What's the Difference Between Gluten-Free Flours?

Gluten-free flours are tricky to work with. It's just not as simple as working with wheat flour or all-purpose wheat flour.

When I first started baking and cooking gluten free, about six years ago, I made the classic mistakes. I tried to bake cookies with rice flour, and they came out tasting like Chinese fortune cookies. I tried to make cream gravy with buckwheat flour, and it came out looking like mud. Etc...

I wished I could've found a website that gave me the low-down on the various flours. Because there are lots of gluten-free flours, but they all do different things. So I'm here to offer that information to you, as I've spent the last six years making lots of GF blunders. Therefore, I can tell you what NOT to do...

Rice Flour: This flour is the crux of most gluten-free baking. Most recipes will call for at least some rice flour, so keep a fair amount of it in your house. It's the filler for almost all GF flour mixtures. But the trick is this: don't single it out. Rice flour doesn't work well on its own. Instead, you've got to mix it with other things, so your baking doesn't come out too crunchy with hard, crusty exteriors.

Tapioca Flour: This stuff has a really sweet flavor to it. When you add it to rice flour, it sweetens the general flavor of whatever you're baking. But don't go overboard. Too much tapioca flour makes baked goods taste too sweet, the way adding saccharine makes stuff taste too sweet if you cook for a diabetic.

Sorghum Four: This flour adds an earthy, nutty flavor to baked goods. It's kind of like the GF version of rye, but on a milder scale. Some celiacs say that adding sorghum flour is like making the bread or baked goods taste healthier, like a seven-grain bread or a whole-grain bread might taste. I like it in my gingerbread cookies and cakes, because it provides that heavier taste that goes great in a gingerbread, but I don't like it in my sandwich bread, because I'm not a big fan of whole wheat's flavor. I do, however, find that sorghum goes okay in pancakes for some reason. So experiment with it.

Potato Starch Flour: This is a great thickener, and I also like to use this to flour a cutting board before I make cookies or roll out my pie crust. A lot of recipes call for this flour, because, like rice flour, it offers a good solid basis. When mixed with rice flour, it makes the perfect filler for most baking recipes. I keep a large staple of potato starch flour in my kitchen.

Potato Flour: This kind of flour is not to be mistaken for potato starch flour. It has more of a beige color, when compared to potato starch flour, but more importantly, it acts very differently. It's got a pastiness that other flours don't have. So, used in small amounts, it can help keep your cakes and breads from being too crumbly. But you don't need much of this stuff to do the trick. Its ability to make baked goods congeal reminds me a little of the way xanthan gum works in recipes--like an egg substitute, but not quite that firm. I mix potato flour into my super fluffy GF flour mix, and I also find it can be helpful in thickening soups, when you mix it with other flours.

Corn Starch: Yes, this is actually a flour. Before I went GF, I thought of this as an ingredient like baking powder or baking soda, but corn starch is actually a flour that can be added to many baked goods to help keep them fluffy. Again, see my super fluffy GF flour mix recipe, to see how you can really fluff up your cornbread and other baked goods using corn starch in pretty big amounts.

Other Flours: There are many other flours you can buy, like garbonzo bean flour, fava bean flour, almond flour, and coconut flour that are all GF, but the ones above are the ones I keep in my kitchen at all times. I also use a lot of super-fine-ground corn meal, and it is possible to buy gluten-free oats now, as well, if your stomach can tolerate them. But I just wanted to give you a quick study of what each of the most basic gluten-free flours acts like in a recipe. I do hope this description helps you get familiar with your gluten-free flours.

Gluten-Free Egg McMuffin

A special treat for my little girl is GF egg McMuffins. What? You can make that gluten-free? Yes, you can. A company called Food for Life makes yummy GF English muffins now. (Check out the link for details.) With this product, it's possible to make McDonalds'-style egg McMuffins right in your own home! YUM!

If you don't have access to Food for Life products, you can certainly try to immitate the same thing with simple toast--just use your GF bread and cut it into circles and toast it. Heck, it might work.

INGREDIENTS:
GF ham (i.e. Buddig, Hormel, etc.)
1 egg
1 slice cheese
English muffin (GF) sliced in half and toasted
1 tsp. cider vinegar
water
cooking spray

DIRECTIONS:
I don't own a double-boiler, so I can't poach my eggs properly. So this is how I poach them: I spray a nonstick pan with cooking spray, put a cup of water in it, add the cider vinegar, and boil. Once boiling, I add my egg. Use a spatula to "scoot" the egg across the bottom, so it doesn't stick. Boil it for ten minutes, 'till the yolk is pretty much hard--be careful not to boil it dry. (I don't like runny eggs, but if you do, cook it for less time.) In the last two minutes of boil time, add the ham to the water. It doesn't need to cook very long, just one or two minutes. Then remove it from the water with tongs. Use a slotted spoon to lift the egg out of the pan, once cooked. Rest the wet egg on a paper towel and dry it off some. Pat the ham dry too. Salt and pepper the egg.

Make sure you time it about right, so that your English muffins are hot and toasted when the egg is done cooking. You may choose to butter your English muffins, but it's not absolutely necessary.

Layer the ingredients like this:

Bread on bottom and top
Egg/slice of cheese/ham in the middle

Wrap the bottom half of your egg McMuffin in a paper towel, and that way you won't lose any bits of egg out the bottom. It can be a little drippy too, so this prevents a mess.

Basic Gluten-Free Gravy Recipe

There are several ways to make gluten-free gravy. For today's post, I'll go with the simplest method. It requires no pre-prep of any kind, other than soaking the corn starch in water for a while.

My list of ingredients includes instant broth, like a powdered broth that you can add water to and microwave. You can't trust the normal bullion cubes that you might buy in the regular grocery store. Instead, you might have to go to a health-food store or other GF supplier to get your powdered broth. Glutino makes good broth, but it comes from outside the US, so it can be a little spendy. There's another brand called Vogue that's not as expensive but doesn't taste quite as good (because it doesn't have any meat--it's vegan).

There's no reason why you can't use broth that you made a long time ago--you know, where you put leftover meat in a boiling pan and just let it simmer all day until you've got broth. Then you can freeze that broth in ice cube trays to last for a super-long time in the freezer. But I'm trying to make this recipe simple, so working moms can come home after a long day's work and just whip up a quick gravy. But yeah, you can use real broth instead of instant.

INGREDIENTS:
instant broth
corn starch
water

DIRECTIONS:
Take two tablespoons of corn starch and soak it in a quarter cup of water. Use a fork to continually whisk up the corn starch mixture. That way it won't form a clump.

In a saucepan, put one cup of prepared instant broth (follow the directions on your instant broth label) and make sure the broth is well-mixed before you turn on the heat. Simmer this on medium-high until it reaches boiling point.

Add the corn starch mixture and continually whisk the gravy nonstop. Season with salt and pepper (and if you like other seasonings, like garlic or onion powder, those too), to taste. Be wary of using too much salt. A lot of instant broths already contain quite a bit of salt, so keep sampling your gravy as you season it, to make sure it's not too salty.

When the gravy reaches the appropriate thickness, remove from burner and serve. If it's not getting thick enough for you, add another tablespoon of watered-down cornstarch, but make sure it's not clumpy when you add it.

Gluten-Free Meatloaf Recipe

One of my children is 11 years old, and she's wanting to learn how to cook. So a couple of nights ago, I let her make a simple meatloaf, and this is the recipe we used:

INGREDIENTS:
11/2 lbs. hamburger
2 tbsp. finely chopped onions
1 tbstp. fresh parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic
dash of salt
dash of pepper (we used fresh ground pepper)
2 tsp. Worchestershire sauce (Lee and Perrins is GF)
1 slice of dried GF bread
1 egg

DIRECTIONS:
There are a couple of ways to crumble up your dried GF bread slice. First, you can put it in a plastic Ziplock bag and roll over it with a rolling pin. Or a second choice is to put it in a food processor and let electricity do the work for you.

Once you've crushed the bread into crumbs, mince the garlic with a garlic press, beat your egg, and mix all of these ingredients together in a bowl. Then use a fork to press the well-mixed burger mixture into a bread pan (3x9 inches or whatever those are). Bake the loaf in a 400 degrees F. oven for 45 minutes to an hour (or until a meat thermometer registers 170 degrees. Drain the fat off of the meatloaf before you serve it, for a healthier meal.

Personally, I like to add vegetables like celery and peppers and mushrooms to my meatloaf, but that makes my kids gag! So I've found, the simpler I keep my meatloaf, the more the kids like it.

They like it even more if you make gravy to go with it. I'll post my very basic gravy recipe next week. To make a platter that looks pretty, slice the meatloaf, splay it out like you would a hand of cards, and drizzle gravy over the top. A sprig of parsley can make it look nice too. The only problem with the decorative platter, though, is that it allows the meat to get cool. So there's that to think about.

How to Make Gluten-Free Garlic Toast and Gluten-Regular Toast at the Same Time

This Image: iClipart

When you first start cooking gluten-free, you make a lot of cross-contamination mistakes. You walk around giving your GF kid the guilty eyes, because she's sick and you're responsible. So before you try any more recipes, wipe that guilty look off your face. It's not your fault. You've got to go through a learning curve before you reach perfection, and after six years of cooking GF, even I'm not perfect. So live and learn, but don't wallow in guilt over it.

Today's GF instructions are for something you'd think is simple, but really, it's not. There are a lot of cross-contamination issues when we cook GF, and making garlic toast is a biggie. So here are the instrucitons for making gluten-free garlic toast simultaneously with your regular garlic toast, all on the same cookie sheet:

Guten-Free Garlic Toast AND Regular Garlic Toast Recipe

Here's what you need:

• cube of butter or uncontaminated margarine
• garlic powder (fresh garlic is okay, as far as I'm concerned, but my kids complain it's too strong)
• 3-4 slices of GF bread, whatever fits on your cookie sheet
• 3-4 slices of regular bread, same deal
• 1 pastry brush labeled GF
• 1 pastry brush that's strictly for your gluten-containing ingredients
• aluminum foil
• cookie sheet

Instructions:

1. Lay the cookie sheet on a table or counter. Measure the aluminum foil to 3-4 inches LONGER than the cookie sheet actually is.
2. Place the aluminum foil on the cookie sheet, but fold it in the middle. (See illustration.)
3. Melt 1/2 cube of butter (I chop it up into little pieces and microwave it in a measuring cup) and mix with a good dash or two of garlic powder. Use your GF pastry brush to mix it. I stick my finger in to taste it, making sure it's got a solid garlic flavor, but it's not overwhelming.
4. Use the GF pastry brush to spread melted butter on both sides of your aluminum foil. (The gluten-side has not yet been contaminated, so it's not going to matter if you touch the GF pastry brush to that side, at this point.)
5. Place only the GF breads on one half of the aluminum foil. Use the GF pastry brush to spread butter on each of these pieces of bread. If you have any extra butter, flip the bread over and spread extra butter on the back. The more buttery the bread, the yummier!
6. To avoid contamination, discard all GF items in the kitchen sink or dishwasher while you work with the gluten-contaminated side of the aluminum-foil-covered cookie sheet.
7. Place gluten-containing breads on the empty half of the aluminum foil, being careful not to accidentally drip crumbs on the GF side.--Cross-contamination can happen easily, so don't touch the GF side with your hands, don't carry gluten-containing breads over the top of the GF side, etc...
8. Melt the other half of the butter. (Again, I chop it into bits and microwave it.) Sprinkle a couple dashes of garlic powder in this and mix it with the pastry brush that is NOT for GF items. -- You must keep this pastry brush separate at all times, even when this recipe is over and done. Pastry brushes easily store bits of gluten between the bristles, so once it has been used on gluten-containing breads, it will forever be contaminated.
9. Brush the butter onto your gluten-containing bread slices now. Extra butter should be discarded, not stored, because it has been thoroughly contaminated with gluten.
10. Place the cookie sheet in a 400 degree F oven for a very brief time--usually 5 minutes or less. Just keep checking it. You want the garlic bread to turn golden brown but not black. I usually flip my garlic toast over once--doing the gluten-free pieces first to avoid contaminating them. Tongs will help you do this safely, but don't use them again to serve the bread unless you clean them thoroughly.

Variations:
It's possible to sprinkle your garlic bread with any of the following before toasting:

• dried parmesan cheese (the kind that comes in a can)
• dried parsley flakes
• grated mazarella cheese