Gluten-free Gourmand

I've been baking since before I met my husband ten years ago.  He eats gluten but appreciates my baking efforts and gives me feedback on texture compared to gluten products, which he consumes regularly on his lunch break at work in the form of sandwiches.  I'm a photographer too but he graces the wall of his office with blown-up cell phone shots of half-eaten sandwiches and burritos from his favorite shops.  He likes my baked goods, sure, but who can blame him for going for gluten? This last few weeks as I was testing this recipe, however, something shifted.  I finally heard these words: "you can make me this every weekend for the rest of my life."   I know my husband likes a bread I made when he immediately plans what sandwich to make from it.  Well, he's done that for every test loaf I've made for this bread.  A few days ago, in fact, he ate a breakfast sandwich with this bread, got catered burgers for lunch at work, then came home and requested a st...

Teff Basics The first thing you need to know about teff is that it's a wild card, but only in the best possible way.  Unlike other gluten-free grains, teff is the most flexible GF grain for baking, and it's also the most variable grain I've ever worked with for flavor.  Nutty, earthy, sour, sweet, spicy, and mild are all flavors that I've gotten from teff bread.  I'm still not always sure how to control the flavor, I'm just along for the ride. Teff is one of the world's tiniest grains and has been used in sourdough bread for as long as 40,000 years.  (See this recipe for traditional injera flatbread .)  It comes in two main varieities in the USA, brown and ivory, though many other varieties exist.  It comes originally from Africa. However, Idaho seems to have a climate conducive to growing it, so that is where much of the teff is grown here in the USA.  Bob's Red Mill , Maskal and Judee's are the three brands I buy. (I've included affiliate lin...

It's one of the first things you learn when you start trying to bake gluten-free: use a blend of different flours.  No single flour can work.  Especially for bread. I based all my baking on this principle for years.  More like 1.5 decades.  Then this year, for the very first time, I asked myself: why?  And to single flours: why not?  Thus were born many, many little baby loaves of single flour gf bread. No surprise that it didn't work for everything.  Glutinous rice flour? No way. The surprise was that it did work for almost  everything. 100% Cassava flour.   100% Oat flour. 100% White rice flour.   100% Brown rice flour. 100% Buckwheat flour. Then, the other surprise that shouldn't have been a surprise.  My favored grains were the best of the bunch. 100% Teff flour (this one is sourdough, the rest are yeasted). 100% Sorghum flour.   100% Millet flour. There is a method to my madness.  This whole experiment was made possi...