Smith - Everyday Grain-Free Baking

This simple, beautiful book is dedicated to real everyday families like yours and mine. I hope it will be a bright ray of sunshine that enables each of us to more easily bring those old familiar favorites back to the table with a delightful simplicity that leaves our lives less stressed and more centered on enjoying the people God has brought into our lives.

My passion for cooking and baking has its roots in a childhood filled with large family gatherings that always centered around a table overflowing with delicious Southern-style food. With conversations and laughter filling the air as familiar favorites were passed among us, I soon came to realize that sharing a meal was more than just passing the biscuitsit was about passing on memories, family traditions, and cherished moments in each others lives.

As my husband and I started our new life together, I wanted to recreate the experiences of my childhood in making our kitchen table the hub of our home, and pass on to our children the familiar comfort foods and traditions that I knew and loved as a child. Everything was right on track with this dream when suddenly our lives changed. In 2007, I began to suffer from two chronic autoimmune disordersinterstitial cystitis and irritable bowel syndrome. Not long afterward, I was diagnosed with gluten sensitivity as well. Yet, despite several prescription medications, I was still in constant pain and discomfort.

I soon came to realize that a healthier way to find relief was to radically overhaul my diet. Like many others, I felt quite overwhelmed by the unfamiliar dietary restrictions required as I strove to regain my health. Weighing even heavier upon my heart was how to continue the tradition of family gatherings around simple and delicious meals at the kitchen table.

Thankfully, many new friends came into my life who inspired me with their knowledge about the whole-food lifestyle, as well as gluten-free, grain-free living. As I learned to translate everything I knew and loved about cooking into a more whole-food, nutrient-dense approach, amazing health transformations began to take placeboth in my life and in the lives of my family members.

These positive changes did not go unnoticed, and soon I was sharing my rapidly growing knowledge, experience, and passion for healthy grain-free living with friends far and wide. With the support of my family, I launched TheNourishingHome.coma whole-food, grain-free lifestyle blog dedicated to helping individuals and families live a more nourished life!

Although many of us live with the challenge of adhering to various dietary restrictions, by no means should these restrict us from experiencing the joy of sharing cherished traditions with our family and friends.

Therefore, my heartfelt mission in writing this book is to provide you with a whole host of deliciously comforting grain-free baking recipes, while also inspiring you to rediscover the joy of sharing your delightful creations with those you love. With the easy, delicious recipes found throughout this book, your kitchen can once again become a welcome gathering place for you, your family, and friends, to break bread and share your lives with one another.

Living grain-free doesnt mean you have to sacrifice your favorite baked goods. In fact, each one of the more than 100 easy-to-make recipes found in Everyday Grain-Free Baking is the result of my passion to take the everyday comfort foods we each hold dear and reinvent them so that theyre not only acceptable grain-free substitutes for old favorites, but are so delightfully flavorful that you wont even notice that anything is missing.

As a firm believer in the whole-food lifestyle, Ive made sure that each scrumptious recipefrom Easy Everyday Bread and Sweet Cinnamon Roll Biscuits to Raspberry Crumble Bars and Deep Dish Apple Pieutilizes only real food ingredients. No processed or refined foods and no starch-based flours are included. The result is a healthier, more nutrient-rich baked good that will leave you and your family feeling satisfied with every tasty bite!

In addition, Ive also come to discover that there is no one-size-fits-all grain-free diet. Instead, what works for one person may not work for another, since were all complex, unique individuals. Therefore, this cookbook isnt focused on exploring the various nuances of one particular diet or another, but instead provides simple, grain-free baking recipes that meet the foundational elements of the most common grain-free diets. Helpful information about each of the grain-free ingredients used in this book is located in the Grain-Free Pantry Essentials section in for easy reference. So whether youre gluten-free, grain-free, or just want to reduce your carbohydrate intake, my mission in this book is to provide you with easy and delicious recipes that your whole family can enjoy whether or not everyone is living a grain-free lifestyle.

As you likely know, there are several different types of grain-free diets, each with its own dietary guidelines. As youll soon discover, this easy-to-use cookbook is compatible with the most common grain-free diets, since its filled with delicious baking recipes that are grain-free, gluten-free, starch-free, and free of refined sugar. The vast majority are also dairy-free, or contain dairy-free recommendations so they can easily be converted as such. To help you more easily identify which recipes are suitable for your personal dietary preferences, youll find the following icons next to each recipe:

Dairy Free:

Dairy-Free Option Provided:

Egg Free:

Nut Free:

Suitable for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet: