Bakeworthy

Here's a list of helpful resources for you:

First, every GF baker out there has their own favorite all purpose flour blend. If you have one, feel free to use that instead of mine and see how it turns out in these recipes. If you don't have a favorite GF flour blend yet, here's mine:

This GF Flour blend comes from Danna Korn, the author of Living Gluten Free for Dummies (details below) who is a huge name in the world of GF information and an excellent resource!

I've used this blend for a couple reasons: 1) there's only 3 specialty flours you need to buy, 2) I've had great success substituting this blend into many of my family's old favorite non-gluten free recipes.

Because I do a LOT of baking (family of 6, plus tons of friends always coming over to play/sleep over, etc.) I store my GF flours in large tupperware tubs in my pantry and have not had any issues with them spoiling. As shown above, I have separate containers for white rice flour, tapioca flour, and potato starch (because some other recipes call for these ingredients individually), and then I keep another large tupperware container where I mix my all purpose flour blend so it's ready to use when I need it.

There are some other recipes where I use a different flour blend (French Bread, for example) where additional ingredients are used such as sweet sorghum flour, but for the most part this GF flour blend has worked in just about every recipe I've tried.

I store my xanthan gum in the fridge and add it separately to each recipe as needed.

Xanthan Gum Guidelines:

Unless otherwise specified in the recipe, use these measurements and adjust as necessary.

Breads: 1 heaping teaspoon

Cakes: ½ tsp

Cookies: ¼ tsp.

Muffins: ¾ tsp.

Pizza: 4 tsp.

*when in doubt or making a recipe for the first time, I typically add in 1 whole tsp. per whole batch of cookies/muffins, etc. or 1 tsp. per every 2 cups of flour.

This GF Flour blend does not provide a lot of fiber for your diet. Some bakers will tend to add additional specialty flours and other ingredients to compensate. Because these specialty flours can be rather expensive I don't buy them and instead choose to get more fiber in our diets through other foods that are natural sources of fiber:

Natural Sources of Fiber:

Brown rice

Nuts/seeds

Oatmeal - using GF oats

Popcorn

Fruits and vegetables that are high in fiber include:

-- Apples

-- Beans

-- Berries

-- Broccoli

-- Brussels sprouts

-- Carrots

-- Cauliflower

-- Figs

-- Oranges

-- Pears

-- Peas

-- Prunes

If you're just beginning to cook and bake GF, start with some simple basics. You might even want to try some pre-made all purpose GF flour blends like Pamela's. They're much more expensive, but a great resource if you don't bake that often or aren't interested in making your own GF flour blend.

Once you get the hang of GF cooking and are ready to experiment some more, you can give this GF flour blend from Danna Korn a try, or change it up on your own to a blend your family likes. All of the recipes on this blog (unless otherwise noted) are made with the GF flour blend listed above...and they're all kid tested, family favorites, and since we work with and mentor high school students on a weekly basis, many of these recipes have been tested and loved by 80+ students too!

The information and resources out there regarding living GF can quickly feel overwhelming at first. The purpose of this blog is to provide a collection of recipes that have already been tested & tried, and have proven to taste excellent! They're the recipes we love to make again and again.

My friend Brenda was instrumental in helping me get started in our family's GF conversion, and she has a wonderful blog where she shares additional GF recipes and tons of information on living gluten free:

Joyful Choices

An easy to read, yet very informative book I highly recommend:

If you are interested in additional testing for gluten (for those who do not test positive for celiac disease and have non-celiac gluten intolerance) visit Enterolab where we had our additional testing done:

Many delicious GF foods can be purchased through Amazon.com with their subscribe & save program. You can decide how much of each product you want to receive, how frequently you want to order those items, and you can change those preferences at any time.

The best part? For many items the products are cheaper than buying them locally (at least as far as Idaho is concerned), and they save you from a trip out to the store with your kids because they are delivered right to your door!

What can you buy GF? Tons and tons of items! Here's a few things we buy through Amazon:

The GF Pantry sandwich bread is great for sandwiches, toast, and making breadcrumbs. I use an electric slicer and can usually get about 21 good size slices from 1 loaf. It rises fairly well here in Idaho and my mom & sis have also had great luck with this brand in Tennessee where the elevation is much lower.

The only downside I've seen is that for some sandwiches this bread can tend to fall apart, and the loaf will become more brittle in a few days (even when stored in the fridge). Still and excellent source for toast and breadcrumbs. I usually buy 1 case every 2-3 months.

The Pamela's brand bread has a more dense texture, rises a little less than the GF Pantry brand, and I can ususally get about 18 good slices per loaf. We really love the taste of this bread for sandwiches, toast, croutons, stuffing, and breadcrumbs.

It tends to last a lot longer than the GF Pantry brand and travels better too (in school lunches, etc.). I usually buy 1 case every 1-2 months.

Despite how much I love to bake, sometimes it's nice to be able to just pull out a delicious mix from the pantry! These Pamela's brand chocolate and vanilla cake mixes are the best we've found so far.

We've tried the Betty Crocker and GF Pantry brands and have not liked the taste of either one. With 4 kids at home they're always being invited to birthday parties, school celebrations, etc. where I have to supply their own GF cupcakes. I'll usually make a batch of cupcakes out of these mixes and store them in the freezer so it's easy to pull out one at a time as needed. It only takes about 10 seconds in the microwave to warm them up to room temperature without melting the frosting.

For the vanilla mix, I always add the optional 1/4 tsp. of almond extract to the mix. Both mixes are incredibly soft, moist, and seriously delicious! These mixes are also great to substitute into recipes that call for a pre-made cake mix. I buy 1 case of each flavor once every 6 months, which gives me 2 cake mixes per month.

Kids LOVE mac-n-cheese! 'Nough said. We usually buy 1 case every 6 months, which gives us 12 boxes (or 2 boxes per month). With a large family I usually cook 2 boxes at a time for a side dish at dinner, which means we're only eating mac-n-cheese about once a month.

These quinoa noodles come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. I used to buy the spaghetti noodles in bulk from Amazon, but this past year we've cut back a lot on the amount of pastas we eat, so now I just buy whatever noodles I need at my local Fred Meyer in their GF foods section. If you tend to eat pasta more than once per month, this would still be a great money saving option.

Risotto is another family favorite (quick & easy) side dish we like. We don't eat it all the time, just every once in a while, so I usually buy 1 case every 6 months.

One of the most recent items we've started purchasing through Amazon are these Glutino brand pretzels. They're a really nice alternative to chips, popcorn, etc. and also come in pretzel sticks. They taste exactly like regular pretzels and are great for substituting into recipes.

At our local stores the average price for one bag is a little over $7.00. When I buy them through Amazon, I get a case of 12 bags for $63.89, making them only $5.32 per bag.

We also like the Ener-G brand pretzels. We like to buy them in the 2.65 oz. bags, which are slightly larger than snack size/lunch size and are great for taking along with you. You can buy a case of 20 packs for $24.48, which makes them only $1.23 per bag.

There are MANY, MANY other GF items you can buy through Amazon!!! For items we don't eat a lot of I typically buy them locally, but once you know which items your family loves to eat, check out Amazon's subscriptions to see if you can purchase them cheaper. Every little bit helps!

Do you love to bake? Want to know some additional GF blogs where you can find tons more excellent recipes? Here's a few of my favorites:

First, an excellent source for crockpot recipes for practically anything you could imagine, The Crockpot Lady: