Evening! I have 2 celiac daughters (10 and 12). My 10 year old is loving leaning how to bake! She wants to learn some tips, tricks and recipes to work with a dough that can be manipulated and in her words “thrown” like on cooking shows. Looking for ideas to encourage her love of baking ❤ and keep her gluten free.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no such gluten free dough that holds together well enough to be handled much at all. Without gluten, dough is fragile. I’m professionally trained, but I don’t bother with baking very much gluten free since 1) it tastes horrible; 2) the doughs and batters are very difficult to work with; 3: it’s expensive to make gf at home. I’m fortunate that I have access to a great GF bakery, so I only bake gf pie, some cake, and some cookies. Bread and pizza dough I buy. I’ve been gf for 12 yrs now; I’ve done a ton of experimenting, but there is not making a dough that can be handled a lot. Gluten gives dough its strength and elasticity. Without it, the dough just tears or crumbles.
I think the two best gf baking cookbooks are America‘s Test Kitchen and Patisserie Gluten Free by Patricia Austin. ATK uses gums, which people can cause issues.
Austin does not use gums or she offers a substitute. Austin is a professionally trained pastry chef who used to work for Pierre Hemes in France, so her book is geared toward better pastries. The only drawback is her recipes are based on Authentic Foods gf flours. They are excellent flours for sure, but have to be ordered unless you live in Southern California. I buy them online from Vitacost, a vitamin and health food online store which is owned by Kroger. She offer a homemade flour blend in place of the Authentic Foods flours, but I find it doesn’t work that well.
and keep her gluten free.
