We are going to test two ready-made pizza bases head-to-head. They are an organic pizza base made with wholemeal Spelt by La Bio Idea, and a gluten free, deep pan pizza base by Amisa Organic.
La Bio Idea’s La Pizza Farro Integrale Ingredients – Whole spelt flour, Water, Yeast, Sea salt, Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Contains gluten. May contain traces of egg, milk and fish.
Amisa Organic’s gluten free pizza base Ingredients – Water, Rice flour, Corn starch, Buckwheat flour, Sunflower oil, Thickener: Guar Gum, Lupin flour, Raw cane sugar, Yeast, Sea salt, Citric Tartaric acid, Citric acid. May contain traces of nuts, sesame, milk, soya and celery.
La Bio Idea’s bases are only suitable for people who are allergic to wheat, but not those avoiding gluten. They might be suitable for vegans, depending on whether the “may contain egg and milk” would bother you. The Amisa Organic’s bases are better from an allergen-avoiding point of view as they are gluten, wheat and egg free.
But what do they taste like? Allergy Dad is a devotee of the deep pan base, while I am more of an Italian thin and crispy type of girl. Despite his love of deep pan, Allergy Dad really enjoyed the spelt bases. They were thin and crispy, but he liked the fact that there were no soggy bits! I thought that the spelt bases had a strong, sourdough flavour, but Allergy Dad didn’t notice this. This might reflect how much our toppings masked the flavour of the base. I had tomato, oregano, peppers, mushrooms, and vegan cheese. He had tomato, oregano, and stinkier dairy cheese. Sorry, the photographs below are so rubbish. The Allergy Brothers were very, very hungry so I quickly snapped the pizzas before serving up dinner!
The Amisa Organic bases had a completely different texture. They were fluffier with an almost scone-like texture. They also tasted much richer and more buttery, despite not containing any dairy. The gluten free bases are more like American-style pizza bases so I was surprised that I preferred these bases to the crisper spelt bases. Allergy Dad agreed with me (always a pleasure to write that phrase!) so the final score was Amisa Organic 2: La Bio Idea 0.
The Amisa Organic bases were provided as a free sample by Goodness Direct.co.uk, but they did not know that we would review them for this site.
The Allergy Brothers 
As M is on a gluten free diet these days, I take an interest in your blog and want to thank you for finding and testing foods for us! Now here’s something you might not expect. I had an allergic reaction to some gluten free pasta and wraps, last year. My eyelids swelled up and I got an itchy rash on my neck. The pharmacist at Boots confirmed it was an allergic reaction and she said if I hadn’t been taking anti-histamines for hay fever, I probably would’ve been a lot worse. My friend who is Coeliac suggested it might be Lupin, as she’s heard of other people having the same reaction. It’s a weird allergy but I guess I’m lucky that I’m not allergic to much.
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Hi. Thanks for the kind comment. Lupin is quite a common allergen; it’s one of the ones that needs to be boldened in the ingredients list on EU products. Luckily, it isn’t used that commonly in British products so most Brits don’t know if they are allergic to it or not because they’ve never tried it. So in that sense it is rare!
It’s also worth considering if there were other ingredients like seeds etc. If the Allergy Brothers have taught me anything, it’s that it’s possible to be allergic to anything!
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