Against the Grain: Extraordinary Gluten-Free Recipes Made from Real, All-Natural Ingredients (2015)

Baking is an interesting interplay between ingredients and how we use them. How we mix them, bake them, and cool them all determine how the final product rises, how it browns, and whether it is light or dense, moist or crumbly. Since gluten-free baked goods often involve multiple flours and some compensation for the absence of gluten, subtle differences can have a major impact on a recipe’s success.

Fundamentally, baked goods are made up of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and leavening agents. Understanding the role these ingredients play in the baking process is the key to successful gluten-free baking and, especially, problem solving and making substitutions. For example, with this knowledge you’ll understand why a solid shortening like butter should be replaced with a solid shortening like coconut oil or palm oil. Or how an egg substitute like a chia slurry may be a good binder but result in a pale crust.

fats and oils

Fats may be solids or liquids. They may come from animal sources like cream and butter or from vegetable sources like coconut oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, and canola oil. The choice of fat, whether it is solid or liquid, and its melting point (the temperature at which a solid turns to liquid) have a significant impact on a baked good. Some of the functions of fats and oils:

LEAVEN: The temperature at which a solid fat begins to melt and the amount of water and air in the fat contribute to the leavening of baked goods. The fat may naturally contain water, as in butter (about 20% water). As the temperature increases during baking, solid fats melt, the water in them becomes steam, and the steam leavens the baked good. The later the fat melts in the bake cycle, the more the fat contributes to the rise. This is because the leavening effect of the fat has a chance to work in tandem with the development of the baked good’s structure.

TENDERIZE: Tenderizing is the opposite of building structure. Although fats leaven, they tend to work against structure development and tenderize baked goods. By coating the proteins and starch granules, fat prevents these two structure builders from coming together. Butter, for example, has a low melting point—it melts very quickly after being heated, at about body temperature—so it makes for an excellent tenderizer. Often recipes will direct you to refrigerate a dough containing butter before baking to extend its melting point to allow for structure development. Cookies are a prime example of this: By refrigerating the dough before baking, you reduce the amount they spread and puff.

MOISTEN: Unlike water, liquid fats such as oil don’t evaporate in the baking process and thus moisten a baked good. For this reason, cakes and muffins made with butter tend to rise more but are drier. Cakes made with oil tend to be the moistest.

CARRY FLAVOR: There is nothing like fat to carry flavor, both by coating the various elements in a baked good and by creating a pleasant mouthfeel that delivers the optimum amount of flavor. Applesauce, for example, can be a good, low-calorie oil substitute in a muffin, but you may find that you have to increase the amount of flavoring to achieve the same depth of taste.

starches

All flours, even nut and seed flours, contain starch. Wheat flour, for example, is about 75% starch, coconut flour is 14%, and even almond flour is 7%. Pure starches, like tapioca starch and potato starch, look like fine powder but are actually made up of granules—tiny, layered balls of starch. The most significant property of starch in gluten-free baking is that it is insoluble in cold water. When you mix pure starch and water together, the starch doesn’t dissolve but becomes suspended in the water and creates a pseudoplastic substance (i.e., a slurry). Though untreated pure starches are insoluble in cold water, some starches are “modified,” which means that most are chemically treated so they absorb cold water and remain stable under a variety of mixing, baking, freezing, and thawing conditions. But starch can also be modified physically through cooking and drying to stabilize it. Functions of starch, whether it is pure starch or a component of a higher-protein flour:

REINFORCE STRUCTURE: As the starch heats during the baking process, the starch granules begin to absorb moisture and swell. This is the process of gelatinization, in which the starch granules swell and thicken into a gel, trapping air bubbles and adding volume and structure to the baked good. Pregelatinizing the starch (heat-treating it before mixing) increases the elasticity of the dough prior to putting it in the oven and, to some degree, mimics the action of gluten in trapping air bubbles.

CREATE CRUMB OR TEXTURE: Yeast feeds on sugar during the fermentation process, and the starch, when it comes in contact with water, releases enzymes that break the starch down into sugar. As the yeast eats the sugar, it produces carbon dioxide and alcohol. The CO₂ leavens the bread and gives it its crumb and bubble-like texture. Meanwhile the alcohol evaporates during proofing or is burned off during baking. Starch in nonyeast breads also adds to the crumb by gelling and trapping air and water in the dough, as described above.

AID IN MOISTURE RETENTION: When starch granules are heated, they swell and absorb liquids, infusing the dough with moisture. As the bread cools, the gel created by water absorption begins to return to its granular state. When stale bread is reheated in an oven, the starch once again absorbs water and gelatinizes, improving its taste.

protein

Gluten, which we are all avoiding, is protein. Proteins are chains of amino acids, which are the building blocks of life. Proteins are also the building blocks of baked goods, both wheat-based and gluten-free. Xanthan and guar gums are routinely used as gluten replacements, yet neither contains a measurable amount of protein. Some gluten-free flours are high in protein, which certainly can help, but they often are included as a percentage of an overall flour mixture and often require some type of binder like eggs or starch gels to retain moisture. Flours made from rolled oats (14%) and flax meal (23%) are high in protein and have good binding properties.

Ingredients like eggs, dried milk powder, and whey protein are often added to gluten-free bread recipes. (For the dairy-free recipes in this book—they’re flagged with this icon —it may be coconut milk.) These are all good sources of protein and act as building blocks in developing structure. This section describes the function of protein in general; eggs, which have very specific functions, are described in the section that follows. Functions of protein in baked goods:

BUILD STRUCTURE: Proteins do the opposite of tenderizers. They toughen the dough and build the framework for the structure of baked goods. Remember in the old gluten-heavy days when high-protein wheat flour worked great for breads, but made tough, rubbery pie crusts? That is because of the high protein content. After many years of baking gluten-free, I’ve found we definitely have the advantage when it comes to pie crusts and other tender baked goods.

ENHANCE BROWNING: During the final stages of baking, when the crust has reached a high enough temperature, the carbohydrates (in the form of sugar) and the amino acids (in the protein) combine to brown the crust and produce the aroma we associate with baked bread. This process, known as the Maillard reaction, is also responsible for the browning and flavor of roasted meats. Baked goods like cakes and muffins will remain pale and not develop a crusty, flavorful exterior with low-protein gluten-free flours.

eggs

Eggs are proteins in a category all their own when it comes to baking, particularly gluten-free baking. Eggs are the basis of many flourless recipes, custards, meringues, and angel food and sponge cakes, and are an excellent multipurpose source of protein that, depending on the recipe, binds, tenderizes, moisturizes, dries, and/or leavens baked goods. Whole eggs are good for certain recipes; some recipes call for just yolks or whites; and some call for both, but added separately.

WHOLE EGGS: Egg proteins in their natural state are separate little coils. When exposed to heat, when vigorously mixed, or when in contact with acidity, the coils unwind, attach themselves to other proteins, and form a web. This is how liquid raw eggs become solid and how egg whites are whipped into a meringue. These webs are the reason eggs are not only superb leavening agents and binders but also an important source of structure in gluten-free baked goods. Eggs provide steam for leavening and moisture for starches—yolks are half water and whites are almost all water. Eggs improve the flavor, texture, and color of baked goods, and contribute necessary protein to browning. Egg washes, for example, often facilitate the browning of baked goods such as brioche.

EGG YOLKS: The yolk contains all of the fat in an egg, and it is also a natural source of lecithin. You may recognize soy lecithin as an ingredient in almost all commercially available chocolate bars—that is because lecithin is an emulsifier that binds together ingredients that wouldn’t normally stick together. In chocolate it binds cocoa and sugar solids with cocoa butter. Egg lecithin is indispensable for emulsifying oil and water in foods like mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce. Since starch is insoluble in cold water, egg yolks play a central role in pulling together gluten-free doughs and batters.

EGG WHITES: Also known as albumen, egg whites are made up of mostly water and a little more than half of the egg’s proteins. When beaten, the proteins in egg whites unwind, and a protein film forms around air bubbles. This is the basis of foams that provide both lightness and structure in baked goods like meringues, sponge cakes, fluffy pancakes, and soufflés. I use egg whites in many pie doughs to both bind the dough into a workable consistency and to make it flakey. Although most proteins are round, egg whites contain fibrous proteins similar to gluten. Is it any surprise that egg whites are so useful here? Egg whites play many other roles: as drying and crisping agents in recipes like crackers, as a shiny glaze for adhering seeds to the top of breads, and as an effective way to provide protein but lower fat.