Cook Book Favorite

[mommyto2kids]

Someone asked me today what is a good gluten free cook book so have at it and help me answer her. Thanks so much.

[mushroom]

If you were just a basic gluten free only cook, I am sure there are oodles of books that would suit. I find myself never using a cookbook because most of them use flours I cannot use or ingredients I cannot use and it is a lot of money for books just sitting on the shelf (I have five or six from when I went gung-ho gluten free that I rarely open because they are too limiting for my needs. I generally go online and do a specific search for something I'm looking for so that I eliminate all the ingredients I cannot use, and have also put together my own cookbook from recipes others have posted on here. Again, I probably am not typical, but I'm afraid I can't help you there. I have a whole section on various flours, their properties, and my own particular flour mixes. Probably the best thing your friend could do would be to check some out of the library and get some idea of what she was looking for. Others may have some useful ideas. Many have said Gluten Free for Dummies is quite good....

[sa1937]

This subject has come up recently so you might want to check this thread:

http://www.celiac.co...s-for-a-newbie/

[love2travel]

I would personally recommend you buy a couple of gluten-free baking books, but not cookbooks (except for the Asian gluten free book which is amazing). Reason? I've flipped through about 100 gluten-free cookbooks in bookstores and am constantly disappointed because all the authors usually do is replace gluten-free soy sauce for regular. Many are a joke. I would stick with regular cookbooks and make your own substitutions.

However, when it comes to baking it is not the same thing. I would look for a book that has more than one flour blend for all recipes. For example, some books have one blend at the front of the book and use about 50-100 recipes using that one blend. I personally do not like that because flours have such different strengths and characteristics. The best pizza crusts have different desirable elements than a cake, for example, so should have different flours or at least different ratios. Some books have different flours or ratios for each recipe - I like that much better. Not that you need to have 1,000 kinds of flours for a book but generally 5 or 6 should do it. I have 22 but then I bake several times a week.

Are you looking for a cookbook or baking book? I have several of both I could recommend. At last count I have over 400 and my shelves are heaving.