The bench · Gluten free
For a coeliac buyer the question is not which dough tastes best. It is which one is safe. Those are different questions, so we keep them on different pages. Gluten-free is the one category where ready-made undercuts making it yourself. Our cost calculator works out the delivered cost per pizza for the wheat brands to compare against.
Five UK sellers will post you ready-made gluten-free pizza dough balls, at £3.24 to £4.13 each. Three now publish a full ingredients declaration; two publish none at all. Two carry a formal certification claim, and one claims gluten-free status without naming a certifying body. The published recipes divide into two starch-based Italian formulations — which turn out to be the same list twice, 89p a ball apart — and a chickpea-and-sorghum alternative that is genuinely different. Below is every declaration and every claim, quoted word for word, with the price per ball beside it.
Read this first. Below we quote each seller's own certification wording, word for word, and link to the page it appears on. We are not a certifying body and we do not endorse any claim. Certification, recipes and production facilities change — if you are coeliac, confirm the current status with the seller before you order.
Sorting these by additive count would mislead you. The thickener and raising agents in a gluten-free dough are doing the structural job gluten does in a wheat one — remove them and there is no dough. We show the count for completeness, but a lower number here is not a better product. Our counting rule explains why.
About the ratings on this page. We have not tested these. Where a seller publishes a customer rating we record it per source, with the count and the month checked — never blended, and never used to order the table. Where a maker publishes no product rating we record their company-wide score instead and label it as such — a Trustpilot score measures delivery and service, not whether the food is any good. Counts under about 20 are marked as too thin to judge. We publish nothing of our own until we have bought the product and cooked with it twice; where we have, the row carries our verdict and who wrote it. Our method.
| Product | Pack | Per ball | The claim, quoted | Base |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ooni UK (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)CB-G01 | 8 × 250g £25.95 |
£3.24 | "This product is certified Gluten-Free, containing <20ppm gluten. When pizza made using this dough is prepared and cooked in an environment free of gluten or contamination, they are safe for people who have celiac disease." |
Rice & corn starch |
5 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsRice starch, corn starch, water, sea water, potato starch, rice flour, sunflower oil, extra virgin olive oil, legume flour (peas), vegetable fibre (potato, rice, psyllium, flax, lemon, pea), sugar, millet flour, linseed oil cake flour, salt, fresh brewer’s yeast, natural flavours, thickener: hydroxypropyl methylcellulose. Raising agents: glucono delta-lactone, sodium acid carbonate. Nineteen ingredients. Certified below 20ppm gluten. Read against Chefs for Foodies below: the two declarations are the same list, in the same order, to the last raising agent. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Our pick. Our pick. Woody Oven (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)CB-G02 | 12 × 250g £39.99 |
£3.33 | "Gluten Free | Lactose Free | Certified Organic" No certifying body named. No ingredients list published. Frozen life stated as 18 months. |
Not published |
Ingredients, ratings and our verdictFull ingredients not published by the brand The product copy says the dough uses “only the finest - Gluten Free Flour”. Lower down the same page, a panel headed “The best ingredients” says “All of our dough balls use the finest Caputo Italian flours, temperature controlled water and fine sea salt”. Caputo mill a gluten-free flour as well as wheat ones, so the two statements can be reconciled — but the page does not reconcile them, and neither is an ingredients declaration. The “Nutritional information” panel opens to a nutrition table supplied as an image, with no ingredients and no allergen statement. The page also carries the site-wide “Great Taste Award · Award winning pizza dough balls” banner; the award we can trace is for their sourdough, not this product. Our verdict — bought, baked twice, eaten I am gluten free, so this is the category I actually have to live in rather than review from the outside. This was much better than the other gluten-free dough here. It rose — a bit like a normal dough, which almost nothing gluten free does — and it took a proper crisp on the crust. If you are coeliac and you have given up on making a decent pizza at home, start with this one. Simon Bell, who eats gluten free · September 2026 · how we test Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Great Balls of Flour (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)CB-G03 | 12 × 250g £4.30 single |
£3.58 | "FREE FROM: LACTOSE, GLUTEN, GMO, NO PALM OIL, NO HYDROGENATED FATS, NO COLOURS. MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF MUSTARD AND SESAME." No certification or dedicated-facility claim stated. |
Chickpea & potato |
4 declared additives Ingredients and ratingsChickpea Flour, Potato Starch, Corn Starch, Rice Flour, Sorghum Flour, Dextrose, Pea Proteins, Millet Flour, Psyllium Fibre, Gluten Free Baking Powder, Salt, Sugar, Dried Yeast, Sunflower Oil, Thickener: E464. Fifteen ingredients, published under an “Ingredients & allergens” heading — it was not there when we first read this listing on 6 September. A genuinely different recipe from the other two: chickpea and sorghum rather than rice and corn starch. E464 is hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, the same thickener the Ooni and Chefs for Foodies doughs use, written as an E number. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Chefs for Foodies (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)CB-G04 | 12 × 250g £49.50 |
£4.13 | "Coeliac UK certified safe – Made in a dedicated gluten-free facility" |
Rice & corn starch |
Ingredients, ratings and our verdictRice starch, corn starch, water, sea water, potato starch, rice flour, sunflower oil, extra virgin olive oil, legume flour (peas), vegetable fibre (potato, rice, psyllium, flax, lemon, pea), sugar, millet flour, whole flaxseed meal, salt, fresh brewer’s yeast, natural flavours. Thickener: hydroxypropyl methylcellulose. Raising agents: Gluconodeltalactone, sodium hydrogen carbonate. The same nineteen ingredients as the Ooni dough above, in the same order. The only differences are naming: “whole flaxseed meal” for “linseed oil cake flour”, and “sodium hydrogen carbonate” for “sodium acid carbonate” — the same compound either way. 89p a ball more than the Ooni pack. Our verdict — bought, baked twice, eaten Once it was cooked there was almost a plasticky chew to it. A bit weird, really, and it did not cook well. I do not say that lightly: the gluten-free choice is small enough as it is, and I would rather recommend everything in it. But this is not one I would buy again. Simon Bell, who eats gluten free · September 2026 · how we test Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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| Babadoh (opens the seller’s site in a new tab)CB-G05 | Mixed pack Details not published |
— | No claim published Gluten-free dough included in a mixed pack; no ingredients, weights or certification given. |
Not published |
Additives: not published Ingredients and ratingsFull ingredients not published by the brand No gluten-free product page. The dough appears only inside a mixed pack, described in their FAQ as six Classic Neapolitan, six Sourdough and six gluten-free, with prices from £35. No ingredients, no certification and no dedicated-facility statement for the gluten-free balls. Sharing a pack with two wheat doughs is worth knowing about if you are buying for a coeliac. Customer ratings — not ours checked September 2026
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A dedicated gluten-free facility and a <20ppm test result are different assurances. A "free from gluten" line with no certifying body behind it is a third thing again, and the weakest of the three. The price order does not follow the strength order.
Two of these are starch-based Italian formulations that behave alike in the oven. Great Balls of Flour is chickpea and potato — a different dough with a different flavour, and one that carries a mustard and sesame trace warning the others do not.
That depends entirely on the individual product, and the five on this page make materially different claims. Chefs for Foodies states "Coeliac UK certified safe – Made in a dedicated gluten-free facility". Ooni states its dough is certified gluten-free at under 20 parts per million, and adds the condition that it must be prepared and cooked in an environment free of contamination. Woody Oven states "Gluten Free" without naming a certifying body. Great Balls of Flour states free-from status but no certification, and warns of possible mustard and sesame traces.
We report those claims; we do not verify them. If you are coeliac, confirm current certification with the seller before ordering, because facilities and recipes change.
Two different approaches. The starch-based route — rice starch, corn starch, potato starch, rice flour, pea protein and a cellulose thickener — is what Ooni and Chefs for Foodies both sell, and it produces a dough that stretches and crisps closest to wheat. The chickpea route, used by Great Balls of Flour, adds chickpea, sorghum and millet flours for a nuttier, denser base with more flavour of its own.
Neither contains wheat flour, and neither behaves like wheat dough in the hand. Expect to press rather than stretch.
Gluten-free balls run £3.24 to £4.13 each against 83p to £2.58 for wheat — between double and four times the price. The ingredients are more expensive, the volumes are smaller, and a dedicated gluten-free facility costs more to run than a shared one.
What is harder to justify is the spread within gluten-free itself. Two products on this page carry near-identical ingredients declarations at £3.24 and £4.13 a ball, a 27% difference.
Yes, and in some ways it suits a domestic oven better than wheat dough does. Starch-based bases crisp at lower temperatures and do not need the fierce heat that gives wheat dough its rise and char. Give the tray or steel a long preheat, bake a minute or two longer than you would wheat, and do not expect a puffed, leoparded rim — that is not what this dough does.
Every specimen record, correction and price change as it is published. About one email a month, written by a person, never a brand’s press release.