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| Crunchy outside, chewy inside, gluten-free vegan chocolate cookies. |
I have a new cookie recipe to share today. A cocoa infused cookie studded with semi-sweet chocolate chips. A cookie that tastes like a brownie- if a brownie was slightly crispy and crunchy on the outside, and chewy soft on the inside. You could say, it's a brownie with a cookie texture.
Texture is a big deal in gluten-free baking.
It's no secret that giving gluten the boot also means giving texture, stretch, and structure the old heave-ho, right along with it. First timers bite into gluten-free goodies and pause. They chew. Their eyes widen and dart to the side as they search for a word to describe
exactly what it is they are chewing.
The word most often used to describe something gluten-free? Gummy. Or worse. Cardboard. Attributes one does not necessarily associate with pleasure. With nourishment. With flavor.
Which is why I am here.
It was nearly ten eleven twelve years ago (December 2001) when I broke up with the abusive protein known as gluten.Our love affair had been a passionate, tumultuous ride. Thrilling and deliciously seductive. From twirling garlic laden Italian pasta to rustic bread baking, we had nurtured a decades long love affair. Four and a half decades, in fact. And I'm not embarrassed to admit, I was deep into it. Head over heels. And dizzy in denial. Until symptoms could no longer be ignored.
And it turned out I felt better without gluten. Not just better. Transformed.
So I bought a gluten-free cookbook
and started baking (and no offense to the wonderful woman who was- literally- a gluten-free pioneer and wrote several best selling gluten-free cookbooks
, but). I determined quite quickly that rice flour and starches do not a gourmet treat make.
Truth is, ten years ago, baking gluten-free meant using rice flour and starches. We didn't have the higher protein, whole grain choices we have today. Oh, they were there, lurking. Buckwheat flour and almond meal have long, delicious traditions in the old country (I loved the cookbook Fabulous and Flourless
). But packaged blends and gluten-free mixes favored cheaper rice flour and starches (and even today, most g-free mixes rely on this old school stand-by, with predictably gummy results). So the cardboard moniker stuck. And me?
My hopes for baking without gluten deflated like a sad little souffle.
Until
Bob's Red Mill brought us
whole grain gluten-free grains. Grains with protein and fiber. Grains with nutrition. Grains with flavor. And yes- texture! Milled with artisan care in a gluten-free facility. And no, this is not a sponsored endorsement. This is personal. By now you should know I'm not the kind of blogger who can be seduced by a coupon offer. Or a free t-shirt. I've been doing this awhile.
I have an opinion.
An informed opinion. Based on nine-plus years of gluten-free baking.
Which ought to be worth more than a coupon or a sample.
So I tell it like it is.
Readers sometimes ask me for recipe substitutions. These can be grouped into a handful of popular themes: - I use too many different flours- they want to use one.
- I use buckwheat flour- they wouldn't touch buckwheat flour like they wouldn't wear Crocs
. - I use sorghum flour- they can't find sorghum flour (for that, I am truly, sympathetically sorry!).
- I use almond meal or coconut flour (fabulous protein and fiber)- and they are allergic (once again, profoundly sorry!).
So they sub. They use rice flour and starches in my recipes. And return to tell me the texture is gummy. Or as dense as cardboard. Exactly. Flour choices matter. And so does execution. So I thought I'd address this today, and offer some quick, short advice on gluten-free baking- and substitutions.
Gluten-free baking is more of an art than a science.
What this means- there is no one perfect, preset formula for a recipe. Why?
There is weather, Bubela. There is humidity. Winter heat dryness. There is how you store your flours (in the humid fridge- or in the cupboard next to the stove?). Dampish flours need less liquid added. There is temperature. The temperature of the ingredients themselves. The ambient temperature of your kitchen (is it drafty and damp, or hot and humid, or do you use air conditioning?). And then, perhaps the most influential of all, there is the temperature of your oven (which, surprisingly, can vary, especially for those of us using cheap stoves in rental apartments). Which is why I recommend using an oven thermometer
. Temperature influences baking time.
With gluten-free baking, the relationship of dry ingredients to wet is crucial. Even two tablespoons more/or less liquid can make the difference between a gummy center, and a fluffy crumb. Here's what I do- I add my liquid to the whisked dry ingredients slowly, a little at a time, and beat until it comes to the right consistency. Don't dump all the liquid in at once. Sometimes you need a tablespoon less liquid. Sometimes, a few tablespoons more.
How to judge the right consistency?
Intuition and experience helps. But in general, cake and cupcake batters are slightly thicker than wheat based cake batters. You're not looking for thin ribbons of batter like the old days. I find the best gluten-free cake batters tip toward a muffin batter consistency.
Bread dough and pizza dough is more like muffin batter.
Cookie dough is stiff and sturdy and a wee bit sticky (except in a cut-out recipe, which needs to be more pliable).
For baking substitution help (because
of course, I know how hard it is to bake gluten-free with allergies- you
know I love you, my multi-allergic sisters and brothers, I'm one of you!) please use my post on
Baking Substitutions and Help as a guide to subbing problematic ingredients in my recipes.
And for vegans, and non-vegans, I have found my recipes perform well with eggs and without, using an egg substitute. For a powdered egg sub I use Ener-G Egg Replacer
- if you use a different one, you may need to adjust starches/liquids. Many readers report good luck using flax seed gel- though I have no expertise with flax. And yes, for dairy and non-dairy, I find it's an easy one-to-one sub. I am dairy-free, so if you prefer using butter and milk in my vegan recipes- that will work just fine. Choose cruelty-free organic eggs and dairy whenever possible.
For detailed info on gluten-free flour choices and how to make your own g-free flour blends that don't suck, see my
Gluten-Free Baking Tips post.
Finally- to repeat it--- experience counts.
Even our failures bring us one step closer to better results. They teach us. Baking gluten-free is a process. It is not a finite, closed experiment. It is more like jazz than strophic form. Learning an intuitive sense of improvisation is worth the effort.
So, go bake some cookies with whole grain flours and share them with someone you love, okay?
Read more + get the recipe >>
