Carlyn Berghoff - Cooking for Your Gluten-Free Teen: Everyday Foods the Whole Family Will Love

abo u t the a u thors

Carlyn Berghoff, CEO of the Berghoff Catering and Restaurant Group, is the fourth generation to continue the Berghoff legacy of serving great food and entertaining guests. She is an author, a chef and restaurateur, a caterer, and a wife and mother. She is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and now operates the famous Berghoff restaurants and also catering out of Chicagos century-old Berghoff building. She is the coauthor of The Berghoff Family Cookbook and author of The Berghoff Caf Cookbook . She is married to Jim McClure, and the couple has two daughters and a son. She embraced gluten-free cooking and product and recipe development after her daughter Sarah was diagnosed with celiac disease. (Photo courtesy of Sonia Roselli.)

Sarah Berghoff McClure is the second daughter of Jim McClure and Carlyn Berghoff McClure. She attends high school, is the coxswain for a rowing team, and loves to cook. She has two pet lovebirds (she says shes their mother) and a dog named Badger. She liked all the normal teenage foods: fries, cookies, cakes, pizza, stuffing and gravy, and more. In 2009, she became critically ill, lost ten pounds suddenly, and was diagnosed with celiac disease. Since then she has regained her health and vitality and tells everyone she is going to live ten years longer because she is eating gluten free. (Photo courtesy of Sonia Roselli.)

Suzanne P. Nelson, M D, MP H , specializes in pediatric gastroenterology and is Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, The Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from Northwestern University Medical School with a Doctor of Medicine (MD) and from Harvard School of Public Health with a Master of Public Health (MPH). She has a busy gastroenterology practice and has been recognized with various awards including U.S. News and World Reports Top Doctor status. According to Dr. Nelson, about 1 percent of Americans have celiac disease. Among that 1 percent is Sarah Berghoff McClure, one of Dr. Nelsons patients. And while Dr. Nelson is never happy to tell her patients, You have celiac disease, she notes. A part of me is always relieved because I know the child is going to be all right. Celiac disease is one of the few diseases I treat that doesnt require any medication (and therefore no drug side effects) and is 100 percent treatable by diet. Carlyn and Sarah Berghoff McClure are thankful for Dr. Nelson and her role as the adviser and consultant for this cookbook.

Nancy Ross Ryan served as the writer for The Berghoff Family Cookbook and The Berghoff Caf Cookbook . She is the founder of Fresh Food Writing in Chicago, Illinois, and specializes in food writing and recipe development.

acknowledgments

To Sarah: Through your health challenge, we have created an opportunity for your voice to be heard around the world to calm, educate, and give hope to the newly diagnosed. How proud I am of how you have grown beyond your illness. I love you.

To my husband, Jim McClure, and my children Lindsey and Todd for tasting, retasting, and living supportively in a gluten-free household.

To Dr. Suzanne Nelson for taking such good care of Sarahthen and now. Youre the best!

To Betsy Hjelmgren, MS, RD, LD, CSP, for guiding Sarah through her new diet and making sure the recipes in the cookbook were gluten free.

To Wednesdays with Nancy Ryan: What a blessing it has been to play in your kitchen, listen to your wisdom, laugh about the failures, and celebrate the successes, especially nailing recipes on our first try. Thank you for your patience, knowledge, and get-it-done force.

To John Ryan, the master of gluten-free grocery shopping for recipe testing!

To Ashley Malmquist, who tested the recipes and was only stumped by rolling spring rolls.

To the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center, my gratitude for their support and my admiration for their ongoing research and dedication.

To my agent, Lisa Ekus, for our third time around: You roll with the punches and see me through thick and thin.

To my publisher, Andrews McMeel, and Kirsty Melville, for our third time around, and our talented editor there, Lane Butler, who took the manuscript and made it a booka thousand thanks!

Chapter 1

breakfast and bread

F or many teens, and certainly for Sarah, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. According to the current medical and nutritional research, breakfast is the most important meal of the day for us all. It recharges the brain and body, maintains good health, and helps avoid obesity. As adults, we need breakfast to make us more efficient during the day, but kids need breakfast even more, because their growing bodies and developing brains depend upon regular eating. So when you look at the appetizing list of baked-goods recipes in this chapter, remember that a balanced breakfast also includes dairy products or dairy alternatives, cereal, and protein, such as eggs. The has both bread (carbohydrates) and protein and needs only fruit for a completely balanced breakfast.

Many favorite breakfast foods rely on flour as an ingredient and baking as a technique. When it comes to gluten-free flours and baking, everything is different: the flour itself, the way doughs and batters are mixed, their consistencies, and their baking times. For all those reasons, it is not easy just to directly convert a recipe, one for one, for pancakes using wheat flour to one using gluten-free flour. The reason is simple: Wheat flour has glutenthe protein that traps gas (carbon dioxide) bubbles and allows the bread, biscuit, or pancake to rise with the aid of the steam created during bakingand leavening (yeast, baking soda, baking powder). When using gluten-free flours, the rising during baking must come from the steam and the leavening. There are no elastic gluten strands to capture and hold the gas.

Already prepared gluten-free flours, both single kinds and blends, are plentiful and available online. The recipes in this book were created for my own blend, ) in the mix. If using another flour blend, the results may vary slightly in the finished recipe. The ratio of xanthan gum to gluten-free flour in my blend is roughly 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum to 1 cup of flour.

All gluten-free batters are thick and do not pour easily. The dough for gluten-free bread is especially thick and sticky, and you cannot knead it. For that reason, a bread machine for baking gluten-free bread is a great investment in saving time and labor, and also money, because store-bought gluten-free breads can be expensive. You can, of course, still bake a great loaf of gluten-free bread in a bread loaf pan in the oven. When mixing gluten-free doughs and batters, a stand mixer does the best job. You can use a handheld mixer, and if the batter becomes so thick it begins to crawl up the beaters, simply scrape down the beaters and finish the mixing with a silicone spatula. If you are, as I once was, still wary of bread baking, then save the bread recipes and try them last.

It is entirely possible to bake fluffy, tender, delicious gluten-free bread, corn bread, pancakes, biscuits, coffee cake, muffins, and moreall the breakfast treats and sweets in this chapter. All of them can be frozen, which is a great time-saver for the cook and grab-and-go convenience for the teen and other family members.

gluten-free all-purpose flour

MAKES 12 CUPS

There are several all-purpose gluten-free flours on the market, some moderately priced, others costing $19 for 3 pounds. My blend is easy to mix, the ingredients are available at large supermarkets or online, and it is the only flour used in this cookbook. Though the final results may vary somewhat, you may substitute your favorite gluten-free flour as long as there is about 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum to 1 cup of flour. All you need to mix and store my flour blend is a large whisk and a 4-quart plastic food storage container with a tight-fitting lid. One batch of flour lasts one month at room temperature and may be frozen. White sorghum or quinoa flour provides protein; the sorghum is less expensive than quinoa. Try both and see which you prefer. Note that potato starch and potato flour are not the same; however, tapioca starch and tapioca flour, while differently labeled, are the same.