Hmmm, well, I thought my last post was sometime in December, at least within a month, but apparently not. Apparently, I wrote my first post the day after my last day of work. It's a most fantastic idea to start a blog (that you hope to contribute to often) right when you leave your job to pack up your apartment to drive cross country with a trailer to move into a new house with a Very Important person and then UNpack all the stuff you just packed up...never mind all the time required to actually do all that. The energy to process it all and handle it and stay composed was tremendous. Is tremendous. Lots going on. But because I don't have a JOB job, I feel like I should have tons of free time. Actually, the opposite is true.
So, yes, all kidding aside, an excellent time to start something else new, in keeping with all the newness.
In our house, there is no wheat flour. It's not a banned substance or anything. There is an abundance of flour - seed flour, nut flour, tuber flour, grain flour - but none made from wheat. I haven't bought any because I, in this house, with my non-gluten-eating loved one, wanted to adjust to baking here, opening the cabinets here, thickening pan sauces here, without seeing wheat flour in the background. I wanted to see if it made a difference NOT to have it around at all. I wanted to see if I had been secretly using it as a mental crutch of some sort even in all my gluten-free experimenting in my wheat containing apartment in Phoenix. I wanted to see if just having it around as an option had, in any way, been holding me back from creating gluten-free deliciousness of the highest caliber I am capable of. I'll let you decide.
The first time I went to bake something in his, I mean our, house, I was flummoxed. Actually, at that point, I was probably flummoxed when I went to take a shower - everything was so new and pretty darn overwhelming. I had thought the baking would calm me, but it made me nervous to gather the ingredients. No big familiar 5 lb. bags of wheat flour to calm my eyeballs, fatigued of adjusting. No indescriminately-palate-d bike shop dudes to eat whatever creation I might dream up, wheat or no. No one at all (outside the house) to take baked stuff to, actually, so if I wanted to share it with someone, well, no wheat. And sharing is one of the beautiful things about baking.
So, I baked the things I had baked before knowing I had no wheat flour to fall back on and make something else to soothe my ego if it didn't come out well. And they were delicious. I also found myself looking at ALL the gluten-free recipes I have in my collections, instead of just certain ones. Never realized the cherry-picking, favorite-playing I had been doing all along...possibly because I knew I had the wheat flour to fall back on, OR because I had made those particular things with wheat flour and didn't want to create a lousy "substitute." How close-minded of me. How free ow nwithout my wheat-flour crutch! How weird.
Made a new version of a cinnamon quick bread that came out well (more on that in a later post), and then got brassy enough to double a gluten-free cookie recipe! Now, I do NOT double recipes. It rarely works correctly and if often doesn't work at all. Just the nature of the chemistry of baking. But I was confident. More baking confident than I remember being. And, of course, the recipe did not come out perfectly, BUT ... well, of course it didn't.
In our house, I had figured, sadly, that certain of my baking books might never be freshly soiled with eggy-battered-fingers again because all the recipes contained (and required) wheat flour and were not tinker-able.
Au contraire.
ANYTHING is tinker-able. Just ask your grandpa. Now, it might not go back together quite how you expect, you might have to add some extra parts, and the end result might differ quite a bit from the initial blueprint, but that doesn't mean it'll be a failure.
So, in the last week, as I've become more settled in the new place, I've read again for the first time some traditional favorite cookbooks and some discarded recipes in familiar cookbooks. And I got to tinkering.
Learned a couple things (well, assumed them, then found them to be true, at least in the application in which I used them).
#1 - Bob's Red Mill Baking Book is an excellent resource for gluten-free baking because of the variety of flours they use in ALL the recipes AND the overall simplicity and traditional nature of the recipes. The abundance of whole wheat flour and other hearty, heavy flours used in the recipes means the liquid volumes are already designed for very dry and moisture-absorbent flours so they are adaptable to gluten-free versions without taking advanced chemistry, especially if you are familar with the batter texture for the particular delight you are making.
#2 - Guar gum. Guar gum is magic. When you tinker, make 1 teaspoon of Guar Gum part of your gluten-free equation. Doesn't have to be an exact teaspoon - just scoop some out and toss it in with the dry ingredients.
#3 - Biscuits and scones and pie crusts are less intimidating in a gluten-free context. Yes, it is still possible to overmix and get a somewhat drier and overly-emulsified dough, BUT overmixing will not ruin the chemistry of what you're making as it will in wheat flour creations. If you overmix wheat biscuits and scones and pie crust, you get chewy, overly hard nuggets of non-deliciousness because the overmixing has developed the gluten into a chewy mass. So, no gluten, no gluey mess! Be crazy and make buttermilk biscuits again for the first time! This is soup season, so it's the perfect time to try.
#4 - Recipes that call for a large amount of flour (3 cups or more) can be very forgiving because you have a large volume with which to tinker. Variety and texture are key - if it's a light cake, use a variety of lighter flours, if it's heavy and dense breakfast bread, use a mix of heavy with light. Use buckwheat flour sparingly unless you know you like it - it hugely impacts flavor and is anything but neutral. Quinoa is not as neutral as the description would have you believe. Cornstarch adds lightness and elasticity to cakes, but never use it to roll out dough because you'll have sandy dough.
Here's my latest creation, using my newfound knowledge and courage, and one of the most beautiful cookbooks I own: bake! by Nick Malgieri. Not a gluten-free recipe in it. But after some tinkering....
Cream Cheese Scones
Makes 12-16 scones, depending how big you cut them or drop them
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 425.
Ingredients :
1 cup sweet sorghum flour
1/2 cup almond meal/flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
scant 1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 teaspoon guar gum
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 ounces FULL FAT cream cheese
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold & cut into 12 pieces
2 large eggs, cold
1/3 cup (filled to the brim!) half & half
Mix all the dry ingredients together with a whisk, being sure to break up any clumps of almond meal or coconut flour.
Place the cream cheese, butter, and eggs in the bowl of a food processor and pulse, or mix using and electric mixer on medium, until it's mostly combined and looks curdled.
Add the dry ingredients and half & half and pulse about 6-8 times, or mix on low, until dough comes mostly together into a somewhat sticky ball.
Knead several times until pretty smooth, then divide into 2 equal pieces and press each into a 6" disk. Place disks on prepared pan about 3" apart and use a long knife to mark each disk into 6 or 8 triangles.
Alternately, after kneading, drop dough (like biscuits) using a tablespoon as a scooper or just your hands, leaving about an inch between drops. Make them whatever size you like, just keep an eye on them if you have more than 15 because they will bake quickly.
Bake until they are visibly risen, cracking a little on the surface, and deep golden in spots.
Cool for a few minutes, and enjoy. If you used the disk-method, use your long knife to separate the scones at the divisions you made before.
Keep in an airtight container for...probably up to a week. We're still working on ours, so I'll let you know how the shelf life turns out.
~SK
