Thanks to our readers for alerting us to this rather important piece of news:

California Pizza Kitchen has pulled their gluten-free crust from the menu.

A call to my local CPK confirms that the pizza is unavailable, pending review / reformulation. From the woman’s tone of voice, I’d say I’m not the first person to call and ask.

The woman on the phone did make a point of saying that their regular menu still does have gluten-free options on it, all of which are still available – mostly, these are salads. The gluten-free menu has the same disclaimer on it as the gluten-free pizzas did, so it’s up to each of us to determine how much trust to place in our local CPK — if you don’t feel that they took your questions regarding the pizza crust seriously, I wouldn’t expect this menu to be any different. If you’ve had good experiences in the past, there’s no reason not to continue along sans pizza.

Presumably/hopefully California Pizza Kitchen will work on their training and education, find a way to keep customers from getting sick, and reintroduce their gluten-free crust. When that happens, you can bet we’ll let you know.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other tasty options for gluten-free pizza. You’ll find oodles of safe choices in our gluten-free grocery guide, including frozen pizzas, pre-made crusts, and mixes. You can also make a gluten-free pizza crust from scratch, for example using this whole grain, xanthum- and guar-free recipe from Gluten-Free Girl or this one from Carol Fenster, reprinted on About.com.

What do you do when you need a gluten-free pizza fix?