Posted by Deanna | Posted in Books, IBS, Life, cooking, food | Posted on 15-12-2009
Tags: baking, cake, cakes, celiac, christmas, cookbook, cookies, cooking, experiment, food, healthy, IBS, martha, martha stewart, organic, scones, wheat-free
The Christmas season is here, and I have nearly finished marking final exams, and I have no experiments or major research to do over the holidays. Therefore it is time to do my own experiments at home, and buy some baking cookbooks and make use of my oven and baking supplies.
My baking cupboards are full of all the fixings to make healthy, organic and wheat-free baked goods, and there isn’t an abundance of wheat-free baking cookbooks on the market. I don’t really bake that often due to that. What should I do?
Well, I went out and got the Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. No, she doesn’t have some magical book that accommodates vegans, celiacs or wheat-free foodies, but I have a plan! I am going to revise some of the recipes in the book to suit my wheat-free needs, and write about whether they are fabulous or a flop.
This will be a fun and and hopefully tasty experiment. Instead of wheat flour, I will be using spelt, corn, rice, kamut, rye and other non-wheat flours.
I will even try to make my revisions as gluten-free as possible, though that can be tough as any celiac will tell you. I may end up ruining some of the recipes, but then at least I will know what works and what doesn’t.
To start I am trying to decide between the following items: scones, rugelach, cookies or coffee cake. Any suggestions?
Wish me luck! I will start posting upcoming baking experiments through the next couple weeks.
~Deanna
Hey Deanna! As I am celiac and cannot eat wheat I am very curious about your experiments! Just FYI, Rye, Kamut, and spelt, all are part of the wheat family. They are chockered full of gluten. The number one flour to experiment with is Rice flour. Also, buckwheat is not related to wheat at all and is gluten free. Other flours are Tapioca flour, Almond flour, corn flour, potato starch, cornstarch, and a whole bunch of other ones that my brain is refusing to remember at the moment
. Hope that helps!
Niki
go for the coffee cake. I need one that works for Nik
I went and made muffins, gingerbread and also Gingerbread cake with a “chocolate” ganache.
I will post about them in a bit.
Thanks for the info about the flour Niki. (I use rice flour for a majority of my baking – I use Spelt etc. when I know other people might eat my baking)
[...] A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to be trying out different recipes from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook. Well, after substituting wheat flour for rice flour in a few recipes, I realized that a majority of the recipes in the cookbook are able to be wheat-free and yummy at the same time! [...]