Gluten-Free Pizza Pasta Salad

This week I decided that we were basically going to eat a bunch of new stuff for dinner. So I went through all of my Pinterest boards to see what I could find for us to make. First up from my Pizza Party board was Pizza Pasta Salad from Butter with a Side of Bread. It looked like a slightly healthier way to do pizza, especially for a family who loves pizza, and it was going to be easy to turn gluten-free!

with tomatoes

We used a box of Barilla gluten-free rotini, Hormel mini pepperonis, one SMALL can of pre-sliced California olives (because I'm lazy), six string cheeses that I sliced up (not so lazy), grated parmesan cheese, cherry tomatoes (for my husband only), and Ken's Italian dressing.

Ken's is not the Italian dressing brand recommended in the original recipe, but I had never heard of the recommended brand and didn't know if it was gluten-free or not. You can be safe with Ken's!

without tomatoes

That's basically it! You can serve it warm or chill it in the fridge and have it cold. Ours was warm, but it will be great cold for leftovers. My daughter loved the cheese. Not so much on the olives. And my husband went back for seconds.

I think next time I would cut down on the amount of Italian dressing used. The recipe calls for the WHOLE bottle, and I actually only used about 3/4 of a bottle because that's what we had in the fridge, but I still felt it was a little too much. Maybe start with half the bottle and then add to taste? Just my opinion.

This would be great for a spring or summer picnic or just a quick weeknight meal!