Getting better at gluten-free baking

Tweet

Gluten-free food was something I never had to even think about for the first few decades of my life. But recently it has become more of an issue. I have had to prepare gluten-free food for social functions, and now we have a lodger who is coeliac (she mostly does her own cooking, but we like to share meals sometimes), and another old friend has developed gluten intolerance. So it is becoming more and more of a thing to consider. As far as main meals go it isn’t too difficult. Bread and cous cous are out, and if you want pasta you have to look for the special gluten-free sort, but potatoes and rice are fine, as are things like polenta and quinoa (as long as they are produced and packaged in a gluten-free facility). The main problem is remembering to check the small print on ingredients you would normally never think twice about, like condiments. When it comes to baking, gluten-free is more of a problem because of course all the ‘usual’ recipes for cakes and pastries use wheat flour, except for things like polenta cake or, my favourite, Black Forest gateau (which doesn’t contain any flour at all). Nowadays it’s much easier to obtain gluten-free flour made from a variety of things such as rice or potato starch, so we’ve been experimenting with that as it isn’t really directly equivalent to wheat flour. Pancakes worked well. The flour seemed to settle to the bottom of the mix like silt but as long as we whisked it up every time before spooning some into the pan it worked fine and the pancakes were almost indistinguishable from the ‘normal’ ones. Waffles though (in our electric waffle maker) didn’t work at all. They tasted OK but didn’t puff up and came out like damp handkerchiefs! Scones were not right at all – they didn’t rise properly and tasted funny as well. Pastry is an interesting challenge. Gluten-free pastry is extremely difficult to work with as it just doesn’t stick together properly so you can roll it out but then you can’t pick up the sheet, it just breaks up. If you want to make something that usually involves cutting out shapes (such as cases for mince pies) it would be really difficult. It works OK for bigger pies though, as long as you don’t even attempt to roll out the pastry but just put it in the pie dish and then press it into shape. The picture shows a gooseberry and rose frangipane tart I made last week, it was really nice! I’m going to continue to experiment! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2025.