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I always make pies by placing my pans on top of one of those cookie sheets. I started because my fruit pies would sometimes bubble over. I kept doing it because I noticed everything baked more even and well cooked throughout. I use metal pans lined with nonstick sheets when I bake 3 layer cakes also on cookie sheets.

Thanks for the tip! My pies are always bubbling over (I think because I use a patted in pan pie crust and the edges don't seal in the juice very well).

I appreciate the advice and thought.

I'm a dietitian and I keep a food record, every day, of exactly what I eat (anal I know). But it comes in handy in times like these.

I tolerate wheat-free tamari (had some about a week ago in fact) without issues at all. Soy-based and corn-based products are the staples of my diet.

Nothing I ate that day was anything I had not had before, on a regular (daily) basis - and 90% of it was from a package or something that had already been open, so that means the batch did not contain gluten.

I reacted within an hour of eating the soy sauce - that's typical for me.

That said, I have found 3 other posts dating back to 2005 that had issues with wal-mart brand soy sauce. It's fishy, to say the least. I'm waiting to see what Corporate Wally has to say.

I've cooked with the GV brand of soy sauce and I've never had a problem with it. I've been using it for about a year now.

My husband was glutened by New Grist a few times (same batch). He had one beer and then a fairly quick reaction. He wasn't certain it was the beer, but he didn't drink anymore. A few days later he tried again and had the same reaction. He contacted them and they sent a courier to our house to pick up the beer for testing. I don't remember if he heard back from them about that... I'll have to ask him.

*Gasp* Super scary! Glad my bf is making mead and gluten-free beer now.

Awesome thread. I just got a glass bread pan and can't wait to try it out for my yeast bread. I use some of the scary non-stick stuff for baking right now and I'm less than impressed with my results. One day I'll throw all my old baking gear out and start from scratch.

Think of it this way...cooking is an art where a little more or less of this or that is up to personal taste and craftsmanship. With baking, however, you're pretty literally trying to make an edible chemistry experiment where heat, moisture levels, acidity, structure, and so much more have to be just so for the results to come out the way you want them to. Even with the magical structural protein of gluten, there is a fair chance things won't come out right; remove that constant and throw in other variables like flours from different plants, the hope that xanthan gum or guar gum might or might not mimic gluten the way you want it to, etc., and you have a volitile situation that might work or might not.

I totally love this summary! It's the gluten-free bread that's killing me. EVERY time it comes out different, whether I change the recipe or not.

And Darn210, I do the refrigerating thing to my chocolate chip cookie dough, I've found that it does, indeed, make a cakeier cookie. But my mom did it to her molasses cookies and the process made them very thin and crispy. Weird, huh? That's a good idea about doing a sample run with the batter first, though.

Do they really taste like the real thing?

And can I use this all purpose flour to make breads too? If so... how do those come out with this flour?

Hi Jamie,

I've found in gluten-free baking that the easiest thing to mimic wheat products is cookies. Using different types of gluten-free flour might change the texture a bit (like putting a percentage of sorghum flour into a cookie will make it chewier), but I've found the taste holds up really well...sometimes even better.

Bread is, in my opinion, the hardest thing to make gluten-free. I've found the gluten-free flours make a very dense bread that doesn't rise very well, and falls very easily. gluten-free bread also requires something to hold it together, usually xantham gum and eggs. I think this is because the gluten in wheat is what makes the dough stretch and is hardy enough to stay risen. And in my opinion, I think this is also the reason why wheat is hard for a lot of people to digest (not just celiacs). Using different gluten-free flours will help in making bread because they add different qualities to the final product.

I noticed the recipe doesn't have any eggs. If you aren't allergic, it'd put at least two eggs into the dough. If you are, I'd suggest using the Egg Replacer stuff.

Also, the bottom of my crust will bake faster if I put it on or near the bottom of my oven. That could help as well.

I don't use a pizza stone, but they're supposed to be great. Basically, it prevents an oven's heat fluctuation by absobing and storing heat. Plus, it wicks away moisture from the pizza dough, making for a crispier crust.

Hi all,

My boyfriend is getting into brewing. He's already done a couple of meads and one gluten-free beer. The beer didn't come out all that well, and we think it's because of the sorghum syrup used.

So, we're looking for a place that sells reasonablly priced (including shipping) gluten free grains in bulk, so that we can malt them and use them in brewing. Preferred grains are quinoa, amaranth and unhulled millet. He's looking to buy 5-10lbs each.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks so much!

Banana bread is a good place to start with gluten-free baking since the mashed bananas add moisture and flavor. I've made a regular wheat flour b-bread recipe subsituting with rice flour and xantham gum before, and it comes out pretty good. With other wheaty recipes, the straight rice flour doesn't work as well.

I'll also throw in a mashed banana when I make gluten-free pancakes, too.

I use this recipe (for the crust only). We really like it. I don't use the recommended flours, I just use the blend I have in place of all the listed flours-it's always turned out really good.

Open Original Shared Link

Totally agree on this pizza crust. I just made it last night and it's awesome. I, too, don't follow the flours in it exactly. I think I used 3/4 c of rice flour, 1/4 c tapioca, 1/3 c corn flour and 1/3 c millet and substituted honey for the sugar. Plus, I don't really follow the directions for prepping it either. I usually just take the dough and spread it out on a greased and dusted-with-cornmeal baking sheet and let it rise from there, then carry on with the directions.

It seems like there's too much liquid ingredients for the amount of flour in the muffins. I'd try either reducing the oil and juice to a 1/4 of a cup each or throwing in more flour. If you want more orange taste, try putting in some grated orange peel.

I'm not familiar with the muffin mix, but make sure you have a tsp of xantham gum in there.

Another trick that I've found really helpful to make your muffins stick together and be more, well, muffin-like is to put in a tsp or so of unflavored gelatin. Knox is gluten-free.

Here's two tips on gluten-free chocolate chip cookies:

1) Use a rice/sorghum/tapioca flour blend (don't forget the sorghum b/c it makes the cookie chewier) w/ a tsp of xantham gum thrown in there.

2) Once you make the batter, stick it in the fridge overnight. It makes the cookies softer because the butter gets cold and doesn't spread out the cookie as much in the oven.

If you do these two things, you can pretty much use the Toll-House recipe.

Sorghum flour is about the best thing that's happened to my family since we went gluten-free. I rarely used white flour before going gluten free, so I wasn't eager to start baking with mixes of white rice flour and starches. I was looking for some nutritional value! Sorghum has really filled the bill, especially in quick breads like muffins and pancakes. I use 3 parts sorghum to 1 part starch - usually tapioca and potato, along with a little guar or xanthan gum. The best part is that I can use this in my own favorite recipes intstead of having to dig around for new gluten free versions of everything we used to love.

For sandwich bread I'm using, from greatest to least, sorghum, sweet brown rice, millet, potato starch and tapioca starch, so, again, I've got a greater proportion of whole grain than bare starches. And as gluten-free bread goes, we think it's pretty good.

I haven't given cookies enough attenion, yet, to I know what I like best for those.

But if I've learned anything from this process, it's that everybody has their own tastes, so your best bet is to just give it a try. It can be hard to be patient with the process; I tend to go in spurts. And I'm trying to make myself take notes every time, 'cause I hate it when something comes out well and I can't remember what I put in it!!

Let us know how it goes for you.

(One more thing about sorghum. We've noticed, at least in the summer, that sorghum baked goods like muffins would go funny if left at room temp for much more than 24 hours. They might last longer now that it's not so warm in the kitchen, but I've taken to freezing anything that doesn't get eaten that first day.)

I've been getting into sorghum flour a lot more lately. I guess because of it's dark color I thought it'd weigh things down, but I haven't noticed that though. Mostly I've been doing a mix of rice flour, tapioca flour, sorghum flour and corn starch w/ a tsp or so of xantham gum mixed in. It's been giving me pretty good results, but for some reason I've been forgetting the darn baking powder lately (that made for a flat plum cake the other day, the taste was pretty good though).

I did put some ground flaxseed into a blueberry bananna bread the other day and that came out pretty yummie.

And as far as remembering to take notes, I'm having the same trouble!

I don't **think** I'm getting glutened, but, I DO think it is going to take me some time to feel better, as I just started the gluten-free diet about a month ago. I just don't think I've started feeling the positive side effects yet.

Ah, that explains it. Yeah, I think it took me like a year before I really started to feel human again (not to mention to get the swing of the gluten-free diet). It really does get better, though. I've been this way for almost 10 years now.

My boyfriend has joked around that if we ever break up, he's going to post on here to find other gluten-free women, HEH. I know he's joking, but in a way I think he means it 'cause he kind of likes having to take care of me and finding out how to cook a certain way for me. He's actually picked up brewing gluten-free beer and mead for me. It kind of makes us, gluten-free girls, special.

But I know what you're talking about. I like to cook and he's never enjoyed restaurants (even before me), so we don't really have a problem there, but the biggest challenge has been trying to teach his parents how to cook for me. His mom's a nurse, so she's picked it up rather quickly, but his dad cooks sometimes and he's not as aware. It's the simple stuff they mess up, like not grilling the burger meat on the same grill AFTER the teryaki steak soaked in sauce I can't eat. That happened a couple of months ago and ended with his mom and dad arguing and me eating a Johnsonville brat cooked in a pan...not the best BBQ I've been to. They're learning, though.

The thing that worries me is that it sounds like you're getting gluten-ed a lot since you're feeling really crappy all the time. Make sure you're eating good gluten-free products and not exposed to CC. Also, don't kiss him if he's been eating/drinking gluten...make him brush his teeth!

Yeah, I wonder about cheese from time to time as well because for awhile I was looking into making my own. To make it, you use enzymes or rennet, which can be from animal sources, but hardly is anymore because it's more expensive. From what I know, they use a "vegetable" source, and that vagueness always scares me. I've tried to e-mail cheese companies to explain their process to me, but haven't had much luck; it's usually a customer service person that doesn't know. But I've been eating the Kirkland block cheese from Costco for about a year and haven't noticed any problems resulting from that.

Thanks for the input. It's definitely changed my thinking...although I still want a KitchenAid mixer.

I'm looking into buying a KitchenAid and their grain mill attachment, but I'm wondering if it's worth the price. Does anyone have and use this for milling their own gluten-free flours?

I just called and they told me the ultra-tabs (the pink tablets) are gluten-free as are the whole product line. Feel free to give them a call though, 1-800-223-0182.

I sometimes have dreams where I forget I'm intolerant, and I'm talking to someone and then I eat a slice of bread. I think in most of those dreams I realize what I've done and freak out, then wake up in a panic. I kind of think most of that is general anxiety dreams and me worrying about an ingestion. But I do know from a psychology of personality class I took in college that physical things in dreams are representations of thoughts and emotions, so it's possible that the gluten thing being present doesn't have anything to do actually with gluten, but is just a BIG symbol of anxiety and stress for me (or possibly unfair feelings or victim feelings or sick feelings, or enter emotion that gluten makes me feel).

We went to a restaurant in Greektown in Chicago last night called Venus, and they had separate gluten-free menus. They even had run out and bought gluten-free crackers (I think they were the Mary's brand) before we arrived, so we got to eat yummie olives and cheese with them!

Everyone was also very well informed, as shown when I tried ordering the flaming cheese appetizer and our waiter said that we couldn't since it has flour in it. A very nice and relaxing dinner experience.

I thought that until I tried Green's - a Belgian brewer.

Had never imagined gluten-free could be so pubworthy. 3 varieties & each was spectacular in its own right, tho one was less my type. Can't remember the names offhand.

Unfortunately, they were 5 or 6 bucks per 500ml bottle!!

It's about time I splurge again

I've been trying to find a place that sells that. How'd you get it?

Also, Sprecher makes a gluten-free beer called Mbege along with the Shakparo. The Mbege has a banana flavor that's a little overwhelming by itself, but with a spicy meal is delicious.

My boyfriend's working on making a gluten-free beer. The first batch was okay, but needs some work.

I spent Saturday afternoon making tamales, following most of this recipe from

Open Original Shared Link.

I used corn husks instead of banana leaves. It takes a couple of hours, but you're left with lots of tamales that freeze and reheat really well. I plan on packing these in lunches.

I really really really love Rose's Wheat Free Bakery in Chicago. They are 100% gluten free and their pizza is fantastic!

I second this. It's not deep dish (but I'm not really sure if there is deep dish gluten-free pizza in Chicago), but the quality is topnotch. Even my bf, who's not a celiac, loves it. Marcello Father and Sons is good in a pinch, but their gluten-free dough is frozen, so it tastes like frozen pizza with really good, fresh toppings. I'd say go to Da Luciano's for any other kind of Italian food other than their pizza.

Yes, I used to think all wines are gluten-free, but I don't believe that's the case any longer. However, I did write to Barefoot Cellars because I really like those wines (cheap, but good) even though I've never had a problem, and this is what I received back:

Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate your interest in Barefoot Cellars.

In response to your inquiry, all of the wines and champagnes produced by E. & J. Gallo Winery in the United States are in compliance with the Food and Drug Administration