The Proctitis Pages
The Problem of Binders and Gluten Free Cooking
One of the main challenges which most of us are faced with sooner or later when trying to get too grips with a gluten free diet & in learning how to cook gluten free. Gluten is a substance found mostly in wheat grain & other related grains, gluten is a long chain molecule, a protein, it is sticky by nature and this fact is very important. Gluten then is a binder and kind of glue like substance. For example it is the gluten is bread dough that binds the bread together and gives the bread a firm structure so that it can be easily cut into slices, its gluten that holds wheat flour together when making pastries or pies or pasties.
THE PROBLEM? So if you are faced with a completely gluten free diet & you want to cook meals which are free from gluten then this can be problematic, how then can I bind foods together if you cannot use gluten? Well its a very good question, a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
EGGS IN COOKING. If you want to make food that involves eggs within the recipe ( technically eggs are gluten free, however I found that egg yokes contain other proteins that made me very sick & made my symptoms worse) but need to avoid real egg yoke's then I recommend the product "NoEgg" by the Orgran company. No Egg can be used successfully as a safe egg substitute or egg replacement in a recipe.
FLOURS & PASTRIES. So you cannot use wheat flour because of the gluten, however when making food which is gluten free you can use other kinds of flours. You can use fine milled rice flour or maize flour, these can be mixed together too. You will still need a binder other than gluten to successfully form a dough or pastry mix. Once again No Egg (from Orgran) can be successfully used.
**Tapioca flour is one of the major ingredients found in the "No Egg" product, but it is very precisely blended so as to work just like eggs in cooking.
GLUTEN FREE BREAD. I have experimented extensively with gluten free bread making ( I was an experienced bread baker before becoming poorly) & the results never completely satisfying. Once again because there is no gluten in the mixture the loaf that results is often rather dense, the second problem was that I just couldn't get the dough to raise enough so loaves were always half the height that wanted. I've tried a variety of different gluten free bread recipes, I've tried recipes by hand, I've tried recipes with expensive & sophisticated bread making machines and the results were always a disappointment. I've tried & tested quite a number of commercially made so called gluten free loaves and the vast majority of these products were completely disgusting, well if you like tasteless card board that's fine but I don't. My search for a viable gluten free loaf eventually lead me to dietary special's gluten free white sliced 400gm which is the nicest gluten free bread I've come across. This is available in the UK from ADSA supermarket in stores where they have a gluten free section.