Gluten Free Baking Tips

Kayleigh here. When Jason first discovered he was gluten intolerant, I had never even dabbled once in gluten free baking. Figuring out meals that were naturally gluten free came easily enough, but seeing the prices of store bought baked goods in the special diet section of the supermarket drove me to try and make everything myself. I stocked up on cookbooks, researched what flours were often used, then set about experimenting.

And, as to be expected, things started off pretty rocky. Converting a recipe to be gluten free often takes more than just switching the white flour over to an all-purpose blend- the dough might look right, but the end result always seems off. And when you cannot have your favorite breads and desserts anymore, it's hard to just settle for 'close enough'.

So, to help out the new gluten free baker, here is a list we've been putting together of little tips and tricks that will make the first few recipe attempts more edible.

- Gluten free baked goods, unfortunately, never quite rise as much as their gluten-full counterparts. You can boost this slightly by adding extra baking powder to the mix. Putting in extra protein via dry milk or protein powders also give it the strength that it needs.

- When making yeast breads, resist the urge to punch it down and start a second rise. That dough will put all its effort in the first time, and will not reach that height again. What that means for a bread machine- pull out the paddle after it has mixed the dough thoroughly, so it does not beat it back down later. For specially shaped breads, form them and put them on the trays they will bake on immediately instead of leaving them to rise in a covered bowl first.

- Gluten free baked goods are often denser and drier when baked. To compensate for this, add extra liquid ingredients right off the bat. This will probably mean that bread dough will not hold a shape on its own, so be prepared with appropriately sized pans and specialty trays to get that look you want. Hamburger bun pans and ramekins are good investments to make, on top of loaf and muffin pans of varying sizes.

- When you are first starting out, finding good gluten free flours can be pretty daunting. Buy 4-5 different kinds to try out first, and try to make note of what textures and flavors they each give to the breads. Use flours like tapioca and sweet rice to add a chewy softness, and buckwheat or garbanzo for extra flavor and heartiness. Think carefully about the gluten baked good you are trying to reproduce, and use what makes it special to figure out the right blend.

Jason here. 

If you switching over to a gluten free diet you may find yourself craving certain foods. For baked goods do not try and reproduce your favorite foods exactly. That will only end in disappointment. Instead think about how you would improve your favorite recipes. By using different flours you can make something denser, or have a different taste. When you stop thinking about reproducing a flavor exactly, that is when your baking will go to a whole new level. Your creations are something new, enjoy them as such.

Persistence is key. Don’t feel defeated if an experimental recipe doesn’t come out as you hoped. It took Kayleigh many months to get a decent bread recipe going. Even today, we try recipes that turn out as complete flops on a regular basis. Only after a lot of trial and error do we eventually find the perfect recipes which get posted on this blog.

Hearty Pancakes for Two Recipe

Kayleigh here. I really love experimenting around in the kitchen and coming out with recipes that are not only great imitations of the regular gluten-filled item, but are just the perfect amount for Jason and I. Cooking for two can get really frustrating when all you can find are recipes that make a dozen, or enough to feed the average family. But more often than not, I find that there's some simple trick or secret ingredient that will let you make a smaller batch without having to toss half an egg or buy heavy cream only to use a tablespoon of it.

While waffles usually end up being our go-to last minute breakfast (boy, I love owning a Belgian waffle maker!), I've found that just using the same recipe for waffles and pancakes just doesn't quite seem to cut it- soft and spongy waffles are great, but that's not what I'm looking for in pancakes. Sure, there's not much of a difference, but it was about time we got to the drawing board and came out with the perfect, small scale gluten free recipe for us.

These pancakes get a heartiness and wholesome texture from the buckwheat flour, but enough leavening from the egg and baking powder to keep it from being too dense and flat. In this batch, I chose to add dried cranberries and roughly chopped pecans to the batter, but add whatever you like! Just don't forget the real maple syrup.

Hearty Pancakes for Two

Ingredients:

1 egg
2 TB Sugar
¼ Cup Milk
Pinch Baking Powder
¼ Cup Buckwheat Flour
1/3 Cup Tapioca Flour
1-2 Drops Vanilla Extract
Pinch Salt
Toppings or fillings (chocolate chips, blueberries, dried cranberries, pecans, etc)

Directions:

1) Combine all ingredients in a bowl, adding any desired fillings after everything else has been stirred together.
2) Butter up a stovetop pan and set on medium heat. For a thicker, fluffier pancake, use a pan with a small diameter so the pancake completely fills it, and put a lid on top so it cooks all the way through. For thinner pancakes, add a bit more milk and use a large pan.
3) Cook on the first side until the top is covered in little bubbles and you can see the sides starting to firm up. Flip, then cook until desired brownness.

Jason here. So to start I should mention I always eat my pancakes with chocolate chips, so on top of the maple syrup this pancake was very sweet. Just how I like it. These pancakes came out with the perfect texture. The outside had a slight crispness to it, and the inside nice and fluffy. I felt the pancakes themselves had a slight sweet taste to them, perhaps from the vanilla extract. I like that the pancakes are quick to make, with little clean up. That and we can make exactly how much we want that morning. I’ve mentioned it before, but I usually like smaller breakfasts so it helps having a recipe that can scale to any number of people.

Enjoy your delicious pancakes, I recommend a nice fresh glass of milk.

Gluten Free Baking Classics Review

Kayleigh here, rounding off our series of cookbook reviews with some talk about Gluten Free Baking Classics, by Annalise G. Roberts. Focusing largely on quickbreads and desserts, this book is a fantastic addition to any gluten-free household due to its easy-to-follow instructions and helpful tips following many of the recipes. Roberts was even thoughtful enough to provide alternate toppings, fillings, and techniques for her more versatile dishes, to allow for even more personal creations in your kitchen!

From my first readthrough, I quickly ran out of post-its to bookmark interesting recipes. Should I try the Hazelnut cake or Chocolate Ricotta muffin recipe first? Or give the basic pie crust a shot? Really, the best part about her recipes is that almost all of them contain the same basic flour blend, which she details at the beginning of the cookbook. Since I did not need to special order anything exotic to start trying the recipes, I was able to jump right in- how exciting!

In the end, we tried her basic Buttermilk Biscuit recipe first. Crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside, with a rich buttery taste- a perfect clone of the standard box biscuit mix. In fact, they turned out so well, we baked them to go along with Christmas dinner! Not stopping there, we used the Old-Fashioned Buttermilk Doughnut recipe to try out some new Puff Pancake pans. As someone who grew up in the Northeast, I have been hankering for a good Dunkin Donuts run for a long time, and found these to be a near dead-ringer for the old-fashioned cake donuts. Boy, did they go perfectly with a hot cup of coffee!

Jason here. We were super happy to try out our new Puff Pancake pans. They worked out great, although it took us a little too long to add the fillings and flip the donut holes. Admittedly this caused them to have a slieght burnt taste on one side. Next time we will cook them a bit longer, but on less heat.

My favorite part was figuring out what all of the toppings, and filling we wanted. Kayleigh of course went with the peanut butter. I tried making a powdered sugar topping, and a cinnamon brown sugar topping. For my fillings we ran out of peanut butter, so I added some Nutella, and chocolate to another hole. When we took the donuts out, I fairly quickly rolled them in my toppings, but alas nothing stuck. We eventually opted to quickly spray some cooking spray and then reroll them. Even then the toppings barely took. We will have to figure out a better method for next time. Speaking of next time, I will definitely be trying chocolate donuts, with chocolate filling.

If you are still are not sold on this book, check out Robert's blog here. She updates fairly regularly with new recipes, mostly baking-centric, but with a fair share of delicious savory entrees mixed throughout. If you find yourself making two, three, or more recipes from there, then I would definitely recommend picking up one of her books!

The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread Cookbook Review

Kayleigh here. Seems like it's about time for another cookbook review: this time, The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread, by Bette Hagman. If you are anything like us, then you have one tried and true bread recipe, and you find yourself using it over and over again, since you do not want to go through a string of failures again finding out a new recipe. Clearly, the writer of this cookbook was cut from a different cloth, since she has made the effort to test and compile hundreds of different recipes for all sorts of bread varieties, from hearty, distinctive Rye and Sourdough recipes to inspiring and rut-breaking Irish Soda Bread and Chocolate Cherry Loaves. If you have the hankering for the vast array of varieties a gluten eater has at their disposal, then boy is this a book for you!

Hagman starts you right off with a Q+A session, covering quite many common issues with gluten free baking, from bread machine quirks to water-to-flour ratios and how to combat differences in brand behaviors. And as if this was not useful enough, she follows it up with quite a comprehensive list of flours, covering how they taste, what they are best used in, and even what other flours pair well with them! No longer does the sea of GF flours seem so daunting, with this list as your guide!

Another interesting quirk to this cookbook is that nearly every recipe has multiple versions for different sized loaves. Built as a guide for the oven baker as well as the bread machine user, each yeast bread contains instructions for both, noting the differences in cook times and behaviors quite thoroughly. I think it is fabulous, since it opens me up to baking at a friend’s house that may not have the same fancy kitchen setup as we do. It also makes recipe swapping easier, for the same reason!
Out of all the recipes we've dog-eared in this cookbook, our favorite so far is the cinnamon swirl bread. We added a cup of raisins to the cinnamon ribbons in the loaf, and baked a beautiful, fragrant loaf of bread worthy of toasting, spreading with Nutella or butter, and enjoying in your pajamas on a cold winter morning. In fact, this is the first gluten-free bread we've been able successfully make french toast with, as most other attempts have yielded crumbly, wet piles of disappointment. Not this cinnamon bread- it held up to the battering, gained a lovely crust and moist interior, and stayed in one piece when taken from pan to plate- fabulous!

Jason here. This cinnamon bread was absolutely delicious. Kayleigh has been the one who has persevered and made bread after bread, trying to find recipes which are enjoyable. Each time I feel the bread gets slightly better. What started as dry, dense, and bland, as slowly become flavorful, light, and fluffy. I know for sure that the various bread making books which we have picked up, or had gifted to us, have done wonders. I for one really enjoy the desert breads like the cinnamon bread we made from Hagman’s book.

Unfortunately, we cannot link to a blog or website for the author, as she has since passed away, but she does have several more cookbooks available for purchase, covering everything from comfort foods and desserts to more healthy dishes and baking tips- all lovingly researched and written long before gluten-free lifestyles entered the public spotlight. We cannot speak for the other books yet, but we highly doubt you can go wrong with Hagman's creative culinary concoctions!

Christmas Cookies for Two Recipe

Kayleigh here. Yes, I know the holidays have come and gone, but I am sure most of you are still wrapped in the warm blanket of good will and kindness that the season brings every year. Along with that fuzzy feeling, I'm sure you're still craving the tastes and scents of all that delicious holiday food that countered the cold, blustery weather so well. So, what to do when you do not want to roast an entire ham, or wait weeks for that fruitcake to soak? Well, why not take the quicker route, and bake some Christmas cookies?

Really, these cookies are quite lovely any time of the year, but I have some strong sentimental feelings from baking dozens of them towards the beginning of December, and riding out that sugary tide all the way into the start of the new year. But if you are like Jason and I are, and prefer a little variety from week to week, then maybe that thought of piles of cookies does not sound all that appealing. Why not reduce the recipe, and just whip a couple up when you get that craving?

The recipe below makes two each of Snowball cookies and Christmas Wreath cookies, since the base for each is the same. Really, you could alter this recipe pretty easily to just make one or the other- just double the extra ingredients for that cookie, and omit what is only needed for the other. But if you are like me, then these two go together like peanut butter and nutella, and I could not dream of having one without the other!

Christmas Cookies- Snowball and Christmas Wreath

Makes two of each cookie (4 total)

Ingredients:
For both:
2 TB butter, softened
1/4 Cup White Rice Flour
1/4 Cup Corn Starch
1 Cup Ice Cold Water (you will not use all of this)

For the Snowballs:
1 ts Granulated White Sugar
1-2 drops Almond Extract
2 TB crushed up Walnuts (very small pieces)
1/4 cup Powdered Sugar

For the Christmas Wreaths:
1 TB Brown Sugar
1-2 drops Vanilla Extract
1/2 Egg, beaten
2 heaping TB of Crushed Walnuts
2 TB shredded Coconut
2 heaping TB jelly or preserves of your choice (I usually use Raspberry or Strawberry)

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 350. Combined butter and flour in a bowl, until it forms a crumbly dough. Add water, 1/2 teaspoon at a time, until the mixture JUST forms a ball. You want these cookies to hold their shape when baked, so do not make it too wet.

2) Divide dough into two bowls now. In the first, add the Sugar and Almond Extract, then mix in the walnuts. Form the dough into two balls, then place onto cookie sheet.
3)  In the second bowl, mix in Brown Sugar and Vanilla Extract. Roll the dough into two balls, then squish slightly to make a fat disk.

4) Beat the egg, then roll the two disks until coated. Sprinkle on Walnuts and Shredded Coconut, then place on cookie sheet. Using your thumbs, make an indent in the center of each one for the jelly to go in later.

5) Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until the cookies are just starting to brown. Take the snowball cookies (the round ones) immediately off the sheet and roll them in powdered sugar. The sugar sticks better when they are hot, but be careful!
6) After the cookies have mostly cooled ( about 10 minutes), place a heaping tablespoon of jam into the center of each wreath cookie. Plate them up all pretty, and serve!

Jason here. These cookies definitely remind me of Christmas. They have that super crumbly texture that I associate with Christmas cookies. Unfortunately I do not like coconut, so I made mine without. Make sure you have a nice glass of milk to wash the cookies down with. I found my mouth getting dry after just a cookie, and then they are no fun. For that Christmas cookie taste, definitely try out these cookies, especially if you are just looking for a small batch cookie recipe.

Brown Rice Bread Recipe

Kayleigh here. So, after many, many, MANY crumbly and dense loaves of bread, I think we've finally found a recipe for the perfect gluten free sandwich bread. The recipe? It came from my Great Grandmother.

Well, mostly. She had no concerns about using non-gluten flours, so I did have to modify it a bit to match our needs. But fortunately for us, nearly every baked good she wrote down the recipe for included 2, 3, or even 4 different sorts of flours. So instead of guessing at what would match what quantities of the All-Purpose flour, I just plugged in direct substitutes I knew would match the taste!

Another addition to this particular recipe came from the previous post, actually! After making a wonderfully light and fluffy Angel Food Cake, Jason wondered 'Why can't we just make sandwiches out of this?' Although a sandwich made out of cake sounds a bit tempting, we realized it was probably not the best idea, but there was nothing saying we could not take a couple pointers from the cake-making process.

For those of you who have made gluten-free bread before, you know how hard it is to make anything close to the light, springy wonder breads of yesteryears. Certainly, the right flour blend can help with this, but most of the success actually comes in the process. Sift the dry ingredients at least once or twice to introduce more air to the loaf. Make sure all the refrigerated ingredients are taken out well beforehand, so they are at room temperature. Before adding the egg, beat it with Cream of Tartar until it forms a stiff foam. And make sure to proof your yeast beforehand!

What is proofing? Well, just take your liquid (water or milk, depending on the recipe) and heat it until just slightly warm. Add a tablespoon or two of sugar, then pour in the yeast, stirring well. After ten minutes or so, the surface should be very foamy looking, which means the mixture is ready to use. If you give it a fair amount of time, and it still does bot foam, then either the liquid was too cold, or the yeast is no longer active. Either way, it is no good, and your bread would not have risen with it!

If you are using a breadmaker, like we are, then you do need take an extra step beyond pressing the 'start' button. Pay attention to the first stirring cycle. As soon as it ends, reach in and remove the stirring paddle. That way, the first rise can happen uninterrupted, and the second stirring cycle will not undo all of that. Really, this will make or break the final rise and texture of the loaf, so do not forget this step! Gluten-free loaves do not have enough elasticity or strength to rise a second time.

Well, suppose I should stop rambling. Onto the recipe!

Brown Rice Bread

Ingredients:

1 Cup Brown Rice Flour
1 Cup Tapioca Flour
1 Cup Tapioca Starch
2 ts Guar Gum
1 ts Baking Soda
1 1/2 ts Baking Powder
1/2 ts Salt
1 Packet Active Dry Yeast (or 2 1/2 TBS)
1 Cup Milk
2 TBS Sugar
2 ts Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 Cup Mollasses OR Corn Syrup
1 Egg
1/2 ts Cream of Tartar

Directions:

1) Heat the milk until just barely warm, then stir in sugar and yeast until dissolved. Let this sit for at least 10 minutes, or until proofed.
2) Sift all three flours, guar gum, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. If you're feeling ambitious, sift it two or three times!
3) Break the egg into another bowl, add the cream of tartar, and beat with an electric mixture until very foamy, and you can form stiff peaks.
4) Add the milk mixture to the breadmaker, followed by the molasses/corn syrup, vinegar, flour mixture, and egg.
5) Set the bread machine for a 1 1/2 lb loaf, and press start. We recommend checking a couple of times early on, and scraping off the sides if they are not getting combined properly. Remove the stirring paddle after the first mixing cycle, them just let the rest of the process run its course as normal.

By the end, you should have a beautiful, airy loaf with an earthy brown color. And we promise, it tastes even better than it looks!

Jason here. I’ll be brief, I promise.

Finally a decent home cooked bread I could enjoy. All of the previous breads turned to bland tasteless mush. This holds its texture fairly well, while having a distinct bread taste. The bread itself is harder than a regular bread, but not in a dense sort of way. It is more like how bread feels after you lightly toast it, just now all the way through.

It is missing the elasticity that gluten brings to regular bread. This can make it crumbly at times, so I have taken to occasionally eating my sandwich with a fork and knife. I don’t really mind, it just makes it a little messier. 

All in all, this makes for very decent sandwich bread, if you can spare a little mess.