Lightbulb #1
The first lightbulb moment was when I realized that baking is a science. Back in the day of all of my gluten free disasters, I thought that a good recipe was all you needed. Just follow the recipe and everything should turn out well. This is WRONG. Recipes are shorthand. They give you a list of ingredients and the most basic instructions on how to put them together into a finished product, but they leave so much out.
What recipes leave out are the science – the rules – that all of baking, even gluten free baking, follow. There are formulas and procedures that guarantee success. Read that a second time, because I did say guarantee. If you follow the formulas and procedures (that aren’t necessarily in the recipe) then everything works. If you don’t follow the formulas or procedures then disaster results…..in a very predictable way.
Lightbulb #2
My second “lightbulb moment†came when I realized that baking is also an art. Most everything about baking improves when you treat is as a science, but there are still some aspects of it that are a craft. For example, when you’re making bread, the amounts that are given for water are just a guideline. (No one ever told you this, right?)
The consistency of the dough always governs how much water you add. If you’ve added the full amount that the recipe calls for and the dough is still not right, then you absolutely add more. Or, if you’ve added 3/4 of the water and the dough looks just like it should, then you definitely don’t add any more water. This is not a GF thing; it is a baking thing. And so, in order to bake bread, you need to learn what the dough should look like. And it’s not hard; it just takes seeing the right dough consistency enough that your intuition automatically says, “Stop! The bread dough is perfect right now.â€
Hold on A Second!
At this point, you may be thinking, “There is Absolutely. No. Way. that I can learn or even want to learn all of that. If baking is going to be a science, then I’ll just keep buying the manufactured stuff and suffer through it.
I totally get where you’re coming from, but the rules of baking don’t really take a lot of time or effort to learn.
It’s kind of like weather. At some point when you were a child, you learned that if the sky is cloudy it might rain. And if the sky is blue, with no clouds, then it’s not going to rain. You just have to look at the sky and you know what is going to happen. Sure, weather can be a lot more complicated than that, but you don’t really need to know about barometer and pressure troughs to have a good grasp of whether you need to take an umbrella.
Baking is exactly the same. There are a few general rules to learn and then you understand what is going on. Understanding bread baking becomes as simple as understanding that rain falls from clouds.
What’s Next:
In the next email which I’ll probably send out Friday I’m going to start teaching you some of those rules and I’m going to tell you exactly what causes the three most common gluten bread disasters:
1) bread that won’t rise in the pan,
2) bread that falls in the oven, and
3) bread that falls after it comes out of the oven
Right now though, I want to do a bit of an experiment. I want you to scroll down and leave a comment telling me the things that you know to be true about gluten-free baking. I want you to document what you know right now, so that you can come back to it in a few days, and realize how much you’ve learned and how easily! It doesn’t have to be long, just finish this sentence: The things that I know for certain about gluten free baking are ….
P.S. If you’ve already taken one of my classes, your comment can include what you used to know about gluten free baking and what you know now.
I’m not very good at it! lol Couldn’t resist. Well, the liquid to dry ratio is a mystery to me right now and I know that when the dough looks “right” to me I have success. I never thought about the liquid part of it. I was always looking at the dry part. Most of what I had learned about baking gluten bread doesn’t apply to baking gluten free bread. And third, I’ll get this figured out eventually with help.
I love your sense of humor! This is exactly what I was hoping for.
What I know about it will fit in a grain of rice. I know I’ve wasted money-lender being broke I’ve had to stop lol – trying bread for my kids. Yeah….it was a HARD on the outside, doughy, goopy disgusting mess.on the inside.
everything I’ve read says it has to be scoopable, not knead-able. However, it never rises. Quite frankly, gf baking has turned me off if baking!
To make a long story short, I need help!!!
I understand. If it’s not rising, then it’s either a yeast problem or the dough still needs to be softer. One or the other. So, you’ve at least narrowed the problem down!
The things I know for certain about GF baking, I have read/learned/tried in an ATK cookbook. I know it is a lot of work, expensive, and tastes best the day it is made. My daughter has a gluten allergy which requires me to serve GF food when she visits.
1) I have learned to let the dough sit for a minute to absorb the liquid after mixing. That way, I avoid adding too much and messing up the recipe. 2) Also I have learned that preheating the oven is an absolute necessity before baking; and 3) I have learned to customize my flour blends and that one size does not fit all recipes when adding the xanthan gum to a recipe.
Yes! Yes! and Yes!
I’ve learned that a blend of flours in the right ratio to starches helps make baking more “normal.
Yes! That is absolutely true. A biscuit recipe should use a different flour/starch ratio, than bread, and pie should have yet another. When I started developing my pie crust recipe the only thing I changed to get from a horribly stiff crust that squeaked when I cut it to a lovely crust was the ratio of starches to other flours.
It’s difficult in the beginning because it is not like the baking I grew up with…but SO worth learning! I still need to learn how to adjust the flours to not get a middle that is slightly gummy even when baking to 209-210 degrees. Thanks, Mary Frances for sharing your expertise!
Rose Marie,
What are the amounts of the flours and starches in the recipe that you’re using right now?
I have learned to do bread pretty good, but it still falls after I take it out of the oven.
Then you are sooooo close! In the next video, I’l tell you how to keep the bread from falling once you take it out. It’s a really simple fix!
I have found one recipe for gluten-free bread which is fairly reliable (read…easy!) and stick to it.
To be able to vary the recipe and succeed would be great.
And varying a recipe is very doable! That’s actually how I create most of my new recipes. I start with one that I know works and then make purposeful changes to it to get to the new recipe that I want. So, you’ve got the first step!
I know that eggs should be at room temperature. I know that baking gf without eggs is difficult (my sons have food allergies). I know that it’s easier to just buy a loaf of gf bread, but more expensive than making your own. I know I bought so many different gf flours, but have not tried to make my own bread with them YET.
I love that “YET”!!! The first step to success is thinking well!
My frustration with gluten free bread is not knowing how to make it elastic enough to make a braided Challah. Everyone just makes a round loaf of egg bread and calls it a Challah. It needs to be braided to have the significance and tradition of a challah. Can you help?
Absolutely. Often the trick to recipes that require you to manipulate soft doughs require a slightly dryer dough (just slightly) and creative tricks for handling the dough. My first thought is to use a yeast roll dough, pipe the individual sections into a braid and use a pan (maybe a baguette pan) that will encourage the dough to stay in the general shape without spreading too much.
You ladies might be interested to know that Amazon has pans shaped like challahs, both metal and silicone versions. They’re essentially foofy bundt pans that emboss a pattern of braiding into the dough.. I’ve no idea whether they work worth a darn, but they exist For whatever that’s worth to the conversation.
Thank you, Erin! That is wonderful to know!
I know that GF cookies are crumbly and fall apart, unlike gluten flour cookies, which are chewy and nicer texture! I’d love any tips on how to make a GF cookie not fall apart when you touch it!
Cookies are the trickiest thing ever. They are only flour, fat, and sugar – no water. So, you have to get the balance of ingredients just right. Even with wheat flour just changing brands of one ingredient can mess up the recipe, so you can imagine how much more complicated it is with so many choices of gluten free flour that all have different absorbencies. The solution will probably involve measuring you flour by weight, reducing the flour in that particular recipe and/or adding an egg or egg white. The protein in egg white is a structure builder.
Cookies are the easiest thing, once you stumble on this flour blend. Combine 2 cups finely ground brown rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch and 1/3 cup tapioca starch, mix VERY well before each use and add xanthan at about 1/4 t. per cup of mix. This blend is a perfect 1:1 substitute for Toll House and other basics. It’s foolproof and the taste is totally “normal” — not a bit GF. This originated in an Annalise Roberts cookbook, I believe; it crossed my path on a blog that gave her credit.
I’ve used it also for fruit crisps, sweet muffins and everyday cakes. For posher cakes and cookies that take very litle flour, anyway, I use almond meal as one would for classic tortes. Go that way with dense cocoa brownies and they’re heaven. Another useful workaround is crumb crust made from GF gingersnaps.
So far my best GF bread experience was the new Udi’s baguette (which makes garlic bread possible again). Since I’m not much into bread, that’s good enough for me — supplemented now and then with tortillas, for which a lot of decent GF recipes are online.
I LOVE your classes and your enthusiasm. It’s hard for me to organize all of the different flours and flour blends to make bread v cake v cookies v pizza dough. Plus, I have a small apartment sized kitchen, so it’s not easy to store everything I need. I’d like to find a few shortcuts for creating and storing different flour blends in bulk. That might make things a little less frustrating for me. Thanks!
I know Nothing. I am a complete novice at gluten free baking, but my granddaughter has celiacs disease and we think my great grandson has it also, so I would like to learn to bake for them
I know the liquid is important and somehow different from regular breaks recipes. I also know measuring by weight is important.
Oops–regular bread recipes
I also know I’ve never been good at getting the “feel” of the dough–even in regular bread making.
Yes, measuring is so important. I usually harp on it a lot more than I have so far. Maybe in Video 3!
What I know about gluten free baking is that nothing ever turns out right.
What I know is that you don’t use wheat flour, or any other that contains gluten! I haven’t tried it much because the flours are usually too expensive.