I have been doing a fair bit of tinkering of gluten free recipes here, but haven’t written much about it other than the odd tweet, so I thought I would pull up a few of the pics and summarize a bit of the adventure with bread, cookies and muffins.
Baking gluten free is not hard, BUT does require a bit of an understanding of how the various ingredients work before tinkering. A couple of things to renember along the way include:
- Conversions of regular recipes to gluten-free require a really solid understanding of what role the various ingredients play (e.g. are the eggs binding? leavening? structural support?). Substitutions then have to fill that role or you will have recipe FAIL!
- Small changes in gluten-free recipes have big changes. They are not as forgiving in some respects. The starches that form the base of many of the flours have such transparent flavours, so all the other flours may have quite pronounced flavours.
- In trying to achieve a completely vegan results, the eggs are the biggest challenge
- Removing all sugar can be a problem where the sugar helps add structure!
- Baking is more science than improv!
Bread
I have been playing around with bread flours, and found a combination that I think makes a nice sandwich bread that also has enough nutritional value that makes it worthwhile. Millet and sorghum are the key ingredients here. I came up with one combination using garfava flour that is great in terms of texture and taste, but am finding not everyone likes the “beany” flavour, even in moderation, so this iteration was an attempt to find a non-bean alternative. You can see the inside of the loaf here, which has a nice open texture, stayed nice and pliable overnight on the counter, and toasted up nicely.
The second recent experiment was to come up with recipes for chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies that were gluten-free and vegan. I was playing around with a couple of shortening options, and decided to take pics of the chocolate chip cookies made with EarthBalance buttery sticks, as well as those made with coconut oil.
I really like the taste of coconut oil, but it does tend to make the baked goods a little unruly, flatter and crunchier at the edges, whereas the EarthBalance helps make a rounder, puffier cookie. For comparison, here’s the two, with the coconut oil cookie on the right. Note that both tasted good, but hubby decided he doesn’t like the coconut oil version.
I also have what I think is a great recipe for gluten-free oatmeal raisin cookies, regardless of whether you need to eat gluten-free or not. I realize that not everyone can tolerate oats, but for those that can, just make sure you use oats that are labelled as certified gluten-free.
Finally, I have been looking for a basic muffin mix that would be gluten-free, but also dairy-free, and could be doctored with different fruits and spices for easy to make variations. The first iteration relied on about 25% garfava flour, again, to boost the nutritional content of the muffins, but not everyone appreciates the bean! Another trial with another grain mix resulted in this muffin which uses quinoa flour as well as sorghum. The verdict was that it is tasty, but not as “bouncy” in texture as the garfava. The quinoa is also quite a pronounced flavour, which I like, but may not be for everyone.
As per one of the observations (small changes make big differences!), this version of the muffin, while tasty, was definitely dryer than the version with garfava flour. I am thinking about adding a small amount of coconut flour to help make it a tad moister.
And so, I leave you to go tinker some more, but first, here’s a gratuitous cute pic of Eric!