Baked to Perfection: Delicious Gluten-Free Recipes with a Pinch of Science, by Katarina Cermelj

[runpunkrun]

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.