First off, I should start this by saying that I am NOT an expert gluten-free baker or chef. I've been playing around with it for the past few years, but it hasn't had to become a full-on lifestyle choice yet (I still use a fair amount of spelt). There are many, many food blogs out there that give much more thorough advice on how to manage a gluten-free lifestyle. And for those of you who are gluten-free but aren't vegan, including eggs in your baking will make life a lot easier. However, for anyone interested in gluten-free and vegan baking (on a student budget) for beginners, or just wants to read about my own baking experiments, read on.
There are a lot of flour alternatives available for gluten-free baking. As I mentioned in my last post, common flours include rice, buckwheat, soy, sorghum*, soy, potato, and tapioca. Cornmeal is also commonly used. Almost all recipes call for a mixture of the various flours, to capitalize on their different properties and try to come up with the best substitute for wheat. However, most gluten-free flours are quite pricey (especially compared to wheat flour), and so investing in all the different flours needed for each individual recipe can get very expensive very fast.
*What is sorghum, you ask? I did too, after reading it in a bunch of different recipes. Quick googling suggests it's a cereal crop from Africa that in North America is mostly used for feed for livestock, but is developing new popularity as a gluten-free grain and starch.
I should add that several companies make blends of gluten-free flours that they advertise can be substituted directly into any baking recipe in place of wheat flour. I have never tried any of these blends, so I can't speak to their usefulness. Some mix of stubbornness, curiosity and thoroughness means that I like to have full control of what I'm adding to my food, just like I prefer to make things from scratch, and I refuse to use electric beaters or mixers. (This is easier now that I can't eat eggs or whipped cream anyway, but I used to beat eggs by hand just for fun). But these flours are available, and are an easy starting point for gluten-free baking.
Almost all of my gluten-free baking experience has been based around rice flour. Why, you ask? For a very pedestrian reason, really: the first gluten-free recipe I made called for rice flour, and my mom happened to have some hanging out in her cupboard that she was willing to give me, so it was just easiest. And then, since I had rice flour in stock, I specifically searched for future recipes that used rice flour so I didn't have to buy more ingredients. But there are other reasons to recommend rice flour. For one, it tends to be quite affordable and relatively easy to find, because it's a common ingredient in a lot of East and South Asian cooking. It's sold in the health food sections of most grocery stores, but can be found cheaper in the bulk food sections of most Asian grocery stores. Also, like with wheat flour, there are white and brown alternatives (made from white and brown rice, respectively), which can be mixed rather how white & whole wheat flour can be combined in recipes. However, pure rice flour doesn't necessarily give very good results in cakes. Rice flour is very grainy in texture, as I discovered when I first made a rice flour cake. (DO NOT judge the quality of a rice flour-based recipe by how the batter tastes; a lot of the grittiness does bake off). Mixing with other flours helps reduce this problem (but does require buying those other flours).
So once we have a flour, we need a binding agent (which is one of gluten's major purposes in baking) One of the very commonly-used alternatives in gluten-free baking is xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is a chemical I first ran into when I started reading ingredient labels: it's often the last ingredient listed in a number of foods. It's used to stabilize emulsions, thicken liquids and provide a creamy texture to different food products. A very, very small amount of xanthan gum goes a long way (hence why it's almost always last on ingredient labels). It's typically quite expensive (~$10 for a small bag), but a given recipe generally calls for 1/4 - 1/2 tsp, so it lasts forever. Most (though not all) gluten-free recipes call for xanthan gum in addition to whichever mix of flours is being used.
For cooking, rather than baking, purposes, different flours tend to prove prove more useful. I've heard that sweet rice (i.e. glutinous rice, or mochi) flour is the best flour substitute to use when making a roux to thicken sauces. My one test of this flour worked fantastically - my roux thickened more slowly that I've seen in the past with wheat flour, but I don't think I cooked it long enough before adding the milk; and when it did thicken, it thickened beautifully. I haven't tried with plain rice flour yet to prove if the investment in glutinous rice flour is really worthwhile (although I payed something like $2 for a bag, so it was hardly expensive). Chickpea flour is really useful for a lot of savoury batters (such as for fish-and-chips, or for samosa dough). Also, for recipes involving soy sauce, soy sauces marketed in North America as "tamari sauce" are more likely to be gluten-free (but check the ingredients label just in case!)
Finally, I feel like I should follow this rather technical intro to gluten-free baking with the easiest strategy I've found to date. (I cannot take credit for this idea; good friends used this approach to make my birthday cake last year! I was very touched). For those of you who don't need to go gluten-free long-term, but need a gluten-free dessert item for some upcoming function; or are just in too much of a hurry to experiment with gluten-free recipes (because let's be honest, gluten-free baking is rarely a sure thing), I present the gluten-free fail safe: cake mix! Glutino-brand produces boxed cake mixes for both vanilla and chocolate cakes. (I've found the mix at specialty stores like Capers, and also, surprisingly, at SuperStore; to my knowledge none of the other regular supermarkets in Vancouver carry it). The cake mix does contain sugar, so it's not much help when baking for people with an intolerance to processed sweeteners. But the mix itself does not contain any animal products; eggs & milk are added by the baker, and so the cakes can be easily veganized! I recommend the flax seed &; water substitute for the eggs. When made as a cake, it tends to be a bit flat (which is a common problem with gluten-free baked goods), but the mix does make very good cupcakes. (Making two cakes and layering them would also work very well, but the mix is quite pricey so that becomes a bit of an investment). As with all cake mixes, playing around with flavouring agents is where one gets to be creative - lemon juice, vanilla and/or almond extract, citrus zest, and tasty icings are all ways of dressing up a cake-in-a-box. (Vegan chocolate chips, poppy seeds, and pretty much any other add-in you want could be added too; some ways a standard base leaves the most room for creativity after the fact).
Happy baking!
No comments:
Post a Comment