Gluten-Free on a Shoestring

INTRODUCTION

IT’S NO SURPRISE THAT, NO MATTER HOW SPACIOUS THE HOUSE, GUESTS AND FAMILY MEMBERS ALWAYS HEAD for the kitchen like homing pigeons. That’s where all the action is. And it’s the cook who sets it in motion.

A good meal can leave a lasting impression; it can even make your day. And turning out a favorite dessert can make an otherwise ordinary meal into something memorable. All you need is some standard kitchen equipment, plus a few basic skills and recipes, and you’re on your way. When you have the ability to cook, you can reward yourself and your family with homemade treats, tailoring every last detail to your own tastes. You can perk up your entire office with a simple batch of cookies or cupcakes. Or cater to a child’s special birthday wish. Bake a loaf of bread, and you’ll make any house smell like a home. As long as your pantry is well stocked with the basics, nothing is out of reach.

And none of that has to change when you’re gluten-free.

First, a few basics. Gluten is the protein found primarily in wheat, barley, and rye. It is found in all conventional breads and pastas and is also frequently hidden in ingredients such as maltodextrin and dextrin, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, malt or malt flavoring, and modified food starch, all of which are often derived from gluten-containing ingredients. Increasingly, there are all sorts of people who eat a gluten-free diet in varying degrees, from the strictly gluten-free to the occasional gluten-free-food dabbler. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease in which, in response to the ingestion of gluten, the body attacks itself by destroying villi, the finger-like projections in the lining of the small intestine that are responsible for the absorption of nutrients. The only treatment is to follow a completely gluten-free diet. Recent research indicates that celiac disease affects as many as 1 in 133 Americans, most of whom remain undiagnosed. Many others who do not have celiac disease choose to enjoy the benefits of a gluten-free diet as well, including those suffering from nonceliac gluten sensitivity, family members of celiacs, and those seeking various other general health benefits from the diet. Whether you’re new to eating gluten-free and fear that the creative foodie part of your life is gone forever, or you’ve been gluten-free for a while and have resigned yourself to lowered expectations and expensive, store-bought gluten-free foods that leave you cold, help is on the way. Everything’s going to be just fine.

All that being said, I must admit that it took me loads of trial and error to come to this state of gluten-free zen. When we discovered that my second child, Jonathan, had celiac disease, although I was thankful his condition didn’t warrant a lifetime of expensive medications with possible side effects, I honestly didn’t know the first thing about eating gluten-free. And I worried about how his dietary restriction would affect our entire family. So I started out by sticking with naturally gluten-free foods like vegetables, meats, and vegetarian proteins, like rice and beans. The only baking I was confident enough to try was with gluten-free mixes. At the time, I thought mixes were my only hope, and, frankly, I was grateful to have them. Without much experience with conventional mixes upon which to base my expectations, I just gave it a whirl. I don’t want to tell tales out of school and spell out exactly which brands I tried, but suffice it to say that there was some weeping (me) and some queasiness (me, the kids, my husband). And there was also the whole unpleasantness (my husband and me) about how much these experiments were costing us (a lot). I paid over $6 for a gluten-free cake mix, plus the cost of shipping and the cost of the ingredients that I had to add to the mix to make the cake. King Arthur Flour’s gluten-free bread mix costs $7.99—just for the mix! But I took it on the chin and kept searching, assuming I just hadn’t yet stumbled upon the right mix.

Time and time again, our thoughts turned wistfully to sandwiches. Initially we relied on packaged gluten-free bread. I remember this one particular bread that could be cured of that dense, gluten-free sponginess by toasting it. The only problem was that you had to eat it within moments. If you took the time, all five minutes of it, to actually make a simple turkey sandwich, the bread would spring back to its pretoasted, spongy form. I have to imagine that if a company set out intending to make bread with such unyielding resilience, they would have failed miserably.

I tried looking on the bright side: it looked good. This was one handsome slice of gluten-free bread. If you confined yourself to visual observation of a slice, it was a dead ringer for edible bread. And there appeared to be a whole community of gluten-free people online who thought this was the best gluten-free bread, upon whose endorsements we had based our mail order of a whole case of the stuff. But sadly, our best efforts to eat each slice straight out of the toaster proved impossible in the long run. And at about $7 a loaf, plus shipping, it was incompatible with our food budget.

All the while, our family’s monthly expenses were growing by leaps and bounds, and we just weren’t eating well. None of us felt quite right, but we didn’t yet know where to turn.

Out of necessity I began to search, mostly online, for gluten-free recipes that I could make from scratch. At first, I experienced a renaissance of kitchen confidence, but it was short-lived. Many of the gluten-free recipes I found were full of ingredients that proved obscure and expensive, and the instructions were so complicated that, at times, I felt like I needed a degree in chemistry just to understand them. Did it really have to be so difficult? I started wondering if I couldn’t do a better job on my own. After all, I was armed with necessity, the mother of invention.

Feeling otherwise trapped, I committed myself to trying to convert my repertoire of conventional recipes to gluten-free goodness. My first attempts at baking from scratch were, well, dismal failures. My cakes and bread tasted terrible, not to mention that they were these sad, weepy piles of dough. My cupcakes crumbled into tiny bits, along with my hopefulness (cue the violins). Finally, I started learning about all-purpose gluten-free flours that, with the addition of a binder called xanthan gum and some ratio modifications, could substitute cup for cup for conventional wheat flours. After two tries, I finally made a gluten-free carrot cake that looked pretty handsome—and tasted as good as it looked. I was back in business!

After a few more successes, and fewer outright failures, my experiments grew bolder. I began to hone my skills and refine my recipes, making them better and better. Finally, I realized that the sky was the limit—gluten-free or not—and that gluten-free cooking and baking doesn’t have to be a daunting challenge when you focus on the right ingredients and have the right instruction.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN GLUTEN-FREE WITHOUT REALLY TRYING

I started to realize that with a few simple tricks, I could reduce my family’s grocery bills significantly, something that became more and more important as we felt the effects of the new economy. I went from spending, on average, $175 a week for groceries to spending less than $100 a week. And not only were we eating better, the food seemed more plentiful. Oddly enough, even though my husband and I were part of a celiac support group and more and more people we knew were avoiding gluten for one reason or another, the cost of living gluten-free was something that nobody seemed to be talking about—at least not at first. Only when I began to mention how we were saving all this money, always to a surprised and eager audience, did I begin to realize what an important, but under-the-radar, issue this had become. Since everyone wanted to know my secrets, I started a blog called Gluten-Free on a Shoestring. In short order, I began to enjoy gluten-free cooking and baking more and more. As both the blog and my collection of recipes grew, I began receiving scores of e-mails from readers, enthusiastic that saving money and living a gluten-free life full of flavor and possibilities were not mutually exclusive after all.

This book, as a natural extension of the website, represents the culmination of many years of hard work, experimentation, and perfection of recipes—created in response to the demands of both my family and my readers. You, too, can be in on the secret and learn to feed yourself, your family, and your guests fabulous gluten-free food—while still keeping an eye on the household budget. Think of how liberating it will be to satisfy your heart’s desire in the kitchen, no worries about gluten or about the grocery bill. You’ll soon feel freer to entertain, knowing that you can make a tasty, satisfying meal, complete with dessert, for everyone, even the most discriminating foodies.

The recipes in this book are not about making time-consuming, complicated, restaurant-quality food. They’re about traditional staples, easy dinners, and comfort foods—the things that we all crave these days (the gluten-free among us even more). This approach will not only save you money but will allow you to feed your family consciously and deliberately—something that we all should do more often. And you’ll reap the rewards when you hear your children literally sing while they eat their dinner, as do mine.

This cookbook is the flagship book of what has grown into the Shoestring cookbook series. It’s the cookbook that started it all, and it proved a point. We want to eat well, to feed our families and friends well. We also want to prove something to the world: “good for gluten-free” simply isn’t good enough. Our food must be good, period.

The first edition of this book was originally published in 2011. Four other cookbooks have followed, and the blog has grown by leaps and bounds. The mission is the same, and only the scope has broadened.

In that spirit, in addition to providing recipes, this book will also do the following:

There are a few simple skills you can master that will dramatically expand your meal repertoire, and this book will share all of them. There is no need to get bored just because you’re on a budget. Together, in this book, we’ll make simple but delicious pancakes and blueberry muffins, soft pretzels and wontons, the perfect chocolate chip cookies and the ultimate in birthday cakes. Step by step, in the plain language of everyday home cooking, I’ll show you how to make the comfort foods my family and I love, like chicken potpie and macaroni and cheese. You’ll know how to bake a delicious apple pie when apples are abundant and even make your own fresh pasta—all gluten-free, all delicious and inexpensive.

I think you’ll also be surprised when you learn how easy it is, with the right instruction and a little bit of practice, to make yeast breads, including never-fail white sandwich bread for packing everyone’s lunches. Making your own fresh bread is a uniquely joyful experience, and when you settle upon an all-purpose gluten-free flour blend you love, you’ll be able to make everything in this book easily and on a budget. Some bake with a complicated bevy of exotic gluten-free flours, tweaking recipes here and there with a tablespoon of some flour I have never heard of before. When I go down that road, I always end up with remnants of flours in the wrong proportions, followed by a major bout of kitchen shyness, thinking I’ve lost my touch. Trust me: stick with the basics, and you’ll feel more confident and competent, both about your budget and about the way that kitchen of yours hums. You’ll be amazed how much more enjoyable life is when you simplify how you cook and how your family eats. Never underestimate the power of kitchen confidence.

Remember: Life is sweet and fun. Gluten is expendable.

Love,

Nicole