The success of cooking is as much dependent on how well one follows the directions of a good recipe as it is on being able to add a personal element – either to suit your tastes, your current pantry, or just to give a recipe a little bit of flair to help you make a dish become a part of you. And that’s why I’m going to be embarking on a little project. Over the next month or so, I’m going to make for you a guide. A guide to GF ingredients, a guide to knowing when you can switch one thing for the other – in the hopes of giving you more tools to enjoy your gluten free cooking. I’m going to aim for a month to put it together, and I hope it will help you.
One of the hardest facets of gluten free baking is making the right decisions about substitutions – When does it matter what flours are in a recipe? When can you just substitute a box mix? Is it really necessary to own 20 different types of ingredients to make something? If you are like me, you probably have a base of 4-5 flours that you use regularly, and when you see a recipe with someone else’s gluten free flour mix, you do your best to make do with what you own rather than going out to spend even more money at the store – cause let’s face it – gluten free ingredients often bring a whole new definition to pricey groceries. I think about substitutions almost every time I bake gluten free – sometimes I am sure the end result will come out great and other times I’m praying to the gluten free baking gods that whatever is in the oven will turn out edible. As you probably well know, baking is not my original area of expertise, and even I am prone to a mess-up or two.
