Since the current special deal on my cooking classes includes a free digital kitchen scale, I wanted to take a few minutes to write a post on why a digital kitchen scale is needed for gluten free baking. I’ve written about why you should weigh your ingredients before, but measuring cups are so ingrained in [...]
Best Places to Buy Bulk Gluten Free Flour
April 5, 2013 by 13 Comments
Buying gluten free flour in bulk is convenient and cost-effective. When you’re doing a lot of gluten free baking, it’s lovely to have a 25 lb bag of brown rice flour at hand, so that you’re not constantly running to the store. The price of a large bag of flour, even with shipping costs, is [...]
How Do I Get My High Fiber Cereal Fix on a Gluten Free Diet?
March 7, 2013 by 11 Comments
Are you a high-fiber cereal junkie? I was. Before I started a GF diet I thought the most healthful part of my diet had to be the bowl full of high-fiber cereal and 2% milk that I had every morning. Boy, was I ever wrong! The wheat in the high-fiber cereals was creating chronic back [...]
Why Do Gluten Free Products Cost So Much?
February 27, 2013 by 3 Comments
Have you wondered why gluten free products are so expensive? Read today’s guest post from Chris Bekermeier at PacMoore, a certified gluten free food manufacturer, to find out why. Gluten-free is the latest buzz in nutrition circles. The rise of celiac disease has moved the gluten-free concept into the mainstream marketplace, filling retail shelves with [...]
How to Get Your Nutritional Needs Met on a Gluten-Free, Casein-Free (GFCF) Diet
February 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I get quite a few questions from readers who want to know how a gluten free diet will affect them nutritionally. Since that’s not my area of expertise, I went to my friend Tovah to get an answer for a mom who recently wrote it, concerned about how to give her autistic child a well-balance [...]
Are You Prepared To Bake Gluten Free Bread When The Sky Falls Down?
January 24, 2013 by 3 Comments
Are you afraid the world as we know it is going to end soon? Or maybe just that you’d like to be prepared for whatever life throws at you? Read these questions from a gluten free mom who wants to be prepared to bake gluten free bread regardless of what the future holds. By the [...]
How I Saved 43% Without Coupons on Gluten Free Groceries
September 12, 2012 by 14 Comments
I confessed last week that I’m not a good budget grocery shopper. I am a good cook. That’s why my business is all about cooking….not grocery shopping =) Over the past few years, we have seen how graciously God has provided money for our gluten free food purchases. And, although I know He will provide [...]
Make Your Own Gluten Free Sub Sandwich
September 3, 2012 by 1 Comment
Don’t you wish you had one of these? You can! Here’s my favorite gluten free bread recipe, and a tutorial on how to make long gluten free loaves. The middle of our sandwiches include: gluten free turkey, honey ham, and black ham sweet pickles bell pepper lettuce Parmesan cheese balsamic and olive salad dressing green [...]
Gluten Free Groceries for $1/lb
September 1, 2012 by 2 Comments
Confession here: I’m not good at budget grocery shopping. However, I do want to be a good steward with our money and our income is variable, so I’ve decided that I need to get some help =) Help for me has come in the form of a grocery shopping coach – Patti Laurens. I had [...]
Lose Weight, Improve Energy Levels, and Feel Great: Three Variations On The Standard Gluten Free Diet
July 19, 2012 by 5 Comments
There’s often a lot of confusion about starting a gluten free diet. Most people, when they’re interested in eating gluten free, look up “gluten”, find out that’s it’s contained in wheat, and they figure all they need to do is avoid wheat in their diet. Then they hear that gluten might be in other grains [...]
Three Things You Should Think About Before You Host Your Next Dinner Party
July 9, 2012 by 3 Comments
It will be no surprise to anyone reading this that being a gluten free guest in someone else’s home could easily be compared to a minefield. This minefield extends beyond the food to the relationship between the host and guest. A recent article in the New York Times addresses many of the relational issues that [...]
Do I Have To Proof My Yeast When I’m Making Bread Using a Gluten Free Bread Mix?
May 17, 2012 by 9 Comments
Hi Mary: I just read your post making my own gluten free bread mix. I’m a little confused. You say that we can put the 2.5 c of flour mix in a qt size bag. Then you say we add the xanthum gum, sugar and yeast to the flour. So, my question is how does [...]
Is Chicken Gluten Free? Finding Gluten Free Meats and Beans
February 14, 2012 by 1 Comment
Trying to make gluten-free versions of meals that normally contain wheat flour, or another source of gluten, is time-consuming. Personally, it’s not the sort of thing that I generally want to tackle during the week. I want something that can best be described as a quick meal or easy meal. For that reason (and a [...]
10 Ways to Accidentally Gluten Yourself at Thanksgiving
November 10, 2011 by 10 Comments
Thanksgiving is full of gluten-filled landmines. If this is your first Thanksgiving on a gluten free diet, you might not realize the challenge that awaits you. Read this list and make sure you’re ready to stay gluten free this Thanksgiving. Even if you’re not new to the gluten free diet, a refresher of the potential [...]
Cranberry Orange Quickbread by the Ratio – How a New Recipe is Created
April 6, 2011 by
In my last post I mentioned that I was going to experiment with gluten free ratios and start weighing out my recipes. To hold myself accountable (because we all see how well I’ve done with posting my bread experiments) I decided to join the Gluten Free Ratio Rally that Shauna Ahern of Gluten Free Girl [...]
Why You Should Use Be Measuring Your Gluten Free Recipes By Weight
April 2, 2011 by
When you open up a cookbook or get a recipe off of the internet, how do you know that it will work? How do you know that the brownie recipe that you’re about to make will be a brownie, and not a chocolate cake? Is it even possible to evaluate a recipe without actually cooking [...]
Gluten Free Bread Experiments: Free Form
March 12, 2011 by 4 Comments
Loaf #7: Gluten Free, Soy Free, Corn Free Trial #4: So, the best laid plans all fail when you realize that it’s 2:30 and that you need to be out of the house, with bread in hand, by 5:00. I had planned to make a double loaf of bread today and bake one in the [...]
Gluten Free Bread Experiments: Sunken In and a Little Flat
March 11, 2011 by
Loaf #5 – Gluten Free, Corn Free, Soy Free Perfecting gluten free baking ofter requires several trials. The first two pictures are trial #3 of my new gluten free, soy free, corn free sandwich bread recipe. I think that it’s probably 2 or 3 more trials away from being ready to share with you. So [...]
Gluten Free Bread Experiments – A Loaf of Gluten Free Bread Every Day
March 8, 2011 by
Let me give you a brief sketch of what life is like right now. John and I both work at home. He works on his internet marketing business in the morning. I work on Gluten Free Cooking School in the afternoon. Except for the days that we switch. Whoever is not working is taking care [...]
My Gluten Free Flour Mix Actually Has Nutritional Value!
February 11, 2011 by
I get a lot of questions from readers who are concerned about the nutritional value and glycemic load of gluten free flour mixes. If there is one item of nutritional data that most Americans know, its that you should eat whole grain bread. Eating whole grain bread may seem to be nearly impossible on a [...]
Gluten Free Cookie Baking Tips
December 15, 2010 by
Cookie baking seems like it should be simple. You just have to take the cookie dough out of the freezer and plop it on a baking sheet, right? Baking cookies from scratch is not quite so simple. Here are some cookie baking tips from the cookie research that I did this morning before my sugar [...]
Grocery Shopping for Your Gluten Free Diet – Week One
May 28, 2009 by
This is the second post in a series on Starting the Gluten Free Diet. Click here for a list of the other posts in the series. To make sure that you get all of the posts in the series sign up for free email updates in the right sidebar. For more help getting started on [...]
What to Eat on a Gluten Free Diet – Week One
May 21, 2009 by
The hardest part of the gluten free diet is probably when you realize that wheat is in almost every processed food imaginable. So don’t think about that now! Give yourself a week to mourn the fact that you can’t buy normal bread and pasta, and that Campbell’s soup can no longer dwell in your pantry. [...]
Getting Started on a Gluten Free Diet
May 17, 2009 by
Hello all, This week a commenter mentioned that she was developing several celiac disease symptoms and asked for advice on starting a gluten free diet, so I’ve decided to use her questions as an impetus to write a series of articles. I sat down last night and jotted down a list of 10 actions that [...]
How to Use Bean Flours
July 9, 2008 by
I broach this topic knowing three things: 1. Most Americans would shudder at the idea of eating beans on a regular basis and thus, do not know how to cook beans. 2. Beans have a bad reputation and are oft involved in third-grade humor. 3. Beans can taste really good and are really good for [...]
Rolling out Flour Tortillas (Gluten Free Tortillas, At That)
April 23, 2008 by
Rolling out dough, particularly into a circular shape, is a learned skill. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when John tried his hand at making tortillas. At approximately 11:30 on a Tuesday morning I received a call from work that went something like this, “So how do you keep the dough from [...]
How to Bake a Gluten Free Angel Food Cake
March 27, 2008 by
Please welcome our guest author:Natalie Naramor, Gluten Free Mommy Homemade angel food cake requires very few ingredients and is a snap if your gluten free flour mix is already prepared. It can be intimidating to work with egg whites at first, so visit Gluten Free Cooking School’s archives on How to Beat Egg Whites for [...]
How to Cream Butter & Sugar
December 17, 2007 by
This post is the first in a 4-part series on How to Make Sugar Cookies. Check back throughout the week for the next three posts. As I was making up a batch of gluten free sugar cookies this week, I realized that a new cook reading a recipe for sugar cookies, would have no [...]
How to Prep a Butternut Squash
October 22, 2007 by
Winter squash can be a bit intimidating to the uninitiated. They suddenly appear in the supermarket when the first hint of autumn is in the air, a heaped pile of colors and shapes. A lot of people buy them for decoration. But the wise cooks buy them and cook them up into wonderful pies and [...]
How to Make Gluten Free Cream of Mushroom Soup
October 15, 2007 by
So many of the favorite dishes from my childhood started with a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. Poppy Seed Chicken, Chicken Rollups, Chicken Spaghetti Casserole, my Grandmother’s gravy….all unattainable on a gluten free diet until you learn how to make a white sauce. For more great gluten free recipes like this one, make [...]
7 Great Things About a Gluten Free Diet
September 5, 2007 by
The first few days and weeks of life on a gluten free diet are tough. You’re not sure what to eat. Lots of the food in your pantry is full of gluten. And, many of your favorite comfort foods are off-limits just when you really need some comfort. But, there is hope. Here are seven [...]
How to Cook Brown Rice: The Experiment
August 22, 2007 by
When I was a kid, our church had a potluck lunch every Fifth Sunday (i.e., if a month had five Sundays, we at lunch together on the fifth one). Every family would bring a couple of dishes, and since there were a lot of good cooks in our church, we always had quite a spread. [...]
Egg Series No. 1: How to Crack and Separate an Egg
August 14, 2007 by
How to Crack an Egg Cracking an egg for the first time can be intimidating, even if you’ve seen it done before. 1. Firmly tap the middle of the egg against the side of the bowl or the edge of your counter. Basically any sharp object that will crack the shell, rather than crushing it, [...]
How To: The Egg Series No. 1
August 13, 2007 by
The lesson to recipe ratio is getting a bit too low on this blog, so this week I am going to focus on “how to” articles. Tomorrow’s post will cover how to crack an egg and how to separate the egg white from the egg yolk. The topic for Wednesday’s post is beating egg whites [...]
Five Reasons to Shred Cabbage with a Knife, and How To Do It.
July 19, 2007 by
Despite the fact that I own a lovely Cuisinart and that pre-shredded, bagged cabbage is readily available at the supermarket, I have always shredded cabbage with a knife. Hhere is a brief picture tutorial on how to shred a cabbage and five reasons why everyone should learn how.