Culinary Adventures: Gluten-Free Empanadas

Since I've gotten married, I've been cooking much, MUCH more frequently, especially at dinnertime. I'm not familiar with very many recipes, and I don't particularly relish the idea of eating the same thing over and over again, so I've been trying a lot of new recipes--at least 3 or 4 every week. I've tried to stick to recipes that are quick and easy (or are at least CLAIMED to be quick and easy), and I've met with a reasonable amount of success: so far everything I've made has been eatable, and sometimes even extremely tasty.

This past weekend, I attempted to make empanadas based on this recipe from Real Simple. The steps are not complicated: make 8-inch rounds of pizza dough, put refried beans, salsa, and cheese in the center, fold in half, and bake.  

I had to (very slightly!) modify the recipe to make it gluten free. You are instructed to use refrigerated pizza dough, so I used Pillsbury Gluten Free Thin Crust Pizza Dough.  I also forgot to flour my work surface before forming the rounds, even though I have some gluten free flour that I could have used. (I assume that made a difference, I'm just not sure what it was.)

This recipe only took me 30-40 minutes to complete, including cooking time. The most difficult part, by far, was folding the dough over the filling without tearing it. This could have been partially related to the fact that the dough I used was for a thin pizza crust, but it was probably also because I wasn't careful enough when I made the rounds (more on that at the end).

According to the website, here is what the final product is supposed to look like:

Looks appetizing, right?

So, here is what MY version looked like:

Hmmm....is it just me, or do my empanadas look a little different?  (Cue the Music! One of These Things is Not Like the Other....)  If you look carefully at the first picture, you can see the places where the dough tore during folding and I tried to mend the holes with extra globs of dough.

Despite appearances, the empanadas tasted pretty good, especially with a dollop of sour cream.  DH ate his without quibbling, and when it comes to food, he is not the type to suffer in silence. 

There was only one thing that bothered me: parts of the empanadas had no filling and were way too doughy. Granted, the outer edge can't have any filling inside because that is what seals the filling in the middle, but that doesn't mean that the far ends of the empanadas should consist of big hunks of pure dough--especially when the dough on the top and the bottom is clearly too thin.  I needed to be more careful when forming the dough rounds--the dough in the center needed to be thicker, and the dough on the outside edge needed to be quite thin. That's something to remember for next time.