This is Part 2 of Celiac Awareness Month: Going Gluten-Free. Click here to read Part 1.
In the first installment of this article about gluten-free living, I talked about myself and my eating habits and how and why my family and I changed to a gluten-free diet to help my brother recovering from autism.
In this second – and final – installment, I am going to write about my experience with gluten-free cooking and eating, in particular regards to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
It’s only been fairly recently, this year, that I’ve been having more practice and experience with traditional gluten-free baking – using a mix of flours and, even more recently, within this month, use xanthum and guar gum: two agents in helping gluten-free baked goods hold together and creating a process similar to the stickiness of gluten. Most of my gluten-free baking experience is based on following the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which also means that I was making not only gluten-free baked goods but also grain-free, starch-free, and sugar-free.
When we started the GFCF diet, I did a little bit of baking but by and large I made nothing particularly spectacular. We didn’t know about using xanthum or guar gum in baking. I remember I made these rice flour cookies and they were good, but as they cooled off, they became rock hard. We couldn’t eat them. I remember I once threw one of them on the table, just to see if I could break it that way, and it remained fully intact. Not even a crumb came loose. It was incredible. If anyone needed a recipe for Hagrid’s rock cakes, that was it.
