoons sugar or honey
5 Tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
5-8 Tablespoons butter for pan(s)
4 large eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2/3 cups Greek yogurt, plain
1/2 cup melted butter

Directions:

Arrange racks in oven to accommodate two standard-sized 12-muffin tins, with as little overlap as possible. Preheat oven to 400º F.

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients together, set aside.

Put a dot of butter (about 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon) into each cup of the muffin tins. Place in oven to melt butter and heat the tins. When the butter is melted, swirl it around so it covers the bottoms of the cups.

In a medium bowl, mix eggs, buttermilk, yogurt and 1/2 cup melted butter. Add into dry mixture all at once and stir until moistened (do NOT overmix – it should still be a little lumpy).

Scoop by 1/4 cup into the muffin tins, bake 11-15 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean.

Makes 2 dozen.



*You can make this into a standard corn cake in two cast-iron frying pans, other heavy-duty round pans, or a 12x16x2 cake pan, by reducing the amount of butter to be put into the pan by about half (about 2-3 Tablespoons per round pan, or about 4-5 per rectangle), and then by baking for 15-22 minutes.

†Update: If, for the sake of portion control, you want to make mini-muffins (as pictured below, using regular cornmeal – I made these much later, under the watchful eye of Asteroidae's younger brother, Ilex), this recipe will make about 4 dozen. Treat the same as regular muffins, but bake only 8 minutes, or until lightly golden-browned. Serve warm – with more butter, if you feel like living the decadent life.

They just look so darned cheerful, all in a row, don't they?

We like our cornbread accompanied by butter and a bowl of soup or chili.

Gluten-Free Zesty Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

It really hurts when you watch those ads for breakfast at some establishment where they slather butter on a tasty, fluffy biscuit and then turn it into a breakfast sandwich, and then you remember that you can't eat wheat. Because sometimes, you just need a biscuit.  And I'm not really a big fan of the flavor of those normally produced by gluten-free mixes, but I also haven't yet found my own mix of flours I like for the texture.  

Until I remembered the rule I learned from my painting instructor in college, o, so many years ago: never use paint straight from the tube.

Adapting it to the kitchen: don't use a mix straight from the cupboard. Make it your own. And I had another mix on the shelf, the powder for ranch dressing (sometimes I make my own, but I was lacking ambition, at the end of a long day of moving furniture to make way for my soon-to-arrive gargantuan bed frame). So, I put two and two together and made dinner.

I had a large pot of my Philly Fish Chowder, and I completed it with these:

And there were enough left over for me to have one for breakfast. Just one. I'm the only one here, right now, too.

Gluten-Free Zesty Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups Bob's Red Mill Biscuit & Baking Mix
1 Tablespoon dry buttermilk powder
1 Tablespoon powdered ranch dressing mix

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 1/2 cups lowfat milk (or more, if the dough seems too heavy)

1/2 cup butter for pan

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Using a pastry blender or fork, work butter into dry ingredients until it has the consistency of coarse cornmeal.

Place butter in 9x13" baking pan, put in oven to heat up.

Stir in milk until completely mixed into a sticky dough.

Remove pan from oven, make sure butter covers bottom of pan. Drop biscuit dough by heaping tablespoons into the pan.

Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until beginning to turn golden brown. Turn off oven, allow to cool a minute or two in pan, to allow the biscuits to absorb the remaining butter.

Serve warm.

Candied Cranberries

Sometimes, at the end of Thanksgiving, I still have a spare bag of cranberries, as well as about half the sauce I made for that dinner. I've learned to serve the sauce, thinned and combined with a handful of other ingredients, as a salad dressing, or slathered on biscuits and pancakes,  and countless other ways to keep it from going to waste. The fresh cranberries, themselves, could probably be frozen, but this time of year, the freezer is usually pretty full, so I'd rather not try to cram more in.

Therefore, I seek out alternatives.

If you have a cup or two of leftover cranberries from Thanksgiving (or just want to do something lovely  with what you have, regardless of whether they're leftovers or not), you can candy them up a bit, and have a nice treat with the sweetness and the tartness playing back and forth across your tongue. 

It's not something to have ready in an hour – it takes overnight and a little change. 

But it's well worth it.

Candied Cranberries

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 cup fresh cranberries, washed, sorted (no bruised or shriveled ones), and allowed to dry

1/2 cup extra-fine granulated sugar

Directions: 

In a small saucepan over medium heat, dissolve sugar in water. Bring just barely to simmer – do not boil! (If it does boil, you'll have to wait for it to cool a few minutes before the next step).

In a small container, combine cranberries and sugar-water. Place in refrigerator and allow to chill at least 8 hours or overnight. 

After they have cooled over time, pour cranberries and syrup into strainer  over bowl. You may wish to save the syrup for some other recipes (it's a nice simple syrup with a faint hint of the berry flavor, good in some drinks). 

Meanwhile, lay a sheet of parchment in a large jelly roll pan (sided cookie sheet) and put extra-fine sugar in a bowl. A few at a time, roll the cranberries  in the extra-fine sugar, then allow to rest and dry out for at least 1 hour on the parchment.

Nibble on them straight as a snack, or use them to decorate desserts, like a buche de noël.

Buche de Noël (Yule Log)

Coconut cream filling with added goodness; premium chocolate sponge cake; double-chocolate frosting with bonus. 

And candied cranberries.

Decadence without flour.

What's not to like?

Recipes for the cake elements posted in partes tres. 

In this cake, I used just over 2 cups coconut cream, and added to the whipped coconut cream for filling, in these amounts:

1 Tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon powdered vanilla

1 teaspoon cocoa powder

3 Tablespoons orange liqueur

I topped the cake with a sprinkling of ultrafine granulated sugar for the snow, and tossed in a few candied cranberries...the flavor combination of the orangey chocolatey cake and the sweet-tart berries is amazing!

Update, December 2014: this year, I traded up, for the filling. I went from a simple whipped coconut cream to a white chocolate/coconut cream/orange liqueur mousse. It held its form better in the center of the cake, and ended up with a not-too-sweet, well-balanced finish.

The rest of the process remained the same.

It was still a big hit.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

In case you aren't familiar with me, I like chocolate.

Well, that probably would be labeled a gross understatement.

Given the opportunity, I could probably exist on nothing but chocolate. And I'd start with good frosting, like this stuff. It has a lovely texture, the sort to hold its shape if you use it for piping and other decoration, and a flavor to die for.

I worked this down and adapted for my own use, from a recipe a friend found for me.  It can easily be doubled, but under normal circumstances, one single batch should cover a normal two-layer cake. Or a nice buche de noël.

Dark Chocolate Frosting


Ingredients:

3/4 pound (one 12 ounce package) good-quality semisweet chocolate morsels
1 cup (2 sticks) plus 2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons confectioner's sugar, sifted
pinch salt

1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1/3 cup boiling water

2 Tablespoons orange liqueur

Directions:

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or by microwave oven (if microwave, begin at full power for one minute, then, in thirty second increments, stirring after each time, until nearly smooth, so you can stir the last remaining lumps out of it. Do not overcook, or it will congeal and be unworkable! Allow to stand until no longer warm to the touch, but still melted.

Combine cocoa and boiling water, stirring until cocoa is completely dissolved. Add orange liqueur and combine well.

With electric mixer on medium-high, beat butter, confectioner's sugar and salt until light, pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low, add melted, cooled chocolate, scraping sides of bowl as needed. Add in cocoa mixture, beat in completely.

Wait until you've finished frosting your cake before you lick the spoon and spatula, but enjoy the beaters right away.

Chocolate Sponge Cake (Fudgy Genoise)

One can make an awesome, quite large buche de noël using this recipe. Or, just a lovely delicate sheet cake.

Any way you look at it, it's nice to have a rich, yet gluten-free bit of naughtiness to share around…

Chocolate Sponge Cake

Ingredients: 

12 egg yolks

1 1/2  cups sugar, divided

10 egg whites

1 cup cocoa powder, sifted

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla or 1 teaspoon vanilla and 3 tablespoons orange liqueur 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Line a large jelly roll pan (sided cookie sheet, 14"x 20" or somewhat larger) with well-greased parchment.  Also line an 8"x8" or 9"x9" shallow brownie pan the same way.*

In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat the egg yolks with 3/4 cup sugar on high until pale and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Add salt and vanilla, then beat in cocoa powder. Transfer to another bowl and set aside.

Thoroughly clean and dry mixing bowl and whisk. Beat egg whites on medium-high until they form soft peaks. While the mixer is still running, gradually add in remaining sugar about a tablespoon at a time until mixture is glossy and stiff peaks form.

Stir well about 1/4 of egg white mixture into egg yolk/cocoa mixture to make it a little lighter. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites.

Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking sheets, spreading the batter just barely even with the tops of the pans. Bake 10 (for the smaller) to 15 minutes, until cake springs back when touched at center. 

Cool on rack. Cake will deflate slightly.

If making a buche de noël or other rolled cake, allow the large sheet cake to cool only about 5 minutes. Using a cooling rack or a larger flat cookie sheet and a towel dusted with cocoa powder, turn cake out of pan (be sure the cake is NOT centered in the towel, but to one side or the other, with only an inch or two extra border on the one side. Start by rolling the wider towel edge and then very gently roll the cake around it, and allow to cool completely while preparing your choice of creamy filling. 

When cool, carefully unfurl the cake, spread the filling thickly, use the towel to re-roll as tightly as possible. Again using the towel, transfer the cake to cake plate, outer seam side down. If you like, you can serve lightly dusted with confectioner's sugar or superfine granulated sugar. Or slather it with your favorite ganache or frosting.

Serves 12-16.

*I have updated this to include a second, small pan, because this recipe has consistently expanded beyond a single jelly roll pan's sides, leaving a "muffin top" effect which, while tasty on its own, makes rolling more difficult and a bit unattractive unless you dig out a good knife and trim it all to heck (which, I will concede, gives us tasty crumbs to nibble before the grand unveiling, but we're trying to avoid being naughty until after Christmas morning).  I suggest saving the smaller cake for a later date, perhaps to use in a New Year's trifle, or freezing it until St. Valentine's Day and making something decadent without the added effort.

Bunny Cookies

Every one in a while, I end up making food for somebody non-human, especially at Christmas time. As I've already mentioned, I made dog cookies for Pop's best friend, Clyde, as well as more bikkies for Bat's best friend's best friends…

This year, I also made bunny cookies…that is to say, treats for the bunnies in the house of my young friend Asteroidae and her family. It took a little prying to be sure what was permitted in their diet, but eventually I had a batch of decadence for lagomorphs.

Oddly enough, when it's baking, it smells good enough for people to eat…I may have to try it sometime as a basis for an energy bar, or something like it. 

Nevertheless, for the bunnies…

It began with oat flour. It ended with bliss. 

Bunny Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups oat flour (you can make your own by blending the dickens out of a couple of cups of regular – not instant – oatmeal)

1 cup fresh spinach 

1 medium carrot, finely grated

1 small apple, chopped into small pieces

1 medium banana, smooshed*

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300º F.

If you have a food processor†, combine everything but the oat flour and puree it. Add in the flour, mix well. Spread out on an oiled parchment on a cookie sheet, to about 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) thick or slightly thinner. Bake about 45 minutes, or until golden-browned on top and crusty. 

Remove from oven. Cool a few minutes, then cut into centimeter-square pieces or smaller (it will still be sticky in the middle, so you may need to use a wetted knife to cut). Spread the pieces out on the cookie sheet, place back in oven, and bake another 20 minutes, or until they are completely crusty and beginning to darken.

Remove from oven, allow to cool completely. Store in solid container, in refrigerator or cool dark place.

* I realize this is not actually a technical term used in polite cooking society, but, seriously, go ahead and smoosh your banana in its skin & then just cut or tear off the end & squeeze it out like toothpaste from a tube. Or, you can peel the banana first and then smoosh it in the dish.

†Without a food processor, I recommend using a hand-blender to puree the fruits and vegetables. Barring that, you will want to add water to the mix in a regular blender, then strain it back out using a sieve or colander lined with a coffee filter, until most of the water is removed and the mixture is thick and pasty. Once that is done, mix in the flour by hand. Or with a wooden spoon or spatula, if you prefer. It's kind of a sticky dough, so I used a silicone spatula.  

Dairy-free whipped filling: go crazy with a can of coconut milk

I've seen a lot of posts on the internet showing how to make a substitute for whipped cream using coconut cream - that is, the thick gloop which likes to rise to the top of a can of coconut milk. Several have even been so kind as to give recommendations for brands worth buying for it - top of their list for greatest cream-to-water ratio: Trader Joe's. I'd like to add Golden Star to that preferred list. I opened up two still, well-chilled cans to find less than an inch of liquid at the bottom of each can. All the rest was rich, thick, chilled-buttery solids. Of this I approve. Most others are just about half cream, or even less. That's fine for some things like curries and soups, but not when you want to get whippy with it.

And I do like getting whippy with it.

For just regular, immediate serving, you can use the coconut cream plain, with just a little vanilla and a hint of your preferred sweetener (I used some agave syrup, most recently). In essence, all you want to to is give it a lift, so you need no more than about a half-teaspoon to a teaspoon of sweetener and a half-teaspoon of vanilla per cup of coconut cream (unless you're a sugar addict, in which case, dump in as much sweetness as you like. It's all a matter of taste).

But if you let it stand – in or out of the refrigerator – for more than a couple of hours, it begins to liquefy – or, at the very least, go too soft – once more. I needed it to hold its shape overnight, in the middle of a buche de noël, so it took some figuring. My solution: gelatin. Unflavored gelatin. One teaspoon of dry gelatin, added to a quarter cup of the coconut water I separated from the coconut cream… It went like this:

Take one can of good, high-quality coconut milk, allow to stand without shaking for at least a couple of days, then refrigerate overnight.

Open the can carefully (again, don't shake it), and very carefully scoop out the great dense globs of the cream on the top of the can.

Pour 1/4 cup of the remaining liquid into a small dish to set into a pan of cool water, or the top of a small double-boiler under which the heat is off.  Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin onto the top of the liquid and allow to stand about 3 to 5 minutes. Turn on the heat and add the coconut cream. Allow to melt and bring to simmer, but be careful not to boil.

Remove from heat, refrigerate until completely chilled (at least 2 hours).

Put in bowl for a stand mixer, whip up until light and fluffy. Add sweetener and any flavorings you like, whip a little more. Overbeating this does not do the same damage that overbeating dairy cream does (unless you don't think of having butter instead of whipped cream as damage). Chill the heck out of it, then serve or add to recipe.

Pumpkin Cookies for Dogs

When the holidays roll around, there's occasionally a little fresh pumpkin left in our house after making pies. While many people have no problem with either throwing the half-cup or so into the trash, or burying it deep in the frozen wasteland that is the deepfreeze, I rather enjoy producing more gifts for Christmas. Even for the pets.

Not long ago, I discovered that said squash was good for dog digestion, and – more to the point – our big fella Clyde likes it almost as much as he likes sweet potato. And he LOVES sweet potatoes. In fact, I've occasionally just  baked a couple of large sweet taters, sliced them up, and dehydrated them to give as substitutes for biscuits. Indeed, one can even use leftover baked sweet taters instead of pumpkin, in this recipe.  Or, if you feel like splurging (or taking a shortcut), you can buy canned pumpkin or  yams. Most dogs won't know the difference.

And, you can use other flour for this, but the brown rice flour is the most easily digested, as well as being least likely to trigger an allergy in your dog – plus, it makes the best crunch. Clyde really likes the crunch. Especially when there's squash involved.

The original source I had for this recipe (long since lost) suggested a teaspoon of dried parsley, but I usually have fresh on hand around holiday meals, and recipes need more of the fresh for the fullest effect. Either way, it's especially nice for the rest of the family if you add some in to the recipe, because it helps sweeten doggy breath…or at least cut the funk when he pants in your general direction.

Any way you look at it, though, if you throw together this recipe, you'll have a happy goggie in short order.

Pumpkin-Laden Dog Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1/2 cup pumpkin puree 

2 Tablespoons powdered milk (dry)

1/4 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt

2 1/2 cups brown rice flour

1/2 cup finely chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º F.

In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin and eggs until completely combined smooth. Stir in powdered milk, salt and parsley (if using). Gradually stir in rice flour to form a stiff, dry dough. Turn out onto a lightly-floured surface (use rice flour, please!) and knead lightly until fully combined. 

Press dough to about 1 centimeter thick (somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 inch), and cut into biscuits (if you have a shape you want, go ahead and use it, but I prefer the simple approach: grab a big knife and cut a grid of rectangles or diamonds). 

Place on ungreased cookie sheet, and, with the tines of a fork dipped in rice flour, press pattern most of the way through each biscuit. 

Bake 20 minutes, remove from oven carefully turn over, return to oven to bake another 20 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool on rack completely before storing or giving to the dog.

Clyde, want a cookie? Do I even need to ask?