Gluten-free cooking hacks

[Teronms]

On 6/1/2022 at 12:42 AM, Alex said:

I often have to do a bit of tweaking (not twerking—that would be terrifying) of proportions or baking time to get the result I want, but I've had good success adapting some recipes to be gluten-free. These are my general guidelines: 

• Instead of a-p flour, use a mix of almond flour, coconut flour, and Bob's Red Mill 1:1 g-f flour
• If measuring flour by volume, use more mix. For example, my original recipe for brownies called for 1/2 cup + 1 T a-p; I now use 1/3 c each almond and coconut plus 1/4 c 1:1.
• Increase eggs (for the brownies, 3 instead of 2), decrease butter (3 oz instead of 4), and increase the leavening (¾-1 t instead of ½ t baking powder)

So easy to do, thank you for the tips! I just recently found out that I'm allergic to gluten and I need to change my eating habits

[Darienne]

Just landed on another gluten-free site: Gluten Free Alchemist.  Has anyone else found this site?  And what does he/she think of it?  It seems very detailed and very complete...but then I'm currently drowning in information and not feeling competent to make any judgements.  (New endeavors always see me drowning in information for a while...)

[kayb]

1 hour ago, Darienne said:

Just landed on another gluten-free site: Gluten Free Alchemist.  Has anyone else found this site?  And what does he/she think of it?  It seems very detailed and very complete...but then I'm currently drowning in information and not feeling competent to make any judgements.  (New endeavors always see me drowning in information for a while...)

Haven't seen that one. Will check it out.

[Darienne]

I'm watching this program on gluten and inflammation and do not endorse or disagree with it...I simply don't know enough about the subject...but one thing is true and I guess that scientific study endorses it: 1,000 years ago wheat contained only 4% gluten and now in the 21st century, it's 12 %. That was a staggering thing to learn.

 

Added:  I went back and reread this entire thread and was taken aback by my post of 2018...an eating lifetime ago.  Now I avoid gluten pretty much, although like some, a small amount will not produce any problems...so far...  I'm going to rethink this issue again.  I didn't find it a problem for the year and a half in which I avoided gluten completely...life is much easier for the gluten-intolerant now.  And still a lot of my baking is gluten-free...I actually like what I am making.  But bread is the biggest problem.  I love a particular whole-grain regular-type bread and have gone back to eating it.  I'm going to try the gluten-free sandwich bread recipe posted above.  

Edited April 15, 2023 by Darienne (log)

[kayb]

The biggest thing I miss is fresh yeast bread, warm from the oven, slathered in butter. GF sandwich bread is fine, toasted, and I was always inclined to eat sandwich “innards” sans the bread, anyway.

 

But yes. Gluten free selections have improved tremendously.

[weinoo]

19 hours ago, Darienne said:

1,000 years ago wheat contained only 4% gluten and now in the 21st century, it's 12 %. That was a staggering thing to learn.

 

They may have used fewer pesticides/herbicides/fungicides then too.

[Darienne]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

 

They may have used fewer pesticides/herbicides/fungicides then too.

Absolutely.  

 

Interesting, the video touches upon the fact that some people can tolerate more wheat while eating in Europe than in North America.   Stricter laws on the use of pesticides/herbicides/fungicides seems to be the answer in this case.  

[weinoo]

The Trouble With Bread

 

Quote

 

Journalist Maggie Beidelman enjoyed her favorite bread, pasta and pastries during a year in France, but when she returned to the United States, she found she could not eat the same foods without developing a stomachache, nausea and exhaustion. She knew it was “something,” but didn’t know what.

The Trouble with Bread, her documentary film project as a student at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, became a personal and professional quest for answers about gluten intolerance (trailer). Surrounded by mentors like Professor Michael Pollan, scientists, farmers and bakers in the gourmet- and heritage-wheat-loving Bay Area, she journeyed “from farm to mill to table” and found some surprising answers.

 

 

Also, the story of Tartine Bakery's Elisabeth Prueitt is quite interesting.

[chromedome]

21 hours ago, Darienne said:

I'm watching this program on gluten and inflammation and do not endorse or disagree with it...I simply don't know enough about the subject...but one thing is true and I guess that scientific study endorses it: 1,000 years ago wheat contained only 4% gluten and now in the 21st century, it's 12 %. That was a staggering thing to learn.

 

That's...pretty dubious. I'll watch the video later and see if I can find whatever source he's citing for that. Durum, for example, is a high-gluten wheat and it's been cultivated for about 10,000 years (in round numbers). Though I did find at least one study - comparing "ancient" wheats to modern wheats - which worked around that difficulty by simply classing durum among the modern wheats.

 

 

[Darienne]

If you are interested in accessing the documentary mentioned by the quote in @weinoo's post and if like me you don't have access to any video sources, you can access the text (and script directions) from this source: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0zv7w37s .  Not exactly a fascinating method of accessing a video, but I really wanted to watch it and can't.