Club Celiac

If you love to bake like me, you know that gluten is that wonderful protein that makes dough sticky-gooey, traps air bubbles in it and makes your sandwich bread and muffins so wonderfully fluffy. Also, if you are as ignorant as I was, and say "Thank God, I really like rye bread and not wheat", you are in for a rude awakening. Every cookbook I ever read, clearly (and mistakenly as I soon found out) states that "rye contains no gluten, and wheat need to be added to obtain the desired texture". I wish! The day I found out the dirty little secret of rye, I was sad, very sad. After all, sour dough rye had been my breakfast staple since childhood. Everything tastes good with sourdough rye. It makes cheese taste better. It is wonderful with just plain tomato. It is unbeatable fresh out of oven with cold butter melting on top...

I learned a lot reading all the labels in the supermarket. It's amazing how much longer it takes to shop when you have to find out what they actually put in your food. Turns out, they really like to sneak wheat into it.

Barley was the easiest to give up, obviously. Never been a big fan of beer and how much barley do we really eat in any other form?
I do feel really pretentious whenever I go out to eat, with all these questions about what goes on my plate, asking for substitutions and taking forever to find things to eat on the menu. Now if someone would feed me figs and rub my feet while I'm making my selections, it would be perfect indeed!

Every time I entertained, my husband blissfully warned the guests: "It's gluten free!" And right away half of them lost interest in the dessert without ever tasting it. "Why do you tell them???" I moaned after everybody had left and I could speak my mind. "It's a little different," he replied. "I can tell the difference, it's a weird texture."

All the vast knowledge of baking I had, flew out of the window. Nothing worked the same. Ready made baking mixes had weird aftertaste and gummy texture and most of it found it's way to the garbage disposal instead of a plate. My pantry was brimming with every gluten-free flour I could get my hands to. Who know garbanzo bean flour makes the end result taste, well, a lot like garbanzo beans! Or that amaranth would be strongly reminiscent of the taste of red beets? Some of the intense flavors never grew on me, I was more than ever resolved to find the way to cook and bake so that it's so good that people who do not have to eat gluten free and are used to having bakery fresh goodies and not dry cookies out of the books like we celiacs, could not tell the difference and ask for seconds. And this day came. My husband raised his eyebrows and asked: "This gluten free?" "Yep." I said. "Cool," he said and continued eating. Strangely enough, now he let everybody dig into the goodies without the formal "gluten-free" announcement that I so hated. Instead, he waited, to reply to the guests' praise with a bigwig nod and a slowly uttered single sentence: "It's also gluten free you know. "

By now my pantry has been cleaned from all the flours I tested and deemed unusable either because of the taste or baking properties, and has been narrowed down to a pretty simple selection. There's corn starch for breading and baking, tapioca flour to add chewier texture to breads and muffins, flax seed flour that will do the same in addition to countless health benefits, white rice flour and brown rice flour, my favorite. Not only is it higher in fiber and nutrients, but it really works in most of the recipes. I do always have almond flour around, but that's just to be extravagant. Every now and then I get buckwheat flour to make plini and there's corn flour to make arepas but it's nothing like the selection I started with.
Once you have your main ingredients down, it's time to learn the new rules.

You will need more liquid, more leavener, and you will need to use gums to make up for the lack of gluten. Doughs are more like batters and take on the shape of the pan into which they are poured. You start adding eggs to recipes you never put eggs into.

Gluten free goods do not brown so easily and it's hard to get that "golden" appearance, but there is a way around every problem. If you are lucky and not allergic to soy, you can add soy flour to your baked goods. It is rich in protein and also helps tremendously in browning. I am also allergic to soy but I'm not totally out of luck - adding whey powder or using dairy as liquid will help significantly. Adding a tablespoonful of whey will also improve the texture of your baked goods.

I use either xanthan gum or guar gum, I think both work as well as could be expected. And you don't really need as much as most of the recipes suggest - put too much and your dog can fetch the muffin for you, it will be more suitable for bouncing as a ball than eating.

To me bread is the foundation of a perfect quick snack on the go. To think of it, PB & J would have never made it so big without a slice of bread to pull it all together. What would we do with all the ham and cheese? Or try imagining a New York morning without a bagel. Most of the fast food dives would cease to exist. Wait, did we just find a solution to the obesity problem?

Now that the bread isle is off limits, let's explore our options. I have never been a big fan of frozen foods, but like it or not, this is our first stop. Gluten free bread in your average neighborhood supermarket will be guaranteed to be hanging out in the freezer. Guaranteed, it's a little more dense than what you are used to, and guaranteed, it may break when you try to separate a piece from the rest of the frozen loaf but IT IS bread, something to hold together the newly shattered ex-wheat-eater's world. After a few weeks the excitement starts to fade though.
It's like meeting a great-looking guy after not dating for years and then finding out he has a wife and 5 kids.

Our next stop takes us to the online world of gluten-free recipes. After all, if gluten free bread can be baked, it is possible that it could be baked at home. The recipes seemed mystifying - lists of different flours mixed together, 5 or so at least, gums and vinegars, and promises that "this will be the first gluten free bread your husband will like." I quickly found out that testing all those recipes can turn into an expensive hobby, considering half of it my husband didn't just not like, he hated it. And so did I. Few of the first flour mixes did not pass either, but after much testing, 2 brands came out as winners - Gluten Free Pantry which made a quite impressive loaf of white bread, and Schar flour mix that can be used in pretty much anything you make, bread, pancakes, muffins, you name it. Dries out very fast though. Now remember, I'm still reading all the labels and it's making me think. Bulk of these frozen breads and ready-to-go flour mixes consist mainly of white rice flour and tapioca starch or potato starch. In calories it equals eating white bread, in nutrition you get close to nothing besides simple carbohydrates. There is almost no fiber or minerals or vitamins in those flours, just so that you know.
It's like meeting a great-looking guy after not dating for years and then getting a glimpse of the future and finding out that if you were to stay together you both would be 200 pounds heavier in a couple of years or so.

We are back to square one - me, a loaf pan, bags of flour and hours of experimenting ahead to make a loaf of bread that's not only delicious but also somewhat non-artery clogging. Sometimes what you've missed can be found in your own kitchen.

As you start creating gluten free versions of your favorite recipes, remember this simple rule: light cakes and cookies do not need much protein, but breads do, otherwise they may collapse regardless of the amount of gum you use.

Cakes need half the amount of gum you put into breads, and cookies need none or just a pinch. Your pie crust actually benefits from not having gluten and turns out wonderfully crispy (it does need to be pre baked before adding the filling though).

I now use use whole grain brown rice flour as foundation for most my bread recipes. It is rich in fiber and nutrients and thus good for you. I also add flax seed flour. It has dual purpose in the recipes - first, you guessed it again, it is very high in fiber and omega 3 fatty acids, second- it adds chewy texture to the bread. Gluten free breads tend to dry out very fast, adding flax seed flour helps keep them fresh longer.

"So what do you want to eat tonight?" my father-in-law asks. ""How about pizza?"
"Dad, I can't have pizza."
"Oooh... how about a nice meatball sandwich?"
"Dad, I can't eat a sandwich, it's wheat."
"What about chicken parm? That's good."
"Chicken parm has wheat in it."
"You really are doing this thing, ha... what was it again, glutton diet?"

That's what my father-in-law called it for months, a glutton diet. I tried explaining over and over what gluten is, but to him it stayed just as mysterious as facebook and getting music into your ipod. We have made strides, he knows that regular bread is off limits and I will not join him and my husband for a slice at the corner pizzeria, but sometimes I feel it is amusing to him to have me explain it again and again.

It is amazing how your fast food options become limited. The whole country thrives on the food to go - there's a deli or a sandwich shop on every corner, your food will be ready to go in minutes and all of a sudden this convenience is not there.
"Do you want something?" my husband asks in the drive-through.
"Get me some fries," I sigh.

Freia, my miniature dachshund, points her big plum nose up in the air and sniffs around to locate the source of this wonderful smell. Fries, her most favorite thing in the whole world. She must think we are gods feasting on nectar and denying her the divine pleasure of letting her help herself.

This is how it feels going to a party with everybody else. No dessert (unless it's potluck and someone brought jello or you are visiting a Norwegian grandmother and she made fresh whipped cream with strawberries.) You keep passing the catered trays: breaded chicken breast, no, chicken francaise, no, meatballs, no, salad, yes. Crutons-no. Veal swimming in thick gravy- no. Veal Parmesan-no. Orzo salad - no. Potato salad- YES! Wait%u2026I'm also allergic to soy and there's soy oil in mayonnaise, so change that to NO. Look at my plate, there's romaine lettuce, a couple of grape tomatoes, handful of potato chips and a piece of Italian sausage. Good thing I ate at home! The parties really are not what they used to be food wise.

Yet, a year and a half later, I don't really miss wheat any more. I don't think of it as depriving myself from the things I love, I think of it as doing something that's good for me and my health. I feel so much better, many of my other allergies have subsided and I do not feel deprived at all, there's so many foods that are naturally gluten free and I can whip up a gluten free cake that will blow your mind, even if you are not a member of Club Celiac!!