Ingredients
Guts (this makes enough for one stromboli!)
1 bunch of chard, stem removed, cut into thin strips
2 medium onions, halved and sliced thin
1 cup of gruyere (or fontina), grated
oil or butter (for cooking chard and onions)
sugar and/or balsamic vinegar (to add to onions; optional)
Dough (this makes enough for two strombolis!)
2 1/2 cups of gluten free flour mix (I use this blend)
1 1/2 cups warm water (test on your wrist — if it’s too hot, it will kill the yeast)
1 Tbsp quick-rise (granulated) yeast
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
Egg wash
One egg yolk, whisked, with a touch of water
Coarse salt to sprinkle on top
Instructions
Make the dough. Mix the flour and salt together and set aside. In a large bowl, mix together the warm water, yeast, olive oil, sugar, and salt. Let the yeast bloom for 10 minutes, making sure it gets nice and frothy. Add the flour. Cover and let rise for 1 hour. (The dough will be soft! If you find it too tough to work with, you can refrigerate it — it will be easier to handle when fully chilled)
Meanwhile, caramelize the onions. This will take about an hour, so you can do it while your dough is rising. Add a couple glugs or a knob of butter to a pan (I prefer to use an enamelled cast iron), heat over medium-low, and add your onions. Salt to taste. Check them every five minutes or so, using a wooden spoon to scrape the darkened bits (fond) off the bottom of the pan. They’ll let off a lot of moisture until the 35- or 40-minute mark, and then will begin to caramelize slowly after that. With about five minutes remaining, you can add a touch of sugar or balsamic vinegar if you like.
In a second pan — or after you’ve done caramelizing, if you want to chill your dough for a bit — heat a bit of oil or butter over med-low, and then cook your chard. The goal here is to gently cook all the water out of the chard without burning it or making it crispy. Like with the onions, it takes a touch of patience. (If you don’t cook all the water out, your stromboli dough could end up wet, or your stromboli could blow apart — see the next pic for an example of what that looked like for my tomato-based stromboli :P)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Unfurl a stretch of parchment paper and generously sprinkle it with white rice flour. Take half of your dough and place it in the centre of the paper. Sprinkle with white rice flour. Stretch two lengths of plastic wrap over the dough. Roll the dough out to about a 10” x 16” rectangle. Check to make sure the dough is not sticking to the parchment; if it is, gently remove the dough, sprinkle more white rice flour underneath, and try again. (This can be a frustrating process, and will work best with chilled dough.)
Once you’ve got your rectangle, remove the plastic wrap and add your toppings. The 10” side will be the length of your finished stromboli — you’ll be rolling the 16” side. I did the cheese, then the chard, and then the onions. Leave a generous one-inch gap at the top of your rectangle and on the sides.
Brush the bare edges with egg wash.
Roll the stromboli. You want a relatively tight roll, but not too tight — it needs to be able to expand in the oven. When it’s rolled, gently pinch the top and side seams together. Flip the stromboli so that it’s seam-side down.
Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with coarse salt.
Slice three vents into the top of the stromboli to let steam escape.
Bake at 400 degrees for at least 25 minutes — until the stromboli is a nice golden brown.
Let rest out of the oven for at least five minutes, and then slice & eat.
In the back of the oven, the grueyere, chard and caramelized onion stromboli enjoys its rolled-up life. In the front, a second pizza-ish attempt goes a bit awry.
Someone needs to teach me how to take food pictures. Pizza stromboli at top left; chard, gruyere and caramelized onion stromboli at bottom right.