It's a Thing!

 

As if life around here isn't complicated enough, now I have a new challenge: finding delicious gluten free and dairy free recipes.

I just recently learned that Bubba is gluten intolerant. We were already dealing with his casein allergy (a milk protein), and his peanut allergy, and my soy allergy. Yes, with each additional allergy, entire food categories are eliminated.

If you have ever been quoted as saying: "I just love pizza. I can't live without it, " watch out, you just might find yourself having to cut gluten (pizza crust has that) and dairy (um, hopefully I don't have to mention that cheese is a dairy food item) from your diet.

But I digress. What in the world is xanthan gum? That is the question. At our house, we spend a lot of time reading food labels, ingredient lists, nutritional information, recipes, and we do a lot of cooking from scratch. It's partly because we're concerned with eating a healthful diet, but mostly because we need to watch out for allergens in our food. While reading food labels we frequently would encounter xanthan gum. We would laugh about it, wonder what it was, joked about how delicious it was and about how we were all out of it and needed to add it to our shopping list. Little did we know that it was "a thing." Yes, you can walk into a store and actually buy xanthan gum.

And how do I know this? Because I found myself in the position of having to bake gluten free/dairy free brownies, and I learned that you need to use xanthan gum when you bake with wheat flour substitutes. It has something to do with having to make up for the elasticity that is lost when gluten is taken out of a recipe. Now, I can't speak for other recipes, but the first gluten free/dairy free brownie recipe I tried did not turn out too well. The brownies ended up being dense, crunchy, and not very chocolaty. And since I used oat flour, they sort of tasted like really bad oatmeal cookies.

However; being one to not give up so easily, the adventure will continue. I will explore strange new ways of baking, I will seek out new recipes and new ingredients, I will boldly bake what I have  never baked before.

Let's hope that it's yummy!