Eating out or buying your gluten-free foods from a store has
made huge improvements in today’s society for a celiac, but I am forgetting
about the most self-satisfying way to eat gluten free: Cooking something with
your own two hands. Knowing that you were able to cook for yourself is a great
accomplishment, especially for a freshman in college, but the fact that it is
gluten free makes your wonderful creation a hundred times better. Like every
recipe, the first time making something new can be intimidating, but with time
and persistence, anyone can create something magnificent to put on their plate.
This is exactly the case with any gluten-free recipe.
Some
people think that when they eat gluten free, they have to give up some of their
favorite recipes. This is not always true. With the advancements in the celiac
world, there are many ingredients that can replace the gluten. Sometimes, the
outcome tastes even better than the original recipe. During the beginning of
eating gluten free, I began to miss certain foods that I used to bake all the
time. I had no clue how I was living without bread, I craved thick and
delicious waffles in the mornings, and life was torturous without a chocolate
chip cookie after dinner. I was really starting to miss gluten.
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| Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough |
For those of you that have experienced the
temptations of eating a little bit of gluten or at some point will have these
feelings, think about other options or replacements. It is definitely not the
end of the world if your favorite morning breakfast has gluten in it. Now,
there are a great number of different ingredients that can be substituted into
your recipe to make it gluten free. According to Karen Robertson from
Celiac.com, “Gluten-free flours are
generally used in combination with one another. There is not one stand alone
gluten-free flour that you can use successfully in baked goods.” Some of these
gluten-free flours include arrowroot flour, buckwheat flour, corn flour, and
many others. Don’t be afraid to try out different varieties of flours when
cooking a recipe. Sometimes the first go at any recipe can be disastrous. I’ve
baked gluten free cookies that flattened out so much they filled the entire
cookie pan once and also extremely crumbly bread. The most important thing to do is to no give
up. You just have to figure out which combinations create the best replacement
in the recipe.
Recently,
I visited my grandma. She is an amazing cook and I am so lucky to live only ten
minutes away. She has always been known to cook amazing dinners and baked goods
for us and when she found out that I was now a celiac, she immediately started
looking for different ways to cook her food and many gluten-free recipes. When
I went to my grandma’s house the other day, we decided to try and make a few
foods that I have greatly missed. Waffles, chocolate chip cookies and the food
I missed the most, bread, were our recipes on our list to bake. With most of
the recipes, can easily replace the gluten. It’s as simple as using your
gluten-free flour blend in place of regular flour. It is very significant to
add some sort of flour thickener though in order to maintain the same
consistency as the normal recipe. Xanthan gum is a great thickener and although
it is pretty expensive and took my grandma and I looking all over town for it,
it does the trick very well in a gluten-free flour blend. As Anne Barfield states,
“In its function as a
thickener, stabilizer, and emulsifier, xanthan gum partly replaces the
elasticity and plasticity of the gluten that occurs naturally in wheat, barley,
and rye.” After a long in the
kitchen, my grandma and I successfully created some of the best tasting
gluten-free foods. Some people when tasting our bread said that they would have
never known that there was no gluten in it and that is was a wonderful. Others
said that it had a denser consistency and a sponge-like fell to it. Everyone who
tasted it loved it though. Any food made from your own kitchen can be amazing,
but knowing that I was able to replace any gluten in the recipe with other
ingredients was the best feeling in the world.
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| Gluten-Free Bread |
Here
are some pointers when making a recipe gluten free. First, don’t get discouraged
if your recipe looks different. My chocolate chip cookie dough was a little
crumbly but the end product tasted amazing. In addition, it might take a few
tries to get the recipe just they way you like it. While making my gluten-free
bread, I did not cook it long enough and the end product was still a bit
uncooked in the middle, but it still tasted wonderful. Lastly, take be afraid
to take a risk. Mess around with the recipe, try different gluten-free
substitutes and get creative. When you have finally perfected your gluten-free
recipe, there is nothing better in the celiac world than to be able to
re-create your favorite food, but this time gluten-free.
 |
| Gluten-Free Waffles |
Gluten-Free Bread:
Ingredients
1 cup
warm milk (about 110ºF)
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons active
dry yeast
2 1/2 cups Gluten-Free
Flour Blend (see below)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Land O Lakes® Butter, melted, cooled
Directions
Combine
milk, sugar and yeast in small bowl; set aside 10 minutes.
Combine flour
blend and salt in large stand mixer bowl; beat with stand mixer on low speed,
gradually adding yeast mixture until well combined. Add butter and eggs; beat,
scraping bowl occasionally, until well mixed. Increase speed to high; beat
until batter is very smooth (about 3 minutes).
Cover, let rise in warm
place 1 hour.
Grease 8x4-inch loaf pan. Stir dough; pour into pan,
leveling top. Loosely cover with greased plastic food wrap; let rise until just
above top edge of pan (20 to 30 minutes).
Meanwhile, heat oven to 350°F.
Bake for 42 to 50 minutes or until top is golden brown. Remove bread from pan;
cool completely on wire rack.
Gluten-Free
Flour Blend: To make
flour blend, combine 2 cups rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 cup tapioca
flour and 1 teaspoon xanthan gum. Use appropriate amount for recipe; store
remainder in container with tight-fitting lid.
Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie:
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups
Gluten-Free Flour Blend (see below)
1 teaspoon
gluten-free baking powder
1 teaspoon baking
soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon xanthan
gum
3/4 cup Land O Lakes® Butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed
brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons
gluten-free vanilla
1 (12-ounce) package (2 cups) gluten-free semi-sweet chocolate chunks or chips
Directions
Heat oven to
375°F. Combine flour blend, baking powder, baking soda, salt and xanthan gum in
medium bowl. Set aside.
Combine softened butter,
brown sugar and sugar in large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often,
until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla. Continue beating, scraping bowl often,
until well mixed.
Reduce speed
to low. Beat, gradually adding flour mixture, until well mixed. Stir in
chocolate chips.
Drop dough by
rounded tablespoonfuls, 2 inches apart, onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for
9 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown. (DO NOT OVERBAKE.) Let stand 1 to
2 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets.
Gluten-Free
Flour Blend: To make flour
blend, combine 2 cups rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 cup tapioca flour
and 1 teaspoon xanthan gum. Use appropriate amount for recipe; store remainder
in container with tight-fitting lid. Stir before using.
Gluten-Free Waffle:
Ingredients
1 cup brown rice
or 1 cup rice flour
1/2 cup potato
starch (NOT Potato Flour)
1/4 cup tapioca
flour
2 teaspoons
baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup oil
2 eggs (or
not...see notes)
1 1/2 cups
buttermilk (regular milk works, too)
1 teaspoon sugar
Directions:
1. Mix all
ingredients together with a whisk, and pour into waffle iron, in batches.
2. Add a bit more
milk if too thick or a bit of rice flour if too runny.
3. Can be made
without eggs, if necessary; just add a little more liquid to make up for them
Works Cited
Anne Barfield, Anne. Alamo
Celiac. Gluten Intolerance Group, 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.
<http://www.alamoceliac.org/actipsxanthanfree.html>
Bennet, E. Food.com Home of
the Home Cook. Recipe. Scripps Networks, 22 Feb. 2003. Web. 1 Feb. 2013.
<http://www.food.com/recipe/gluten-free-waffles-54529>
“Chewy Chocolate
Chip Cookies (Gluten-Free Recipe).” Recipe. Landolakes.com. 2013. 25 Feb. 2013.
< http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/1470/chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies-gluten-free-recipe>
Robertson, Karen. Celiac.com.
Ed. Scott Adams. Celiac.com, 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.
<http://www.celiac.com/articles/863/1/Gluten-Free-Flour-Alternatives-by-Karen-Robertson/Page1.html>
“Sandwhich
Bread (Gluten-Free Recipe).” Recipe. Land O' Lakes. Ed. Christopher J. Policinsk.
Land O'Lakes, Inc. , 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2013.
<http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/3074/sandwich-bread-gluten-free-recipe>
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