The Gluten-Free Kitchen

If there’s anything lucky about having celiac disease or gluten-sensitivity, it’s that we have it now, when the availability of gluten-free products is expanding at lightning speed. As few as five years ago, many folks didn’t even know what gluten was, and unless you were in a natural foods store or specialty grocery store, you wouldn’t be likely to see a single item labeled “gluten-free.” Now, many mainstream supermarkets have whole gluten-free sections, and many restaurants provide gluten-free menus! (Though, a word of warning: gluten-free menus are not always as exciting as they seem. I once ordered eggs benedict from a gluten-free menu, eagerly awaiting the first English muffin I’d had since discovering gluten made me feel lousy. When the plate arrived with just a lonely poached egg and a bit of hollandaise sauce—sans English muffin—I was sorely disappointed.) Going gluten-free is a whole lot easier now than it ever has been before. Still, it takes some time to recognize which ingredients are safe and which are not, and there is the unavoidable fact that gluten holds baked goods together and helps them rise and without it, your cookies, cakes, and piecrusts are at a high risk of being flat and crumbling to bits. Those are really two separate issues, so let’s start with the first one: ingredients.

Ingredients to Avoid

Wheat, rye, and barley are the gluten-laden culprits you must avoid. Unfortunately, that’s not as simple as it sounds, since those three grains show up in a myriad of forms. Here’s a list of common dessert ingredients to watch out for:

DANGER LIST

Barley, barley malt, barley extract

Bran

Bread flour

Bulgur wheat

Cereal

Durum

Einkorn

Farina

Farro

Gluten

Graham flour

Kamut

Malt extract, malt flavoring, malt syrup

Matzo

Oats, oat bran, oat fiber, oat syrup*

Rice Syrup, brown rice syrup **

Rye

Semolina

Spelt***

Sprouted wheat

Wheat, wheat berry, wheat bran, wheat germ, wheat grass,
wheat starch, wheat berries

* Oats are often processed in facilities that also process wheat. Look for certified gluten-free oats to ensure they’re safe.

** Rice syrup is often processed using barley enzymes. Check with the manufacturer to ensure the brand you use is safe.

*** Spelt is an ancient variety of wheat, so it is not safe for individuals with celiac disease. However, some people with gluten-sensitivity or intolerance find that they can tolerate spelt just fine.

To further complicate things, these ingredients can show up in some unexpected places. The below ingredients do not always contain gluten and when they do it’s trace amounts, but especially if you have celiac disease, you should be careful about what brand of the following items you are buying. Look for ones that are specifically labeled “gluten-free.”

MAYBE LIST

Alcohol

Artificial color

Baking powder

Brewer’s yeast

Chocolate

Dextrin

Dextrimaltose

Dry roasted nuts

Flavoring and flavor extracts

Glucose syrup

Ground spices

Instant coffee

Maltose

Modfied food starch

Non-dairy creamer

Now for the good news. There are lots of flours, starches, and other essential dessert ingredients that you can eat. Here I’ll focus on the flours and starches, since those are the trickiest areas. The following are safe to eat on a gluten-free diet:

SAFE LIST

Agar-agar

Almond flour

Amaranth

Arrowroot flour or starch

Buckwheat flour

Cashew flour

Chestnut flour

Chickpea/garbanzo flour

Coconut flour

Cornmeal and cornstarch

Flaxseeds

Gelatin

Millet flour

Oats (if they’re certified gluten-free)

Pecan flour

Potato flour

Potato starch

Quinoa

Rice flour, brown rice flour, sweet rice flour

Sorghum

Soy flour

Sweet potato/yam flour

Tapioca flour and tapioca starch

Teff flour

Xanthan gum

Tips for Successful Gluten-Free Baking

• Use a mix of flours and starches. On page xii you’ll find a basic recipe for gluten-free all-purpose flour. It includes a variety of flours and starches, which helps to ensure a nice texture in your finished dessert. Using sweet rice flour adds some “stickiness” to your batter or dough that is sometimes lacking in gluten-free flours. I recommend brown sweet rice flour (rather than white), since it’s a bit more nutritious. (Note: sweet rice flour is sometimes called “sweet rice glutinous flour,” but it doesn’t contain any gluten.)

• Go small (obviously a big theme in this book). Smaller cakes, muffins, and cookies hang together more easily than really big ones.

• Add moisture. Applesauce, pumpkin puree, and yogurt add moisture and nutrition to gluten-free baked goods. Using brown sugar instead of white also helps, as does using a little honey or gluten-free brown rice syrup.

• Chill your cookie dough. Gluten-free cookie dough tends to spread out a lot. This will happen less if you drop your cookie dough onto the pan and then stick the whole pan in the refrigerator for half an hour or so before baking.

• Darker baking pans will lead to better browning.

• Store your baked goods in the refrigerator or freezer to keep them from getting stale.

• One man’s baking disaster is another man’s gorgeous trifle. There are plenty of good uses for baked goods that fall apart, including trifles (page 82) and cake pops (page 2).

XANTHAN GUM

When I first discovered xanthan gum, I thought it was brilliant. A dash of the powdery white stuff and suddenly my cookies became moist and held their shape almost perfectly. But that was before I realized that combining various flours can lend similar results and more nutrition. Do I think xanthan gum is bad? No, it’s actually pretty handy stuff, and a little bit goes a long way in cakes and cookies. But it’s expensive and not entirely necessary for most baked goods, so if you decide to skip it when it appears in the recipes in this book, don’t fret—you should still end up with a perfectly good finished product.

All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour Mix

• 2 cups brown rice flour or brown sweet rice flour

• 2 cups sorghum flour

• 2 cups potato starch, tapioca flour, or arrowroot powder (choose two types of starch to combine for best results)

Sorghum flour is high in protein and fiber and has a lovely slight sweetness to it. I love it in baked goods, but for a slightly grainier texture you can also experiment with replacing the sorghum in this all-purpose mix with buckwheat, almond flour, coconut flour, or a mix of these.