Given the length of this section, feel free to skip ahead to the specific information that you may require.

Gluten-free Baking is Easy with these Eleven Secrets!
How I started baking gluten-free
Before you start: Know Gluten and Understand What It Does!
A Scientific Approch to Gluten-free Baking?

1. Don’t pressure yourself when you first bake gluten-free
2. Know your Gluten-free Baking Ingredients
3. Replace gluten in gluten-free doughs and batters. Channel It.
4. Add more liquid to your gluten-free batters and doughs
5. Know how to convert glutinous recipes to gluten-free
6. Creating Humidity in Gluten-free Batters and why it matters
7. Know gluten-free flour mixes and their use
8. Tame the diva: How to Master Gluten-free Doughs and Batters Without Crying
9. Be courageous: try new gluten-free recipes!
10. Never give up: anyone can bake gluten-free!
11. Don’t compare yourself to other gluten-free bakers!

Gluten-free Baking is Easy with these Eleven Secrets!

The idea of baking gluten-free can be overwhelming at first. You are dealing with all new ingredients, some with names so strange that you don’t even know how to pronounce them – and then you realize the dough and batter texture is way different than what you are used to. But fret not: here they are: my eleven gluten-free baking secrets! I stumbled upon them by coincidence or through research or because experts in gluten-free baking told me at their own free will or after I pestered them with questions.09 GF Baking

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How I started baking gluten-free

Flashback: in April 2013, when I began my gluten-free experiments, I simply started baking, just like always. Of course, I ran into the odd obstacle or two, but this did not keep me from continuing with my efforts. While my baking results were always somewhat okay and I almost never had to throw anything away, I did find that learning a bit of a technique and – even more important – knowing and embracing certain aspects of gluten-free doughs and batters made my life in the kitchen easier. I started watching others bake and taking notes. Sometimes, I found, the only thing necessary was to accept that gluten-free baked goods rank somewhere on their own shelf (not only to avoid contamination) and to love them for their character. The taste, texture and appearance of my gluten-free baked goods improved greatly once I had understood this. And don’t get me wrong: it’s not about lowering your standards, but about having a deeper understanding of the essence of things that are gluten-free. So let’s get started! (And yes, this is a long, long read, but I believe it’s really worth it. I also suggest reading all sections, because all of them are relevant and equally useful)

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Before you start: Know Gluten and Understand What It Does!

The first step to knowing gluten-free baking is to know what gluten is and what it does. And how gluten-free baked goods differ from the evil glutinous things we used to eat.

Gluten is a protein contained in grains such as wheat or barley. Gluten has binding qualities. Gluten-free flours (such as those obtained from rice and potato) lack this binding element. When you take gluten away, you also lose the ability to bind liquids in batters and doughs. This is why gluten-free batters are so sticky and unmanageable. They may make you want to cry the first time you handle them! Gluten-free baked good require more liquid than gluten-containing recipes, especially for those that call for a higher portion of dry ingredients. For example, cookies or tartelette crusts can turn out so crumbly that they fall apart as soon as you try to remove them from their tin if you don’t add sufficient fat and eggs to a de-glutenized version. The other obstacle is that if you end up using different universal gluten-free flour mixes, you may still need to vary your liquids, because some gluten-free flours (e.g. potato) absorb more liquid than others (e.g. teff).

The lack of binding qualities also makes gluten-free baked goods age seven times faster than their glutinous counter parts. They turn hard as a brick or fall apart into a pile of crumbles if you don’t eat or freeze them within a reasonable amount of time. For me a reasonable amount of time is over the moment the baked good is cold.

Gluten also helps dough rise and plays a key part in creating large bubbles of air in baked goods (e.g. baguette or other sour dough bread) and also makes bread fluffy in addition to maintaining a healthy moist atmosphere. This is another factor to consider when starting out with gluten-free baking: expect different results from gluten-free doughs.

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A Scientific Approch to Gluten-free Baking?

Some people (not me!) believe all cooking and baking boils down to is basic science. That there are laws to adhere to and that certain environmental factors will guarantee certain results. While I would never agree to such a statement, I do believe that a lot of your success in the kitchen depends on using the right technique. This means: give your dough, batter and crust what they love.

So, without further ado, from my flour-covered hands to yours, these are my suggestions toward success in the gluten-free baking experience!

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  1. Don’t pressure yourself when you first bake gluten-free

If you’re just starting out with gluten-free baking, it’s ok to draw on ready-made gluten-free flour mixes or to buy a ready-to-go bread-mix out of a box to which you just add water and oil. Give yourself a break and start off easy. There’s nothing wrong in doing so!

Experiencing success in the early stages of your gluten-free life is key, so getting a feeling for what gluten-free dough feels like by sticking to a fool-proof pre-made product is totally fine during the first few months (or forever). After all: you’re still learning the do’s and don’t’s of gluten-free life overall – and probably nursing your health, too!

Feed yourself well and be happy. Take the easy way out for now and stay adventurous. No one will judge you! Start baking at your own pace and switch to baking from scratch when you think you’re ready!

You may be busy with having to defend your new situation to your surroundings (there will be a lot of explaining and questions) and experiencing small moments of success is really important. Don’t give in to the pressure of having to know everything all at once, because you can’t. It’s going to be trial and error for the time being and you’ll at least need to try out a few recipes before you can call yourself an expert in gluten-free baking. There’s no need to become an expert overnight. I didn’t.

Plus: a lot of work went into that brownie or bread-mix in a box on the side of the manufacturer and if baking out of boxes will help you stay gluten-free, then by all means: do it!

And yes, you can probably eat something with less chemicals, carbs or sugar: but you’re not going to be eating baked goods that came from boxes forever (and even if you do: probably still better than eating gluten if you are eating gluten-free due to celiac disease!) and you’ll probably be spending more time in the kitchen than the average person anyway. So don’t feel bad for starting out easy in order to get acquainted with the matter, we all have to start somewhere!

If you are in Germany, I recommend using mixes by Bauckhof. They are tasty, easily veganized and also organic. I particularly love their gluten-free dark bread mix, but their gluten-free white bread mix is also quite wonderful. I’m not a fan of the gluten-free oat-bread, but then again, I’ve not had an oat-based bread yet that I have loved.

If you are feeling adventurous and want to try an easy gluten-free bread recipe, I suggest doing my no-knead bread!

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  1. Know your Gluten-free Baking Ingredients

There are a myriad of gluten-free flours. And all have different tastes and textures. There’s rice, potato, corn, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, kidney-bean and lentil flour? WHAT? You will have to use several different gluten-free flours in combination in order to get good results. Your gluten-free baked goods will be a bust, if you don’t know this. Please don’t try to bake something out of just rice or teff flour, unless you are attempting to bake a brick, then don’t let me stop you!

Rely on gluten-free mixes rather than single gluten-free flours

Also, as opposed to using just one type of flour like you did back in the gluten-filled days, get ready to bake with several different flours and starches all the time. Storing more than just one type of flour in your kitchen is a good idea.

05 GF BakingI always have several types of flour mixes in my kitchen cabinet, because I like using them for different things. In addition, I always have sorghum grains and basmati and brown rice available so that I can run them through my mill spontaneously. I keep potato flour and corn starch ready to add to cake or waffle batters or even bread, as they contribute to a soft and fluffy result.

Yeast has rules and boundaries

Get acquainted with yeast. Find out that it dies if you overheat the liquid that you dissolve it in. Learn that it does not like direct contact with salt (meaning that you should knead your bread dough, hold a little bit of liquid back in which you can dissolve the salt, then add this to the batter to overcome this problem!). Study that it loves sugar and your dough will rise faster, if you add a small amount of sugar to your yeast whilst dissolving it. Learn that yeast also loves vinegar or lemon zest – and will rise faster as a consequence.

My best advice for gluten-free yeast-based doughs is to use soda water rather than tap water. This creates more bubbles and is something we strive to have more of in our end-result. I find it makes a great difference in rising, but no difference in taste, yay!

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  1. Replace gluten in gluten-free doughs and batters. Channel It.

03 GF BakingGluten is gone. Forever. But don’t panic. Learn to work without it. Millions of people have done it before me. I have done it. And so can you!

My golden rules for substituting gluten are:

a. Mix different gluten-free flours (e.g. rice, potato, corn and sorghum).

Even dare to mix several gluten-free flour mixes. The results are amazing!

b. Meet the gluten-free agents: Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum, Arrowroot Flour and Carob Flour

Sometimes you really don’t know what you had until it’s gone. In this case: gluten. Who’d have expected that it’s what makes baked goods flexible and fluffy and keeps buns, pizza doughs and other delicious things in shape? I didn’t! Gluten binds water and helps glutinous cakes, waffles and hamburger buns stay fresh and edible for days. And now, you have to do without it. But no worries, life is still good, meet the gluten-free agents!

They’re called Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum, Arrowroot Flour and Carob Flour. They may not be gluten, but they help feeling a little less blue about missing it. These agents all have water-binding abilities and thus contribute to a more manageable dough, that will not break apart or grow a long, white beard after you bring it out of the oven. (These guys are amazing, but should be used with caution and under different circumstances in cooked batters, e.g. Spätzle, where I find you should ommit them all together, because they completely change the character of your culinary quest and create more frustration than anything)

These guys replace gluten in the sense that they have amazing binding qualities (e.g. the food industry uses these in yoghurts and sweets to create a thick, rich texture in an effort to use more water and less of a more expensive ingredient) and help your dough be more manageable. This is handy, when you form things such as buns or breads. Also, the gluten-free agents keep your baked goods hydrated later on once they are ready (albeit freezing them and defrosting later is probably still a good idea). When I went gluten-free, I bought all of these. I added an equal amount of each to a small Tupperware, closed the lid, gave it a good shake. I still use this conglomerate as a gluten substitute in anything baked. Some people also use ground phyllisium husks. I haven’t gotten around to purchasing these, but they are also great binders of liquid and can be used instead of the others (e.g. some people develop a lot of gas from Xanthan Gum).

Another way of binding your dough is to use egg whites, and in the US-based gluten-free literature I’ve come by, I’ve found people using ridiculous amounts of eggs to substitute gluten. They even put egg-whites into bread dough. As a European, this is just not acceptable to me. Egg does not belong in bread (unless we are talking about sweet bread, which is something entirely different all together). Period.

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4. Add more liquid to your gluten-free batters and doughs

Gluten-free doughs will be more liquid than glutinous doughs. It doesn’t matter whether we speak about cookies, bread or crusts: you will learn how to handle more fragile, moist dough in favour of a delicious result.

Fat, sugar and milk products, e.g. quark or yoghurt contribute to a fluffy end result in gluten-free baked goods and I encourage you to put them in your recipes. Gluten-free manufacturers regardless of country of origin, will tell you that adding fat and sugar is one way to substitute gluten in baked goods. If you compare the value in calories in gluten-free and glutinous baked goods, you will often find that the sugar and fat content in gluten-free goods is outrageously high. (When shopping for a gluten-free flour mix, pay attention to the ingredients: they often contain sugar, either easily identifiable as “sugar” or under hidden names such as “dextrose” – but no worries, there are also plents of gluten-free flour mixes that are sugar-free!) Well, now you know why! Of course, these strategies are somewhat legitimate and you can put them to use in your own kitchen – using common sense and a healthy dosage of these high-energy ingredients. They make sense in moments when you are using an original gluten-holding recipe and want to transfer it to your gluten-free kitchen. But you will probably never add as much fat, egg or sugar to your recipes as the industry would. Your health will thank you!

01 GF Baking 101My favorite thing to add, for fluffiness, if I can, is yoghurt, which I have drained of its liquid. (This takes a few hours using a bowl, a kitchen towel and a strainer, but it’s worth it!) Baked goods become incredibly fluffy and springy with this secret ingredient. If you want to try this method, I suggest making my bagels.

I find that the answer is not adding these ingredients to everything that comes out of my oven, but to use a bit of these ingredients effectively and within reason, when you feel it is apt and need to boost texture and/or taste.

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5. Know how to convert glutinous recipes to gluten-free

Usually, when you convert from glutinous to gluten-free, you can just substitute the original flour with a gluten-free version. But this only works if you have more liquid ingredients than dry ingredients. Whenever a recipe calls for more dry ingredients than liquid ingredients you really need to watch out and consider the following advice during the gluten-free recalibration phase.

Add more egg (white) or butter

If you have more dry ingredients than wet ingredients, add more liquid to the gluten-free dough. This means: add an extra egg or use larger eggs, add more butter, add more milk or water and don’t add more flour. Adding large amounts of water or milk to your batter or dough instead of eggs or fat is not going to get you very far, but it is very smart to think this way anyway, because any more liquid that you add is good for your batter. This advice applies particularly to cookies, crusts and other doughs that tend to be crunchy after they are baked. If you have a choice between more egg, more butter and more milk or water, always choose to add more egg.

More liquid is usually called for in anythingcrumbly, e.g. cookies or pie bases and also batters such as bundt cakes. I suggest adding an additional egg or two as well as a tablespoon or more butter or oil. The alternative is to reduce the dry ingredients (e.g. adding 50g less flour) and upping the relation of liquid-to-dry in this manner and ending up with a slightly smaller baked good. Since we live in a world full of food, I find this solution absolutely acceptable!

If you don’t adhere to this advice, you can still produce delicious results, chances are though, that your crust or cookie will fall into dust if you look at it too hard or if it is sitting around for more than a few hours. Egg is an amazing binder and I love using it in combination with the gluten-free agents.

Never add more sugar when converting a glutinous recipe to a gluten-free version!

I don’t, however, suggest adding any more sugar than a recipe calls for. There is no benefit in this (other than perhaps adding a dash to get your yeast fired up, but that’s a chapter all to its own, and we’ve already covered it above). I strongly suggest you not imitate gluten-free manufacturers in this aspect, because there’s just no benefit of any kind in doing so.

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6. Creating Humidity in Gluten-free Batters and why it matters

Gluten-free flours love heat and humidity. So, aside from creating a fairly moist dough or batter, I suggest adding steam to the rising and baking process. Immerse a kitchen towel in hot water, wring it out, and place it over the bowl in which your yeast-based dough is rising. If necessary, repeat this procedure after an hour. Let your dough rise in a warm place, e.g. in the sun (to get it started) or near a heater. Place a bowl full of water onto the bottom of your oven for the entire duration of your baking session or brush your bread or buns with water throughout the baking process.

Place a small oven-proof bowl full of water on the bottom of your oven (prior to turning it on) so that the steam can assist your baked good in rising. Replenish the water supply, if necessary.04 GF BakingThere is also the trick of sprinkling water onto your baked good. Some use salty water. Others rub their baked good in oil or butter, in order to give it a crispier, crunchier crust. I’ve done all of these, and find that doing them in combination is best. This means that every bread I make has been rubbed in either salt water or oil and that I always, always, always place an oven-proof container full of water onto the bottom of my oven (except for maybe pizza, where I want a crispy crust).

Like I just said, gluten-free baked goods love heat and they love humidity. So, of course, also consider current weather conditions when baking. You may find that adding more liquid is necessary on some days and that you can get away with less on others. This knowledge applies to all baked goods though, regardless of whether they contain gluten or not. And I cannot stress enough: different gluten-free flours will absorb liquid differently, so always keep in mind that when in doubt it is better to have a slightly more liquid, slightly more difficult to hand batter than one that is firm and easy to handle.

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7. Know gluten-free flour mixes and their use

It’s been almost three years and I’m slowly starting to feel confident enough to mix my own flour. In the beginning, I only used different universal gluten-free flour mixes.

I found that using one half a gluten-free flour mix and another half of self-ground flours (including enough starches in the mix) renders pretty good results. It used to be just one fifth of the total flour mass, back when I first purchased my mill. Eventually, you’ll probably also start mixing different gluten-free flours and flour mixes with one another. It’s magic!08 gf bakingSo, what are my favourite flour-mixes?

I use Schaer Farine as my basic flour for everything. It’s Schaer’s cheapest flour and I only began using it after I met someone who said she achieves excellent results with it and doesn’t bother to spend more money on other mixes by Schaer (the largest gluten-free manufacturer in the world). The intended use for Schaer Farine is pasta dough, crepes and for binding sauces. And yes, on its own, Schaer Farine is a bit bland, but once you add a bit of sorghum flour and a bit of corn or potato starch, it’s a great base for breads and cakes!

I have a tiny kitchen and very limited storage space, so I’m grateful for having only a few standard flours. I won’t lie, my kitchen is overflowing with stuff and a tumbling jar of peanut butter recently gave me a nosebleed, but most of the stuff in my cupboards is not flour.

Schaer has flour-mixes specifically for bread, for cakes and cookies – and dark flour-mixes, but I never buy any of them, except for their Food Service Mix and Mix It! mixes, which are also multi-purpose and which I think are also a great, albeit more expensive, alternative to Farine (they are ground much finer). Mix it! (formerly known as Glutano’s all-purpose flour mix) was my first-ever gluten-free flour. I didn’t enjoy the consistency of the doughs and batters from this flour at all, because it was very, very sticky and I always ended up having to scrape it off my fingers with a spatula, but I found the baked results were always really good (in terms of fluffiness and moisture), so I can also recommend this flour, because it has a higher starch-level than Farine. (Unfortunately, it also has sugar, but so does Farine.)

I love Harina de Reposteria manufactured by AdPan in Spain. I use this flour to make anything sweet-ish and to give it a spongier texture, e.g. cakes, ice-cream cones and pancakes or galettes. It does not (I repeat: DOES NOT!) work for baked goods that are meant to be salty (e.g. gluten-free pizza or cheese scones are a yuck-fest when made from it), because the mix in itself contains sugar.

I order this mix online from Glutyfreeshop, located here in Cologne, albeit on the “wrong” side of the Rhine river. I find that Harina de Reposteria doesn’t work well on its own (it’s too dry and too fluffy), but that it goes incredibly well when mixed with Schaer Farine or Dove’s Farm plain or self-rising gluten-free flour. Whatever Schaer Farine lacks in fluffiness, Harina de Reposteria can compensate. I should warn you though: if you are someone who doesn’t want to buy products with a long list of ingredients and who is keen on stay away from additives: this flour is not for you!

AdPan also manufactures a bread-mix, Harina de Panadera. This is also not a product for those who don’t like a long list of ingredients. I only ever put a tablespoon or two into my bread dough though. The additives in there make gluten-free bread dough knead-able (without having to get into the batter up to your elbows) and more manageable. It also helps create larger “bubbles” in the final product, which I like every once in a while.

I have also tried the (sugar-free) Hammermühle’s Gluten-free Light Mix (Hammermühle Hell) and their cake flour. I thought their cake flour was too sweet (no wonder, the first ingredient listed is sugar), but can recommend their Light Mix instead of Schaer’s Mix It or Schaer Farine.

As far as plain gluten-free flours go, I love to add teff flour for bread, using only buckwheat flour and a little gluten-fee flour mix for galettes and bread and try to stay away from the millet and quinoa in big quantities, because I feel it adds too much of an after-taste, which some people would identify as “gluten-free”. I love rice and sorghum flour as well as corn and potato starch, particularly for baguette and sweet yeast-based doughs. I don’t work with oat flour a lot, but I like its rustic character and will add it to bread doughs every once in a while. I’m yet to decide whether I like tapioca starch, not to be confused with sour cassava starch (which is fermented and which will add a sour taste to your dough, typical for Brazilian Cheese Balls). Overall, I’m a big fan of mixing as many flours and flour-mixes with each other as possible and I suggest you do this too. Mixing several flours will also contribute toward a nice colour of your baked good – I find that using a flour such as Farine on its own renders rather pale results, which are more off-putting than appetizing in my humble opinion.

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8. Tame the diva: How to Master Gluten-free Doughs and Batters Without Crying

Gluten-free flours can be very unpleasant. They are sticky, and will give you a hard time. I sort of cried, when I kneaded my first gluten-free pizza dough. It came from a box. It had been a long day just a few weeks after my diagnosis. It was nine thirty in the evening on a Saturday. We were home with my mother, who was visiting. We had just returned home from recuperating my cell phone. I had lost it the previous day, and already reported it stolen. A little boy and his grandmother had found it and only informed me that day. Had it not been for this amazing experience, which confirmed my faith in humanity (seeing the boy’s eyes light up when I gave him his reward may have had something to do with it) earlier that day, I think I would have had a bit of breakdown. I was hungry, and the pizza dough was so sticky and wouldn’t distribute evenly on the baking parchment. It took my mom and me lots of nerve and cooperation and a ton of water, before something remotely resembling pizza had been placed into the oven.09 Gluten Free Challah klI wish I had known then, what I only learnt about half a year later: don’t put all the flour into your dough. And don’t put more flour into your dough than the recipe specifies. NEVER! Considering how liquid and beasty gluten-free doughs are, it’s tempting to add more dry ingredients, but please don’t.

What you should do instead is to set about two tablespoons of flour aside. Then, once you are ready to form whatever it is you want to make out of the dough, sprinkle some of it on the batter. Don’t use all of the flour set aside at once, e.g. if you are making buns. Then, wash your hands, dry them well and proceed to form your pizza dough, your buns or your challah bread. This way, you have flour to shape your baked good, but won’t add so much flour into your end product, which doesn’t belong in there in the first place. This trick has saved me over and over again. It works every time and I no longer end up putting so much flour into my doughs that the end result is a dry, hard brick. Yes, you can run into the situation that your batter is too liquid, and that this trick won’t work, but then this may be due to the humidity in the atmosphere that day or because the combination of flours you are using isn’t absorbing the liquids as much as in the original recipe.

Also, there is no gluten to develop in your dough, soooo don’t overknead it. It’s just more work than you want to go through. You can stop once your batter or dough has absorbed all ingredients and no lumps are left!

Tools to Master Gluten-free Doughs: Meet the Bowl Scraper

You can also buy spatulas or bowl scrapers: the thick kind that you can just take into your hand and use it to cut your dough into pieces instead of using your hands. I hardly ever do this, but it saves you from having to wash your hands over and over again. I hardly ever use these and always forget that I have these tools until it is too late, but I guess this is a question of styles and perhaps some of you will find this advice helpful.Image9

I also suggest that you line your baking tins with baking parchment. It’s much better. Trust me. You can also use silicone baking sheets, if you like.

For rolling out gluten-free cookie dough (or other thin doughs, such as required for a Bolivian Cheese Roll), I suggest substituting ground nuts for some of the flour. This makes a more firm dough, which is easier to handle. In addition, I suggest cutting off a large piece of plastic wrap, spreading it on your kitchen counter and sprinkling it with flour (that you have taken away from the original dry ingredients the recipe called for and not added to the dough initially). Remove a piece of dough (cooling it is always better) and place it in the lower half of your flour-covered plastic-wrap. Cover the dough with the other half of the plastic wrap and roll out using a rolling pin. You can then cut out the cookies using a cookie cutter, and help their removal from the plastic foil by pushing the cookie up from below the lower portion of the plastic wrap with one hand, while you remove it gently from above with your second hand.

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 9. Be courageous: try new gluten-free recipes!

Don’t be afraid of trying something new. First time I boiled my own gluten-free bagels in hot water? My heart was beating rather fast and I was scared that I would burn myself. But now, I do it all the time. It’s no big deal. I don’t know what all the fuss is all about!

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10. Never give up: anyone can bake gluten-free!

It’s probably going to take you several attempts before you make your first gluten-free loaf of bread that you will love with all your heart and want to make again and again. And that’s ok. You’re still getting acquainted with the different ingredients, the different tastes of the different flours and learning how to handle gluten-free cookie dough and gluten-free batter in general. You’re bound to try some recipes that you won’t like. However, you’re also bound to find recipes that will blow your mind. So keep on going, keep on cooking and baking. Keep on talking to others, ask them questions and to share their best recipes and techniques with you. Ask them to come over and bake with you or whether you can sit in on them baking. I assure you that people will share with you, if you ask. In my entire career as a home cook striving for perfection, I’ve ran into exactly one situation where someone did not want to share their recipe and/or strategy with me. It was the recipe for a non-bake cheesecake that this person got from the back of a Philadelphia cream cheese or gelatin package. Apparently her entire reputation as a baker depended on this recipe and me not making a tastier version of it. She never gave it to me and said that she couldn’t, sorry! I OF COURSE found out how to make this cake anyway and got over the whole thing (cake included, it wasn’t that great) pretty quickly. If I like something, even at a restaurant, I will make a point to inquire with the chef. I’ve found that professional chefs in particular are always willing to dish on their secret ingredient, technique or even point you to their entire recipe. Of course, it helps if you are nice! 🙂

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11. Don’t compare yourself to other gluten-free bakers

Yes, whatever you bake at home, isn’t going to be comparable to something you buy at the supermarket. But do you want it to be? I doubt it. At least my prime motivation for baking and cooking at home is that I can usually achieve a better and tastier result than I would ever be able to buy ready-made from a supermarket shelf. Industrial production differs greatly from how you handle ingredients at home (I’ve explained lots about this the sections above), different rules apply (for one, you’re not going to need things to be durable for months!) and you’ll probably never use as much fat and sugar as they do. Keep in mind that this is a good thing!

Also: don’t compare homemade baked goods to industrially manufactured products

And yes, home-baked bread, buns and anything is going to be smaller and more compact at the equal weight of something industrially produced (particularly when it contains gluten). That’s because you’re not using nearly as many chemicals and other artificial stuff and this is, also, pretty great! Don’t compare your gluten-free goods to the glutinous things you used to eat, but focus on developing a new, acquired taste. There is no happiness to be found in wishing for things you can’t have ever again, but, you can certainly extract a lot of joy from a fresh loaf of bread that you made yourself today! From scratch! SconesYou will also find that home-baked goods will fill you up quicker and satisfy your hunger longer than the store-bought kind – and probably at the cost of less calories. If that’s not an argument to learn how to bake at home, then I don’t know what is!

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I hope you find all of these suggestions useful! If you run into any issues, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Also, if you have questions or would like me to cover other topics related to gluten-free baking that you feel are still missing, I’ll gladly answer them – just get in touch via the comments section below or send me a message through the contact form.

Happy baking! 🙂

Love & Light,

Mari