Bruce-Gardyne - Genius gluten-free cookbook

Lifes too short for gluten-free food to be dull. So here are lots of tasty ideas to spice it up.

Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne, chef and founder of Genius Gluten-Free, shows you that a world of wonderful flavours awaits you.

ON THE MENU ARE:

• Tasty tarts and pies, soups and salads, and pasta and pizzas
• Breakfast treats like American Pancakes and French Toast
• Nutritious family favourites from Chicken Pie to Lasagne and Savoury Crpes
• Inspiring ideas for entertaining, including Cheese and Rosemary Sables and Tarte Tatin

I dedicate the Genius Gluten-Free Cookbook to each and every member of Team Genius, all of whom created the unique and impressive business Genius is today.

In 2005 my son was diagnosed with an intolerance to gluten, and we were advised to remove gluten from his diet permanently, presenting us with a challenge to continue eating normally as a family. With a scientific background and a passion for food, having trained and taught at Leiths School of Food and Wine and as the author of How to Cook for Food Allergies, I decided to take on the challenge of creating a wholesome, soft and tasty gluten-free loaf of bread. After a lot of hard work trying to understand the complexities of baking bread without gluten (breaking two ovens in the process), I finally had a breakthrough and in 2009 founded Genius Gluten Free with the launch of the first fresh and tasty brown and white gluten-free bread on the market.

I have made it my mission to discover, use and enjoy the wealth of gluten-free ingredients available and The Genius Gluten-Free Cookbook demonstrates how varied and exciting gluten-free food can be. Whether you have to or choose to live permanently without gluten or simply wish to reduce the amount of gluten in your diet, there is no reason to feel that you are making a sacrifice. This will become clear when you start to make your way through the 120 gluten-free recipes here, covering brunch to party food and inspired by dishes from around the world.

In these pages I explain what gluten is, its role in many of our most commonly eaten foods and why people choose to live without it. I describe how to deal with some of the common challenges associated with gluten-free cooking and the many wonderful and nutritious alternatives that can be used.

I hope this book will inspire you to fill your kitchen cupboards with the wealth of gluten-free flours such as potato flour, wholegrains such as buckwheat and quinoa, pulses including beans and lentils, and ready-made gluten-free staples such as pasta, noodles, breakfast cereals, bakery products and ready-made pastries. The good news is that all these ingredients are available in most supermarkets. Discover the tastes and textures of ingredients you may otherwise never have considered trying. This book dispels the myth that gluten-free cooking is complicated and unpredictable, with a comprehensive section on the many gluten-free ingredients available, their traditional culinary uses and what other dishes they will enhance.

Gluten-free baking and making puddings can cause frustration unless you know how. I have extensively tried and tested the blends of ingredients in the recipes to ensure light, crisp pastry and biscuits and airy, soft cakes. With an understanding of how to blend gluten-free dry ingredients to imitate the behaviour of wheat or other gluten-rich ingredients and tips to help you along, you will be amazed at what you are able to create.

Celebrate the opportunity to live more healthily, cooking from scratch on a more regular basis. This can sometimes be daunting, so cooking techniques are also included throughout the book. Treat your gluten-free diet as an adventure. It is all too easy to stick to the same old wheat-based staples for breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks in between.

My greatest wish is that you enjoy making the recipes in this book over and over again because you know they work and because everybody you serve them to really enjoys them. Cooking without gluten does not have to be hard; in fact I have made the job easier for you by writing this book. Join me in spurring people on to look beyond their bag of self-raising flour, wheat bread, and pasta and join in the gluten-free revolution!

Wheat, barley, rye and oats are the most common wholegrain crops grown in the Western world because they grow readily in cold and temperate climates and are extremely nutritious.

WHAT IS GLUTEN?

Gluten is a protein that is found in the cereals wheat, barley, rye and oats. The gluten contained in the grains makes them extremely versatile. When the flour of these grains is mixed with water or other liquids, the gluten becomes elastic and forms a stretchy, gluey and kneadable dough that binds mixtures together and creates the open, bubbly structure of bread, the delicate layers in croissants and puff pastry, the light and airy fine crumb in cakes and crisp, shortcrust pastry and biscuits.

Wheat is a key element of the Western diet. This means that gluten is present in many of our common foods, including bread, pasta, pizza, cakes, biscuits, pastry items (pies, tarts) and breakfast cereals.

It can also be found in food we may not expect, such as burgers and sausages, because breadcrumbs or rusk (crushed wheat-flour and water biscuit) are widely used to bulk out the meat. Flour is often added to ready meals, soups and sauces to thicken them.

Barley is prevalent in many of our foodstuffs, such as malt vinegar, food colouring and beer, while rye is added to many cereals.

WHAT DOES GLUTEN-FREE MEAN?

There are many foods that are naturally free from the protein gluten. These include, meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, most dairy products, rice, potatoes, some grains (including quinoa, millet, corn and polenta) and pulses (lentils, peas, beans). The designation gluten-free is given to foods that contain less than 20 parts per million (20ppm) gluten protein, which is considered a safe level even for people who have a very high sensitivity to gluten. Any product containing wheat or a wheat derivative (e.g. flour, durum, rusk, spelt) will contain gluten. The exception to this is a gluten-free wheat starch called Codex wheat starch, which is processed to reduce the level of gluten to below the 20 ppm standard. It is used as a substitute product for wheat flour, to improve the quality and texture of baked gluten-free products such as bread. Although Codex wheat starch contains safe levels of gluten, many people with coeliac disease or gluten sensitivity (see ) avoid buying any product with wheat listed on the label, and many gluten-free manufacturers choose not to use it due to the mixed messages this ingredient generates.

It is important to note that wheat-free is not the same thing as gluten-free. This is because the food product may be made with other elements that contain gluten (e.g. barley, rye) or may have been harvested or prepared with the same equipment used for processing gluten-rich foods, causing cross contamination.

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE AFFECTED BY GLUTEN?

There are several ways people can be affected when they eat foods containing gluten.