Gluten-Free Ready-to-Bake Products: Cookie Dough, Biscuits and More

If you want convenience, look for these ready-to-make and bake products

gluten-free cookie dough
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When you go gluten-free, you often give up favorite convenience foods, such as pre-mixed Pillsbury cookie dough or pizza dough that's ready for the oven. Pillsbury does not currently make any gluten-free products, but there are gluten-free substitutes for Pillsbury's popular baked convenience foods that you may find just as good (and nearly as easy) as the originals. Your options include:

  • Ready-to-bake cookie dough and pre-formed cookies
  • Ready-to-bake pizza crusts
  • Ready-to-fill pie crusts
  • Ready-to-bake biscuits and crescent rolls
  • Ready-to-bake cinnamon rolls

While there generally aren't perfect one-to-one replacements for the mainstream, gluten-containing versions of these products, there are alternatives that might work, even for the pickiest gluten-free consumer. Here's what you can consider using to replace them, plus where to find them.

Cookie Dough

There are two companies offering ready-to-bake gluten-free cookie dough in a variety of flavors.

Immaculate Baking Company

Immaculate Baking Company offers bake-it-yourself gluten-free cookies in three flavors including chocolate chunk, double chocolate, and peanut butter. The unbaked cookies come 12 to a package and preformed (they make average-to-large cookies), and take less than 25 minutes to bake in the oven. They're available in some large grocery stores and upscale natural markets such as Fresh Market and Whole Foods.

When purchasing Immaculate Baking Company's products, make sure to buy the gluten-free varieties—Immaculate also makes gluten-containing ready-to-bake cookies. The company is certified gluten-free, which means its products should test below 10 parts per million of gluten (less is always better).

WOW Baking Co.

WOW Baking Co. offers tubs of ready-to-bake gluten-free cookie dough in four flavors including chocolate chip, peanut butter, ginger molasses, and sugar cookie. These refrigerated products are not as widely available as those from Immaculate Baking, but you might consider asking your local grocery store about them, especially if that store already carries other WOW products.

Pizza Crust

You easily can purchase frozen gluten-free pizza crusts in many larger supermarkets. Popular brands include:

  • Udi's Gluten-Free: These crusts, based on brown rice and tapioca starch, are offered in a two-pack of personal-sized pizza crusts. They contain eggs, corn, yeast, and sugar.
  • Kinnikinnick Foods: These are available in a four-pack of personal-sized square pizza crusts. They're made with sweet rice flour and tapioca starch, and contain eggs, corn, yeast, and sugar.
  • Caulipower: If you follow a low-carb or Paleo diet, these gluten-free cauliflower-based pizza crusts could appeal to you. Caulipower offers two frozen crusts: its plain crust contains brown rice flour, cornstarch, yeast, and eggs, while its Paleo crust is made with almond flour, cassava flour, and coconut oil. Caulipower products are available in larger chain grocery stores and in health food stores.

Generally, you should look for gluten-free frozen pizza crusts wherever the store stocks gluten-free frozen pizzas. In some stores, this will be next to the regular pizzas, while in other stores, you'll find the gluten-free pizza products in a separate gluten-free section.

Although ingredients vary for these gluten-free pizza crust products—you'll need to shop carefully, depending on any food sensitivities other than gluten—their instructions are similar, and mainly call for topping with your favorite gluten-free pasta sauce and pizza toppings and then baking in the oven.

Pie Crust

Replacing a gluten-filled ready-to-use pie crust with a pie crust that's gluten-free is simple. Although you won't necessarily wind up with a pastry dough-style crust, there are alternatives on the market:

  • Mi-Del: This company makes three gluten-free graham cracker-style crusts (one in regular, one in chocolate, and one in ginger snap) that are available in many stores and online, and are certified gluten-free. They contain rice flour and tapioca starch, and are made with guar gum. These crusts are shelf-stable and usually stocked in supermarkets' baking section.
  • Kinnikinnick Foods: This company offers a traditional-style pie crust made with white rice flour and tapioca starch. It contains corn and potato ingredients. You'll find it in the freezer section with other Kinnikinnick gluten-free products.

Biscuits and Mixes

While you won't find ready-to-bake gluten-free biscuits and crescent rolls that taste exactly like the Pillsbury originals, you can find substitutes that you can serve fresh from the oven:

  • Udi's Gluten-Free Classic French Dinner Rolls: These frozen rolls are more akin to traditional dinner rolls than biscuits, but will still taste fresh and warm from the oven when baked. They're made with brown rice flour, tapioca starch, and potato starch, and contain eggs, yeast, corn syrup, and xanthan gum.
  • Mom's Place Gluten-Free Crescent Roll mix: Working from a mix obviously will take more effort than opening a can of crescent rolls, but the final result should be worth it. This crescent roll mix contains white rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and yeast. It's egg-free, peanut- and tree nut-free, dairy-free, soy-free, and corn-free. Look for it online.

Cinnamon Rolls

As with gluten-free biscuits and crescent rolls, there are no ready-to-bake substitutes that taste exactly like Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. And in fact, there are only a few quick and easy solutions available for those who crave cinnamon rolls but need them to be gluten-free. They include:

  • Katz Gluten-Free: This company makes frozen cinnamon buns that can be heated for that just-out-of-the-oven taste. The buns are made with a blend of multiple different gluten-free flours, and contains eggs and yeast ingredients. They're available in Whole Foods, some larger supermarkets, and at large natural grocery stores.
  • Mom's Place Gluten-Free Cinnamon Bun mix: It will take you some time to create these cinnamon buns, but they will be fresh from the oven. Mom's Place uses white rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and yeast, and the mix contains powdered milk (there's also a lactose-free version available for those who avoid lactose). You'll need to add eggs, butter, vanilla, and water.

If you happen to live in New York City, Los Angeles, or near Walt Disney World resort in Orlando, Fla., Erin McKenna's Bakery NYC, offers gluten-free cinnamon rolls that you can reheat. In addition, you might get lucky and find a local bakery that makes reliably gluten-free cinnamon rolls.

A Word from Verywell

Several years ago, Pillsbury did try to make its own gluten-free refrigerated products: for a while, consumers on the gluten-free diet enjoyed the convenience of three gluten-free ready-to-bake products: cookie dough, pizza crust, and pie crust.

Pillsbury's gluten-free cookie dough was found in a tub in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, next to Pillsbury's gluten-filled refrigerated cookie dough, pop-out cinnamon rolls, biscuits and other ready-to-bake products. That made it quite popular among people who longed for the convenience of Pillsbury products, but who still needed or wanted to follow the gluten-free diet.

Unfortunately, numerous people came to depend on these Pillsbury gluten-free products before the company stopped making them. There's no question that these products were convenient, and their discontinuation has led to a scramble for people in the gluten-free community to figure out equally convenient products to replace them.

Obviously, following the gluten-free diet generally takes more work than simply eating a regular, conventional diet. Those three Pillsbury products added some welcome convenience, so it's not surprising that people miss them. However, there are alternatives on the market, and once you've determined where you can find them, they'll hopefully be nearly as convenient as the Pillsbury products had been.

Sources
Verywell Fit uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

By Jane Anderson
Jane Anderson is a medical journalist and an expert in celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, and the gluten-free diet.