Adventures in Gluten-Free Land

Despite my overall feelings about the importance of tolerance in the world, my Mr. recently helped me realize that I may be a little intolerant towards gluten. Some might say, "oh, that's cool, you can just go kinda low carb!" or "what did gluten ever do for you?" But for me, it's a little bit of a disaster. My favorite foods, in no particular order, are pie, hawaiian rolls, waffles, cupcakes, and shrimp. I can now comfortably eat only one of those foods (hint: one of these things is not like the other...).

Plus, I love baking, and baking gluten-free is no fun. First you need to buy all kinds of weird ingredients, like xantham gum, tapioca starch, sorghum powder...following the "grandma rule" of eating, my grandmothers would NOT recognize these ingredients in their kitchens. Then you have to trash your favorites and find all new recipes using the above stuff.

Happily, Thomas Keller has come to the rescue with Cup 4 Cup, a direct replacement for all-purpose flour. Yes, it is simply a combo of all those weird ingredients I already mentioned, but it is intended to replace the flour in your favorite recipes, one for one. And yes, it is ridiculously expensive, at $20 for 3 lbs of flour. And yes, you can only buy it at Williams-Sonoma, so you have to brave the holiday shopping crowds if you want to make your traditional holiday cooking gluten-free. But it's worth it!!

So far, we have made pancakes and pie crust. Both had a very different, somewhat gummy, texture when raw (unlike their glutenous counterparts), but cook up just perfectly, and there is really no difference in taste with the original recipe. Next up, chocolate chip cookies...