Mary Ann Wenniger - The Best-Ever Wheat and Gluten Free Baking Book: 200 Recipes for Muffins, Cookies, Breads, and More, All Guaranteed Gluten-Free!

Over 200 Recipes for Muffins, Cookies, Breads, and More

MARY ANN WENNIGER WITH MACE WENNIGER

We dedicate this book to our friends who offered so much

and made this book possible, particularly to Eleanor King

who helped us so much with each of these recipes

and pages, and to you, our new friends with

whom we now share our stories, recipes, and fun.

Why bake? I asked this question to a friend of mine, a book illustrator who seems to work day and night, yet always has home-baked cookies in a copper tin for us after a hike in the woods, when we are ready for a hot cup of tea and a bit of sweet stuff. To relax in-between, was her answer. There were no great considerations, just the fun of making and offering home-baked treats. Thats it. That is what this book is about. Through the years my Ph.D. daughter has turned to baking chocolate chip cookies for a quick fix, a touch of warmth, of cheer.

If you add the health benefits of the new protein-rich flours I will introduce you to in this chapter, you will realize that avoiding the glycemic and dull-tasting wheat flours and choosing to experiment with alternative flours is an option now thanks to the wisdom and initiative of several flour missionaries who have brought these new flours to us during the last fifty years.

This section is packed with information about alternative flours, their tastes, textures, wheat- and gluten-free properties, and where to purchase them. It is the first informative writing of its kind to be included in any cookbook. It provides a unique in-depth list of gluten- and wheat-free flours, their country of origin, and their health benefits, as well as our personal recommendations regarding each of the flours.

We attended the first U.S. International Conference on Celiac Disease, held in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 2000. While there, we buttonholed vendors of gluten-free flours and sought out detailed information about the many flours available for purchase in the United States. Thus officially began our most intensive research. In this book, we offer for the first time the researched but never-presented-in-full flours that we call alternative flours, which are better in many ways than wheat, and are fully safe for gluten-and wheat-free children and adults. How exciting for you and for us! This is an untouched field of unusual flours, which we refer to as alternative flours because we use them as an alternative to wheat.

Recently, we had the privilege of spending a day with friendly, cheerful Bob Moore, the owner and visionary who started Bobs Red Mill in Oregonand the new flour revolution along the way. On a Friday afternoon in late August, when we were in Oregon for a wedding, we stopped in his retail store, searching rather naively for Bob.

By chance, he had just stopped by. He dropped his packages and warmly welcomed us and told us his story in a humble way that belied his position as the head of a huge company. It is a cause that has persisted in spite of a fire that demolished his buildings. Inspired by a Biblically-based conviction of the wholesomeness and holiness of baking breads, he single-handedly reached out to the world for their grains to offer his customers.

Moores story is that he was retired when he read a library book about an old stone grain mill in New Hampshire. Inspired, he and his sons brought old milling stones from all over the United States to his barn in Oregon, where his business of stone-grinding grains to preserve every nutritious particle was begun. Today, you can order all the grains we introduce you to from them online or from their catalogue. Moore anticipates offering gluten-free oats soon. Presently, he packages and stores oats in his gluten-free building, but he cannot yet guarantee that his oats are grown alone, without other grains. (Bob Moore suggests approaching the Quaker Oats Company for gluten-free oats, since their suppliers are vast farms of oat growers.) The same friendly, open spirit can be tapped at the Bobs Red Mill customer hotlines. Many recipes in this book were adapted from recipes sent to us by Bobs Red Mill. There are other companies that offer alternative flours and good advice, including Ener-G Foods in Seattle, Washington, and Arrowhead Mills in Hereford, Texas.

While we researched and tasted flours, we experimented with baked goods. Our experiments yielded wonderful baked goods, which we offer in the chapters that follow.

Read on for basic principles for successful wheat- and gluten-free baking, including tips regarding utensil selection, stirring, pan preparation, presentation, and storage of these fragile baked goods. Sources of gluten-free flavoring are offered. We also give information about the binders that hold gluten-free baked goods together such as guar and xanthum gums, gelatin, applesauce, and mayonaise.

In the early days of our gluten-free baking experimentation, we used rice flour without any binders. Our results were disappointing. Our baked breads, cookies, cakes, and muffins were bland tasting and fell apart at a touch. We researched additives that would make gluten-free baked goods hold together. In this section, we share our findings with our readers. We started by using gelatin and methyl cellulose as binders. We finally heard about xanthan gum, a root product that bakers use in cookies. Later, we learned about another binder, guar gum. Experiments with different types of gums produced a variety of textures in our baked products. Guar gum produces a spongy texture and is particularly useful in cakes. Xanthan produces a stretchy texture, making it best to use in breads. We use xanthan gum in most of our baking.

For years, we had to mail order both gums from a bakers supply house in California, because local retailers did not stock them. Shipping was time consuming and costly. Today, much to our relief, these two gums are available at most health food stores, as is carrageenan, a seaweed derivative that also works as a binder.

Baking is an art as well as a science. We invite you to experiment with the additives, flours, herbs, spices, and toppings, always keeping in mind that the smells and crusts on baked goods are 80 percent of the offering.

This is an exciting time to be interested in baking, with the new heightened awareness of the deleterious health effects of refined white breads. A wide variety of healthful, tasty grains are now sold in supermarkets, including rice, soy, quinoa, teff, barley, corn, tapioca, millet, and amaranth, which are stunningly low in carbs. These grains are full of protein, easy to bake with, and truly delicious.

Bread machines can help take the work and supervisory time out of homemade breads. But we think there is nothing like being hands-on with your baking, especially with gluten-free flours. They do not require kneading, just stirring, and not much of that. Baking breads with gluten-free flours is faster than wheat-flour baking. Everything happens more quickly since there is only minimal rising possible with these grains. So it is fun to do the whole thing from start to finish, as easily as making a meat loaf.

Today, you can be creative in your baking. You will get to know these flours, their characteristics, and interchange them in recipes or make up your own as you catch on to the basic principles involved. We hope that we will open these doors for you and draw you away from the sameness of the white flours that celiacs have been tied to by commercial gluten-free bakers and many recipe books. The textures and whole grains of the various new flours will seem so much more healthy and tasty, with more protein and less carbs than rice and tapioca and potato flours.