Gluten-free baking

On Saturday, October 10 after we went to IKEA and Potomac Mills, we went to a GF baking demonstration put on by Jules Shepard. As I've mentioned before, I use Jules' GF flour with a lot of my recipes (esp my blueberry muffins). It was fun getting see her demonstration and learn how she makes pizza, baguettes, graham crackers, and pumpkin cheesecake squares. I'm going to try out her pizza recipe at some point. We ate lots of yummy samples too. She said that she will be having another demonstration on bread and pie crusts in November.

After the demonstration we went through Whole Foods to pick-up more flour. They had all sorts of samples of gluten-free food, which was so nice. Generally I can't have any samples at grocery stores. Plus all the Celiacs that were there were also picking up GF food so we chatted a bit about the foods we like. It was the first time I had been around that many other people with Celiac disease and it was nice feeling a sense of community.

Saturday night I made gluten-free bread. We bought 2 mini bread pans at IKEA that I used and instead of using 1/4 cup of oil that the Pamela's bread mix requires, I substituted 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of applesauce. I like the way the loaves turned out. They are much more light and less greasy. They are borderline cakey though.

I also made my Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix, substituting the stick of butter for 1/4 cup of margarine, 1/4 cup of applesauce. They turned out tasty and a bit fluffy, which I expected from reading about substituting fruit for oil. It makes things kind of fluffy/cakey. I am enjoying playing around with baking and I am learning about the effects of the different ingredients.