Baking Gluten Free

   
Hey everyone! This post is about Gluten-free baking. As I think you know from the title. It might not be relevant to some of you, but if you know anyone who is gluten-free, feel free to share this post! Lets get on with it. 


    I was diagnosed with celiac disease when I was a wee thing of seven. At the time, gluten-free food that tasted good was rather... uncommon. You had to bake pretty much everything yourself. And so, my mom, (who was a pastry chef in NYC for a bit) started baking gluten-free goods and I picked up the habit. Now I bake a whole lot, and I just love baking. My mom and I even started a business this past summer selling gluten-free products at farmer's markets.
     Anyways. Through the years, my mom and I have come across a lot of websites and books which are amazing for anyone who is eating on a gluten-free diet.

Basics

When you begin baking gluten free, it can be very overwhelming to find the right flours to bake with. Gluten-free baked goods require a blend of flours to achieve a more wheat-like texture. My favorite flours to use are Brown Rice flour, Tapioca Starch and Potato Starch. (I usually use Bob's Red Mill brand) I also like Sorghum and Millet as well as flax-seed meal for certain baked goods. An ingredient that binds the other ingredients together is also essential, since gluten-free flours lack the Gluten protein which is so binding. The most common is Xanthan Gum. (also available from Bob's Red Mill)

The Gluten-free life-style is becoming more and more widespread, so of course, gluten-free products in grocery stores are on the rise! Included in these products are gluten-free all purpose flour mixes. Many companies make these mixes, and there are recipes online for flour-mixes which work very well. My favorite all purpose gluten-free flour mix is from Silvana's Kitchen.

Pre-made Flour mixes which you can buy

Silvana's Kitchen mixes (highly recommend these ones!)
Cup4Cup (never used this but I've heard good things about it)

Resources

Gluten Free on a Shoestring

This is the first gluten free website which I found and fell in love with. Nicole Hunn is the author of the blog and four gluten-free cookbooks. She has recipes for bread, cake, cookies, main courses, drinks, snacks, and pretty much anything you can think of! My only reservation about some of her recipes are that she uses an ingredient called Expandex, (especially in her breads) which is modified tapioca starch. My family and I are very health-conscious, and try to avoid GMOs and chemically laden food, and so prefer to stay away from Expandex, as the company that produces the starch hasn't revealed how they modify it. (seems a bit fishy to me) That being said, many of her recipes do not call for Expandex, and are very delicious.

My favorite recipes:

Yeasted Doughnuts
Pumpkin Cake Roll
Potato Pierogi
Gluten-free Ritz Crackers

Silvana's Kitchen

Silvana Nardone's website and cookbooks are just... epic. She has loads of recipes for sweet things, breads (mainly in her Silvana's Kitchen cookbook), main courses, breakfast classics and just yumminess in general. All of her recipes are dairy free as well, although I don't have a problem with dairy so I sub in the normal dairy ingredients.

     For those of you looking for a gluten-free bread, Silvana's Kitchen cookbook is the answer ! She has a whole chapter on gluten free bread which is just amazing. Her recipes stick to all-natural ingredients as well, which is a huge plus for me!

My favorite recipes:

All-Purpose Flour Mix
Pumpkin  Muffins
Flakey Pie Crust from Cooking for Isiah cookbook
Sandwich Bread from Silvana's Kitchen cookbook
Cinnamon Raisin bread  from Silvana's Kitchen cookbook
Cinnamon Buns  from Silvana's Kitchen cookbook

Darina Allen's Healthy Gluten Free Cookbook 

My mom and I have used this book a lot. We love the Fruit scone recipe in it!

You can find it on Amazon here. 

The Baking Beauties  

This blog is written by Jeanine and has loads of treats on it- cakes, doughnuts, cookies, you name it! 

My favorite recipes:

Cinnamon Buns
Bagels

I hope that this post has been helpful to anyone who has gluten-sensitivity or celiac disease! Let me know in the comments if you make anything from the links or books!

Now, gluten-free or not, what are your favorite baking blogs and cookbooks? 

Cheers, 

Nuala

P.S. When you guys read posts which contain links, are there funny line-breaks after and before the links? Do any of you know what could be causing the problem?