The 7 Most Helpful Gluten Free Baking Tips From My Experience

Gluten Free Baking Tips I Wish I had Known at the Beginning

I love to bake. Unfortunately, I cannot tolerate gluten at all. Therefore, since being diagnosed with celiac in 2016, I have had to learn how to bake gluten free.

And of course, like most beginning gluten free bakers, I had to make ALL the mistakes myself in order to learn what I have learned.

Today I just want to tell you the most important gluten free baking hacks I know to help you avoid the mistakes that I made.

I have wasted money on special gluten free cookbooks that were way too complicated. If a recipe involves thirty steps, I ain’t doing it. That’s just facts.

Oh, and I wasted money buying all kinds of different flours and trying them all out.

Saddest of all, I have eaten some really gross stuff, and you don’t have to do that. You really don’t. These tips will help you make only the yummiest of gluten free stuff in your kitchen. Also, none of this will make you sick…..unless you OD on sugar, and I mean that’s always a possibility. That is also why cookies must be served with milk.

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#1. The Best 2 Gluten Free Baking Flours I have EVER used:

These can be used in exactly the same way as regular all-purpose flour because they already have xantham gum mixed in to create some binding.

You can use these with REGULAR recipes or with gluten free recipes that call for gluten free flour.

These are what I use for actual baked bread products, like cookies, pie crust, etc. If you just need a flour substitute in a soup, or for breading meat, I just use any gluten free flour that I have, usually rice flour.

Also, these two brands do not add any additional allergens that our family has.

I have a son who will throw up if he consumes any food where pea fiber has been added. I try to stick with the simplest ingredients I can because it is so hard to dig through all these labels.

Then I have another son who is very allergic to nuts. These brands do not contain anything that upsets my allergic kids.

I have successfully made many kinds of breads with this flour. Today I made these cookies with the Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Baking Flour:

They turned out perfectly.

#2. Buttermilk is your friend.

Gluten free baked goods seem a little harder to get to rise. Enter buttermilk. The buttermilk activates the baking soda, which produces the gas that makes your bread rise. Read this article at Food Network to learn more about buttermilk.

Buttermilk also helps tenderize whatever it is cooked in because it is acidic. That makes it great for coating chicken before you fry it.

And the fact is, buttermilk makes food plain old delicious.

Try substituting buttermilk for milk in your baked goods. You will love the difference. Of course, I especially love it in biscuits. I will share my gluten free buttermilk biscuit recipe with y’all soon.

#3. You actually cannot use regular oats for a gluten free person. Sad, but true.

Yes, oats ARE gluten free. However, when you buy them at the store, chances are they have been down the same assembly line belts as all sorts of other grains. Those grains work right into the oats. That is why they cannot write “gluten free” on a box of oats unless those oats were not cross-contaminated with other grains.

When I first began eating gluten free, I didn’t buy it. I thought it was overkill because my nut-allergic son eats stuff “manufactured in the same plant as nuts” stuff all. the. time, and it does not bother him at all.

That is not the case with the oats. I personally LOVE oats, so I kept on eating my regular old oatmeal. And I kept getting symptoms. I would eat the oatmeal, and then I would feel awful and dead and my nails were still messing up. My most visible sign of celiac is the way it destroys my nails. Everything else that happens I just feel on the inside. The brain fog is the one that I hate the most.

Oatmeal would always give me brain fog and fatigue.

So I switched to only oats marked “gluten free.” Lots of companies make them now, including Quaker Oats. If you are buying Quaker Oats for a gluten free person, make sure it has the label. Otherwise, it is not safe for your celiac friend to consume.

#4. Don’t let people bully you into cheating on your gluten free lifestyle.

People will laugh celiac off, and say it isn’t life threatening like a nut allergy. But celiac can cause heart arrhythmias and misery, so that is not true.

Is it weird that I included that as a baking tip? Well, this should also be part of this tip: When you go to a potluck, be sure to take a baked good that you can eat so you will not be tempted to try a little of something you should not have.

Plus, the more you have on your plate, the less likely people are to give you a hard time.

According to this study, people with celiac disease have a 38% increase in risk of atrial fibrillation.

Due to inflammation caused by uncontrolled celiac, it is also widely documented that people with celiac have a far higher risk of coronary artery disease.

#5. Some of my best gluten free recipes are simply taking regular recipes and swapping in gluten free flour.

You do not have to go out and buy a bunch of gluten free cookbooks. (Although having one or two is probably a good idea.) My experience with gluten free cookbooks is that they overcomplicated making pretty much everything.

First, they used their own flour that they made of mixing other flours together. In this day and age, that is not necessary when we have Bob’s Red Mill.

They would add in a ton of extra steps. I have four children and a life. Give me a few steps.

Sometimes the extra steps are worth it, like it is a good idea to refrigerate your pie dough or to let your dough sit for a few minutes before you put it in the oven. But if you read a crazy complicated recipe, go search for a better one on the internet. It is not worth it.

Or, in the case of the Alfredo dish in the photo above, I swapped in rice noodles instead of regular pasta. We love rice noodles at our house. If you cook them long enough, most gluten free noodles are great. They just need a little extra cook time.

#6: Biscuits and pie crusts do NOT have to be rolled out, unless it is a top pie crust.

I rarely bother rolling out the dough. It is extra difficult with gluten free dough. However, if you are making cut-out cookies or a top crust or something you will have to. I will address that in tip #7.

But for biscuits, and bottom crusts, don’t bother. Even if it’s not a “no rolling recipe.” I have been making biscuits my whole life. If you roll them out, they will always be dryer to make it possible to roll them, so don’t.

Put gluten free flour of any kind on your hands, take your gluten free biscuits, roll them in your hands like playdoh, into a ball, and plop them in your round biscuit pan.

For pie crust, flour your hands, roll pie crust dough into a ball, then put it in a greased pie plate. Then you just work to flatten that ball out to fit the pie plate with your hands until it covers the whole pie plate.

You will bake way more often when you don’t have to worry about the rolling the dough mess. Literally, it can make a great big mess.

#7. When you must roll the dough: Use cling wrap on both sides of your dough and chill it in the fridge first.

This is a major hack. Flatten your dough ball into a rectangle, and put cling wrap on bottom and top of it. Then put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Then take it out of the fridge, add more cling wrap so it can grow, and roll it out on top of the cling wrap. Then use it as needed. This will keep it from falling apart on you, your kitchen, your rolling pin, and your life. Ha!

#8. Gluten free pancakes and waffles taste better than regular, and my whole family agrees on this.

So if you are looking for something easy to feed lots of people, try gluten free pancakes or waffles!

I haven’t tried a bad mix yet. You can buy any gluten free pancake mix, and it will probably be delicious.

In conclusion, being gluten free does not mean the end of baking as you know it.

You can use all of these gluten free baking tips and find many delicious recipes. There is almost nothing that cannot be made gluten free. Even donuts. I hope this help you on your gluten free journey!

Want more gluten free ideas? Check out this post I wrote on 9 Easy & Delicious Gluten Free Meals.