Something interesting happens when you stop treating gluten-free flour as a substitute and start building recipes around what it can actually do. The cookies hold their shape. The pizza crust crisps. The garlic bread has crunch. And nobody, not once, uses the word “free” when they talk about your baking.
Next time you’re at the store, walk to the free-from aisle and look at the labels.
Free from gluten. Free from wheat. Free from barley. Free from dairy.
Every product defined by what it doesn’t contain.
And then notice how long you’ve been standing there…
Reading the back of every box. Checking every ingredient list. Putting things back on the shelf because you’re not sure.
An hour in the shop JUST to buy flour and bread, and you leave with a bag you don’t trust and a loaf you don’t enjoy.
…after a while you stop being a woman who bakes and you become a woman who can’t eat gluten.
And the food reflects it too.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me three years ago.
Gluten-free flour isn’t a lesser version of wheat flour. It’s a completely different set of ingredients with their own strengths.
Rice flour crisps, potato starch lightens, tapioca gives chew, psyllium husk stretches and binds. Each one does a specific job that wheat flour used to do alone.
Four ingredients. You can buy all of them in one trip. And once they’re in your cupboard, you’ve got everything you need for fifty recipes.
And when you build recipes around what THOSE ingredients can do, instead of treating them as a substitute for something else, the food stops tasting like it’s missing something.
That’s why I stopped looking for substitutes and went straight to the people who actually specialise in this.
A team of chefs who work exclusively with gluten-free flour. Their own blends and ratios. Every recipe designed around what these ingredients can do, not what they’re replacing.
It’s called The Gluten-Free Baking Cookbook by Bloom. Over fifty recipes. Built around what gluten-free flours CAN do, not what they can’t.
The first thing I made was the naan. Soft on the inside soft on the inside with a slightly crispy, bubbly crust.
My neighbour knocked on the door because she could smell it from her garden. She asked for the recipe and didn’t believe me when I told her it was gluten-free.
Then I made the empanadas. Then the cinnamon rolls. Then a pizza with a crust so thin it actually cracked when I folded it.
And nobody, not once, has used the word “free” when they talk about my baking. They don’t know it’s gluten-free. They don’t need to know. They just say “this is really good.”
And I realised somewhere in the last six months I stopped being the woman who can’t eat gluten and went back to being the woman who bakes.