Assembling For The Allergy-Ridden

Being someone with food allergies involves a delicate dance of double-checking restaurant contamination, pre-planning menu orders after closely analyzing ingredients, and, most of all, experimentation that feels like a large leap of faith. Since childhood, I’ve spent years searching for the perfect— or at least distinctly palatable— gluten-free baked goods, ones that manage to mimic the fluff and spice of a glutinous cinnamon bun and the spring and roughness of an authentic sourdough crust. Trying to navigate the world of baking not just with a gluten allergy but with a dairy intolerance as well and you’ve got exactly two shelves of the grocery store for you, filled with crusty shapes that slightly resemble bread and mysterious orbs that claim to be graham crackers. Of course, the quality of allergen-friendly baked goods has evolved enormously over the years. What had started as one shelf half-heartedly complete with coconut macaroons and sour and tough brown rice bread, has now evolved into aisles of the newest allergen innovations. Whenever I peruse grocery store aisles, gluten-free goods now resemble what my allergies crave amidst nostalgia. Yet, during all these years of shift and change in the allergen market, I began to take matters into my own hands. I didn’t need to wait for Whole Foods to craft a cookie that was convincingly buttery instead of being overwhelmingly crumbly. Viva la résistance, I thought to myself as I took hold of the spatula and my destiny. 

And so, I began to explore, experimenting with a variety of different gluten-free flours and dairy substitutes. Some flours were rather grainy and instead of feeling that I was finally indulging in a craving, raising a middle finger to the allergies that plagued my intestines and brain, the dessert would taste more like something crafted during the Great Depression. Still, through trial and tribulation, I pressed on. After years of perfecting recipes and revamping solutions and substitutes, I have finally found brands and tips that work, finally creating gluten and dairy-free recipes that are as close to a not-gluten-free taste as possible. Here are my tips and tricks for crafting allergen-friendly desserts. 

First, it is important to remember that baking allergen-friendly desserts is a fussy process. It is frustrating, often incredibly so. It is a process that requires an open mind and many bouts of failure. Allergen baking is chemistry even more so than non-allergen baking. Each ingredient’s unique chemical composition, a composition I might stress that is very different from its glutinous and dairy counterparts, is highly sensitive, interacting positively one time and negatively another. A paramount suggestion I have is that when you have a successful allergen bake, write down the recipe in exactly the amounts you used. Sometimes the amounts on certain recipes aren’t quite right. For instance, because of the dryer nature of gluten-free flour, you may need to add more milk or liquid to form the right consistency. It is important to note those proportional differences so you have it for reference if you should wish to bake that good again. Furthermore, it is also critical to acknowledge that I recommend sticking with dairy-free and gluten-free when you are baking rather than baking gluten-free with dairy. Gluten-free flour and dairy, especially when making cookies, tend to become more prone to spreading and a loose texture. That is why I have found using vegan substitutes with gluten-free flour holds up the texture to a more able-to-be-baked and shaped firmness. It is critical when baking gluten-free cookies that you use vegan butter, otherwise the chemical interaction of the multi-plant,seed and grain flour, and the regular butter will cause a spreading, melting disaster.  

In terms of allergen-friendly brands to use when baking, I highly recommend the flour blend “Cup 4 Cup,” which was created by professional culinary researchers with a background in nutritional science, Lena Kwak and Thomas Keller. Made from a combination of non-wheat, non-glutinous flours, starches, and other ingredients, Cup 4 Cup is designed to be a 1:1 substitute for all-purpose and/or wheat flour in most recipes. The mix of different starches and flours, combined with the pre-added xanthan gum, makes Cup 4 Cup an easy pick. No longer do you have to struggle with mixing a variety of flours together to create a blend. It is all scientifically there for you! What makes this particular gluten-free flour so quintessential is that its blend lacks a grainy taste. It is soft, fluffy, and mimics a slightly more starchy gluten. Of all the gluten-free flours I have tried, Cup 4 Cup is the preeminent gluten-free blend. To make your recipe vegan, I suggest using Earth Balance “butter.” Earth Balance “butter” is a mixture of vegetable oils, water, and other similar ingredients. One might think that the use of vegetable oil makes for an oily and unpleasant taste, but I can attest that once the butter is melted, its smell is an oily, vaguely buttery combination that makes the baker’s trepidations disappear. I love this faux butter for its ability to also be malleable. While traditional dairy butter takes quite a while to get to room temp, Earth Balance warms up quickly, thus reducing time barriers to baking. The taste of Earth Balance is creamy with a hint of oil, but nothing off putting. If anything, the use of vegetable oils, in my opinion and experience, adds to moisture in particular baked goods. 

If you are looking for a delicious baked good but you are in a bit of a time crunch, there are some excellent gluten-free, dairy-free boxed mixes that I highly recommend. If you are looking for a slightly sour but springy open-textured loaf of bread, I recommend using Pamela’s Bread Mix. The mix is a blended flour variety, which aids in creating an ideal textured loaf. If you have been an allergy individual who has lamented over countless bread baking attempts that have only ended in dense and bland loaves, then Pamela is the answer to your predicament. The result is a more open texture. However, gluten free bread will always be denser than non-glutinous loaves, but of all the breads I’ve tried to make, Pamela’s mix always delights both my taste buds and my obsession with texture. If you are looking for another great easy to throw together gluten-free bread mix, try King Arthur’s bread and pizza mix. Again, the result is not a dense, dry, flavorless loaf. I recommend eating homemade gluten-free bread either the day you bake it or within a few, as gluten free bread does dry up and harden faster than glutinous loaves. If you are not looking to stressfully smash calories in during a small window, I suggest cutting the loaf and wrapping each piece individually in tinfoil, placing all wrapped pieces in a plastic bag before freezing. When you feel like indulging in a slice, pull one slice out, place it in the toaster or microwave, and you can awaken and once again achieve a more open, freshly baked bread texture. If you are looking for good gluten free sweet and savory baked good recipes that require more labor, I suggest visiting the food blog websites, “Gluten Free on A Shoestring” and “The Loopy Whisk.” Both websites have produced some of my favorite gluten-free recipes and more specifically, the most memorably positive gluten-free textures, in my experimental baking tenure. As a bonus, the authors of these recipe blog websites provide in-depth but easy to understand insight into substitutions and extra ingredients, such as different roots, powders, and seed flours to add that provide chemical stimulation to increase a fluffy, open, less dense texture. “Gluten Free on a Shoestring” also provides exact measurement changes if you are making the recipes vegan, providing ease for the mathematically challenged of us. Many of these ingredients are ones that I did not know of, but have truly made gluten-free go from finicky to fantastic and from inconsistent to incredible. Texture is a key thing in gluten-free baking and I believe that texture ultimately is what impacts our taste and by extension, people’s levels of enjoyment and perceptions of gluten-free goods. 

We in the gluten-free, dairy-free, and allergen communities have been highly misunderstood for too long. We spent too much time forcibly relocated to misconceptions and stereotypes of dense balls of crackly goo that a hippy mom hands out to a trepidation gathering. We are forced into corners of Parmesan crisps, meringue, and soggy fruit cups, where we’re second thought to the strands of gluten floating in the air. We are so much more than that. We, the allergen-plagued, are problem solvers of another dimension, formulating new conceptions of what it means to be “free from” and in resisting, we never ignore or sacrifice what we ultimately desire. We demand deliciousness and nothing more and thus concoct when others cannot. Our stomachs may hate the aftereffects of a sourdough cinnamon roll, but our minds are constantly trying to reconstruct the flavor of buttery cinnamon sugar on our tongues and the pull of the fluffy dough between our lips. In fact, being allergy-ridden means that when we finally find something that both delights our senses and our strong sense of nostalgia, we feel even more appreciative of the world of baking and culinary creation. Having food allergies is not a death sentence or an embarrassment. All it is is just a detour en route to the dining room table or the plate. I hope that I have made your journey a little easier and all that more fun.

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• dairyfree
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