gluten-free eats

Current Ingredients: cane sugar, gluten free whole grain oat flour, rice flour, palm oil, high oleic sunflower oil (or canola oil), tapioca starch, invert sugar. Contains less than 2% each of the following: cocoa (processed with alkali), soy lecithin, corn starch, inulin, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, cinnamon, natural flavors, organic maltodextrin, tricalcium phosphate, ammonium bicarbonate.

A gorgeous book with beautiful photographs of the finished baked goods, process photos for some of the tricky bits, and friendly illustrations that demonstrate the science behind the recipes. Because it explains WHY you're doing things this way, it's got an America's Test Kitchen vibe, only Cermelj herself is gluten free and has a degree in chemistry, so it feels more personal than ATK's GF cookbooks.

Be aware, though, that this is a book for people who have no other dietary restrictions. Cermelj makes no attempt to accommodate those with other major food allergies/sensitivities and most recipes include milk, butter, and eggs, and the only substitutions offered are for recipes with a supplemental amount of almond flour. The few recipes that do happen to be dairy free or egg free aren't even noted in the index.

Most recipes use a gluten-free flour blend. These recipes have all been tested with five commercial blends: Doves Farm Freee plain GF flour, and store-brand GF flour blends from Aldi, Lidi, Asda, and Sainsbury's. Why, yes, this book is British.

There are also two blends you can whip up yourself:

1. 50% white rice flour, 30% potato starch, 20% maize flour

2. 40% tapioca starch, 30% buckwheat flour, 30% millet flour

Some recipes then call for additional flours like brown rice, sorghum, millet, and oat, and starches like corn and tapioca. Xanthan gum is used in most recipes, and the breads call for both xanthan gum and whole psyllium husk.

And some specialized ingredients:

• caster sugar
• double cream
• dutch processed cocoa powder
• vanilla bean paste

The recipes give measurements in grams (even the liquids) and temperatures in °C, and each one has a beautiful full-page photo, headnotes describing the finished product, and storage advice.

The extensive introduction covers the ingredients and tools used in the book, and most chapters include their own specialized details about the science behind particular items, like pie crusts, breads, and muffins vs cupcakes. The recipes range from basic (chocolate chip cookie, hamburger bun) to super fancy (eclair! millefeuille!!) and are broken up into: Cakes; Cupcakes & Muffins; Brownies; Cookies & Bars (+ 1 savory cracker); Pies, Tarts & Pastries; Bread; Breakfast & Teatime Treats; and Around the World, with most of the fussiest stuff being in this last, involving lamination and pastry creme and whatnot.

The breads mostly do not use custom blends and instead call for the exact amount of each of the flours used. I made the focaccia bread which was simple and tasty though I probably overcooked it, and the rice-free (!!) sandwich bread which had a lot, a lot, of steps, but was soft and chewy and delicious even though I probably underproofed it because it never rose into a proper loaf shape. I don't know what it is about Cermelj's recipes, but I've yet to nail any of them on the first try. You live, you learn. I'll try again.

This book is a tremendous resource, and after having it checked out of the library off and on for several years (NOT because I was using it, but in case I MIGHT use it), this time when I returned it, I bought my own copy.

You can also find Katarina Cermelj at her blog The Loopy Whisk where recipes are categorized by diet (nut-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan, paleo, etc) and by dish (mostly breads, breakfast foods, and desserts). I've made her gluten free white bread from the blog, and it was also good, even though, again, mine did not come out like the pictures. I'm blaming....England.

Contains: casual use of ableist terms (stupid, crazy); one of the handwriting fonts used for the diagrams is small and its ambiguous letters can be difficult to read; everything is in metric but there are conversion tables in the back.

Current Ingredients: Brown Rice Flour, Brown Rice Syrup, Fig Paste, Raspberry Jam (Naturally Milled Sugar, Cane Sugar, Glycerin, Rice Starch, Raspberries, Apple Powder, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Citric Acid, Locust Bean Gum), Canola Oil, Cane Sugar, Gluten Free Five Grain Flour (Amaranth, Quinoa, Millet, Sorghum, Teff), Date Paste, Whole Grain Oats, Glycerin, Flaxseed, Leavening (Monocalcium Phosphate, Baking Soda), Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum, Natural Flavor, Citric Acid.

This pumpkin bread from Snixy Kitchen bakes up into a lovely brown loaf with warm spices and a tender, moist crumb.

I got serious and bought a metal 9 x 5 inch loaf pan for this one, since glass conducts heat differently and can dry out the crust of a quick bread, which did seem to be the case for the last pumpkin bread I made. I used Libby's canned pumpkin again and followed the recipe exactly—except I used apple cider in place of the milk component, and I again left out the cinnamon for reasons—and I was very happy with the results. In the metal pan, the outside of the loaf turned a deep brown (next time I might give it an aluminum foil tent near the end of the cooking time), but didn't get tough. I cooked it 65 minutes, let it cool on a rack for 20 minutes, and then removed it from the pan to cool completely.

Compared to the Pumpkin Bread with Maple Glaze from The Bojon Gourmet that I brought you last month (and baked in a glass pan, which might have contributed to some of the textural differences):

• both are gum-free, nut-free, soy-free, and dairy-free
• both use oat flour, sweet rice flour, and tapioca starch, then teff flour (Snixy) or millet flour (Bojon)
• both offer some substitutions, including for the oat flour, but both rely on the sweet rice flour and eggs
• slightly different spice mixes, Snixy has cloves instead of allspice, and no turmeric
• a slice of the Snixy is softer than the Bojon, which is more dense and easier to pick up
• Snixy did not bake up as impressively tall
• Snixy makes a darker, browner loaf, while Bojon is lighter and oranger

Both are easy to make, bake up well, store nicely in the fridge (and freezer!), are undetectably gluten free, and have good flavor and texture, but I think the Snixy might be my new favorite due to its almost squishy softness and gingerbread vibes. The Snixy recipe doesn't have an accompanying glaze, so I made one with powdered sugar, orange juice, and a splash of vanilla. Next time I might do something more like Bojon's maple glaze (with maybe less maple syrup), which, since it has (vegan) butter in it, is thicker, sets better, and has a more appealing look when poured over the loaf.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that after years of going without pumpkin bread I now have two really great recipes for it. AMAAPB (Ask Me Anything About Pumpkin Bread).