Gluten-Free Goddess Zucchini Bread

Delicious gluten-free zucchini bread.

A Bread Even Gluten-Eaters Will Love

Sharing a favorite summer recipe here on Gluten-Free Goddess-- a cinnamon laced tea bread made with garden fresh zucchini. You'll love it. And so will everyone else.

GFG Tips on gluten-free bread baking:

Make sure your batter isn't cold when you put it into the oven. If you keep your flours in the fridge, for instance, this will cool down your batter quite a bit.

If you find your batter is cooler than room temperature, allow the batter to rest in the pan near the pre-heating stove and let it come to room temperature before you place the bread pan in the oven to bake (I also do this with cakes sometimes).

The first time I tried making gluten-free zucchini bread I did not press the moisture out of the shredded zucchini and my loaf was a tad gummy in the middle from too much moisture. So pat those zucchini strands dry, Campers.

If you find your tea breads and cakes turning out gummy, or falling after baking, you may want to take your oven's temperature- some ovens never quite reach the proper temperature. You can combat this by baking longer, or upping the temp a bit. If the oven temp is not the issue, then start adding a tablespoon or two less liquid to your batters (you may live in a humid climate and your flours may be absorbing moisture; too much moisture can make for a gummy product). 

Browse oven thermometers here at Amazon. 

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Gluten-Free Vanilla Cornbread Recipe

A wedge of vanilla cornbread. Gluten-free yum.

Playing Dress Up.

This is not your average weeknight cornbread. You know, the one you toss together from a gluten-free mix to serve with a bowl of white chicken chili as you catch up with Mad Men. Nope. This tender cake-like cornbread is a pinch more elegant. A gently sweet treat you might serve at high tea with a gaggle of girlfriends (or low tea, depending upon the company you keep). Picture fresh cut flowers on the table, stemmed glasses filled with dewy fresh berries, a pot of Earl Grey tea or organic chamomile buds steeping beneath a cozy.

This is the sort of cornbread that begs to be served with style. That longs to be gussied up. The kind of cornbread you eat with a fork.

A cornbread that secretly dreams of being cake.

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Gluten-Free Irish Soda Bread Recipe

Tender, delicious gluten-free soda bread.

Irish Soda Bread Love

For bakers using wheat, Irish soda bread is one of the easiest no-fuss breads to throw together. The gluten in the wheat works its magic to bind the quick-rising dough without yeast. But if gluten is no longer in the equation, creating a tender loaf of Irish soda bread is a tad more complicated. Gluten-free quick breads can be crumbly and dry. Especially if you use the old school white rice flour and starch combo.

Lucky for us, we have several newer alternative flours to choose from. Millet, sorghum, buckwheat, coconut, brown rice, and quinoa flours have better taste, more protein, and a superior texture than the old school stand-by white rice flour.

What do I have against white rice flour? It might simply boil down to personal taste. After baking gluten-free for awhile, one develops personal preferences. I don't like the cooked rice taste, or texture, that rice flour imparts. Ditto for bean flour which tastes vaguely metallic. (And I don't care how much protein and how few carbs a raw bean has, okay?)

So I experiment and tweak my recipes. I try a new flour combination and entertain intuition. I start thinking about how a recipe crumbles a bit, so I add some honey because honey is a humectant. And Hello! The bread bakes up tender and moist (agave does the same thing, by the way).

This whole process of gluten-free baking is a process.

And as an artist, I cultivate a deep affection for process. So even though I have a perfectly acceptable gluten-free Irish Soda Bread recipe on the blog, and a nifty new school Gypsy Soda Bread recipe, I felt the need to try again this week and experiment with a new formula. And I came up with a slightly sweet and tender loaf that is rice-free and vegan. No eggs. No milk. And guess what? 

It's better than better. It's scrumptious.

My husband declared it his favorite gluten-free bread to date (as he chowed down on a wedge of this soda bread grilled in a dab of olive oil). So why do I tweak recipes? Why do I make it complicated? Why add a touch of honey when I already use sugar? Why do I add millet when I have sorghum?

This is why.

Because there's always room for improvement in gluten-free baking. Recipes aren't precious. They're not written in stone like a commandment. A recipe is more like a poem. Set to music. And the music?

Jazz, baby.

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Irish Soda Bread Buns

Gluten-Free Goddess Irish-inspired soda bread bun rolls.

To all you brave and plucky souls weathering this record breaking Winter... hold on. Spring is poised to sprout. I just know it. Despite the frigid fingers of wind that unwrap your scarf and creep-sneak down your spine. Despite the tawny, snow beaten grass that twists between wind blown twigs and scattered patches of silvered ice to the edge of the winter weary woods. Despite the wild and wooly roar of March's lion--- you can feel it. Right?

Green is coming.

Happy (almost- it's coming- hold on) Spring!

And here is an Irish soda bread inspired bun recipe to celebrate.


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Gluten-Free Irish Soda Bread (and baking tips)

This Spotted Dog Irish bread is yeast-free and gluten-free.

The Mother of Invention

If I call this new gluten-free bread an Irish soda bread, traditionalists will snicker. Raisins are not at all traditional in an Irish soda bread, you see. If a soda bread has raisins in it, it's called Spotted Dog over yonder, cross the pond in the Emerald Isle (or so I'm told). I never knew this, growing up on the white clapboard wilds of the Connecticut shore. I was blithely ignorant of this quaint canine moniker, despite a hefty streak of familial Irish blood (we ate more pierogi and kielbasa than Irish soda bread and tea). And out on my own- when I started baking my tender little eighteen year old heart out- my Irish soda bread had raisins.

And why not?

When it comes to traditions, I'm the first to admit- I am an upstart. I wiggle and chafe beneath constraint and "should" like an itchy school girl with pinching new shoes. I admire traditions. From afar. At least, in theory. In an abstract, symbolic way. The meaning and the message is more interesting to me than formula. When it comes to formula, I usually prefer to wing it.

Which is why I enjoy gluten-free baking.

My skill set groove runs deep on the intuitive side.

I bake like I paint. Observing. Listening. Responding to what is in front of me. If a recipe calls for x amount of flour and I sense the dough is too wet, I'll add more flour until the dough feels "right" to me. Experience helps. No doubt about it. The process of trial and error gives you a feel for gluten-free dough, an inkling about the muffin batter and how it might behave on any given day. Which varies, I hate to tell you.

So I pay attention to elements like humidity, and room temperature. Weather.

Bread dough will behave differently on a hot and humid day than it will on a windy, cold one. Your kitchen changes with the seasons, you know. So recipes may have to change a wee bit, too. The amount of milk or brown rice flour may need to be adjusted. Tweaked a tiny bit toward wet or dry.

Baking gluten-free is more of an art than a science.

I recommend you tune in to your ingredients and learn how they behave. Learn how humidity affects flour- notice it's dampness. Or dryness. Dry flours will soak up more liquid. Damp flours are heavier, and may need less moisture. A cool and drafty kitchen may require a longer rise time than a hot and sultry one. A thin metal bread pan may bake the outside of a loaf faster than the inside can keep up. Your oven may run a tad hotter than you imagined. Or lag behind and never quite pre-heat itself (do your gluten-free baked goods end up gummy in the center?).

Gluten-free baking requires your full attention. A dash of patience. An intimacy with your ingredients. A willingness to adjust. And most of all, developing an intuition you can trust.

Even if it goes against tradition.

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Gluten-Free Banana Nut Bread Recipe

Warm from the oven gluten-free banana nut bread. Just a fad?

Gluten-Free Believer

As Celiac Awareness Month dawns I thought I might celebrate with a banana bread recipe. This is a banana bread so tasty, tender and fragrant, you won't care it is gluten-free. And you might even tempt the naysayers. And the unbelievers.

You know who I'm talking about.

Out there in the cold cruel world, Darling, some folks apparently (still) view our gluten-free lifestyle through a jaded foodie lens, believing, first of all, that gluten-free anything is never going to taste anything but awful, and second, that this whole gluten-free trend (their word not mine) is a fad not worthy of serious consideration and compassion. Apart from the standard (and always brief) lip service that non-afflicted food writers, non-GF bloggers and journalists pay to celiac disease, adhering to the medical treatment that is a gluten-free diet is degraded- for that sexy topical hook- to a "bandwagon". An eating disorder.

A diet by choice.

They dub it a controversy.

As my twelfth year of living gluten-free marches on, I find myself reflecting not upon the decade plus years living gluten-free, but upon the ten long years prior to shunning gluten- the decade it took me (no thanks to the medical profession) to determine that gluten was the culprit behind my early onset autoimmune cataracts, mysterious low ferritin levels, skin rashes, migraines, fat malabsorption and impressive marathon stints in the loo- I feel the slow, sad burn of anger those of us who are dismissed experience.

Two bloggers referenced the gluten-free diet on a social networking site recently, bragging about their "iron stomachs" and their ability to chow down on everything (this implies that those of us unable to ingest gluten merely have "sensitive" digestion). I was reminded of a previous post I wrote in response to a blogger's remark that gluten-free is "too precious".

Ignorance is bliss, indeed.

Here's the thing. It's not a sensitive vs iron stomach issue. It's not an I-can-eat-anything-so-bring-on-the-butter-and-bacon-and-haggis issue. It's not about macho appetite. Or virtue. Or squeamishness.

It's not philosophical.

It's not emotional.

It's not about preciousness.

Or garnering attention.

Or skinny jeans.

It's about a cruel quirk in genetics.

If you won the luck of the draw in the genetic lottery and escaped- by no effort of your own- inheriting HLA-DQ2 or HLA-DQ8, the two genetic haplotypes that predispose you to an autoimmune disease that triggers your body's defense system to attack itself, destroying the nutrient-grabbing lining of your small intestine, be humble. Be thankful. Your body works. You do not have to be vigilant about every crumb that goes into your mouth. In your world gluten does not increase your risk for Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. A bagel is not dangerous. You can eat what you crave when you are hungry. You can wing it when you travel, feeling carefree and adventurous. You can sample new cuisine on a whim- without asking about the ingredients. Food for you is fun. Romantic. Perhaps, even a passion.

Thank your small intestine.

And while you're at it, thank your pancreas, too.

Because those with Type 1 diabetes (another genetic autoimmune disease, one that destroys the insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas) must also be vigilant about their diet. Along with injecting insulin, Type 1 diabetics must also limit (if not shun) certain foods to protect their health, making careful, low glycemic choices day after day.

But maybe that's a fad, too. Maybe their pancreases are just sensitive. Maybe a diabetic child is merely craving attention, just like her celiac cousin. Maybe a mother learning how to cook a meal with low glucose is coddling her child, too. Maybe all autoimmune diseases are just a silly trend. 

The Fad Du Jour.

I hear celiacs and diabetics are wicked sexy.

Well, that part may be true.

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Orange Scented Gluten-Free Irish Soda Bread

Good morning! Gluten-free orange scented Irish soda bread.

I do believe.

Mid January confession (now that we're half way to February and red hearts are sprouting up around chocolate displays in our local market). Valentine's Day looms. And yes, I use the word looms. Rather than a more enthusiastic awaits. Or glimmers. As in, I haven't been that into Valentine's Day lately. Not that I have anything against love. Or chocolate. Or roses. That would make me rather icy. A stone cold cynic. The prickly sort who kicks away puppies. Or grimaces at kittens and babies.

Don't worry.

I don't indulge in any such blasphemy.

I still believe in love.

And though I may be, shall we say, a tad older than the estrogen-fueled ovulating audience targeted for Valentine's Day, I am not cantankerous. Nor am I without sympathy.

It's just that I find the accoutrements to our consumerist version of love rather ridiculous. All that red lace. Glitter lipsticks. And goddess forbid.

Thongs.

Never buy a piece of clothing that requires you to shave.

Everything.

I personally prefer a little mystery in my romance. Leaving something to the imagination. But then, I am a child of the long-haired free love sixties. Pre-porn aesthetic. We didn't fear body hair.

Last year we stayed home and ate baked mac and cheese for our dinner 'o love. And settled in with a Mad Men DVD. No red silk in sight. No high heels. Not exactly glamorous. But then, you know us artists. We have paint under our fingernails. We have more books than lipsticks. We are curling iron challenged.

I've never been into the whole glossy, magazine style glamor. I am more into comfort (and warmth- after all, it is winter!). I'm not a party girl. I'd rather be home. In my flannel PJ's.

Baking a soda bread.


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Gluten-Free Gypsy Soda Bread

Gluten-free soda bread, gypsy style.

By the time I attended art school and launched into life on my own I had moved ten times and attended nine different schools in four different states. Not all that unusual, I imagine, for many Americans. And for those of us with nomadic ancestry it simply feels natural to do so, to gather up and move in sync with the wheel of the seasons, aligned with winged migrations and turning stars.

I have always kept a gypsy heart, even when it wasn't easy. Even when I let her out only in my deepest dreams, inside a brushstroke, or as I stirred a makeshift dough with one of my young sons, improvising ingredients on a budget so small every dollar bill mattered.

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