Can I Make The Parmesan Shortbreads Gluten Free?

Our answer

Nigella's Parmesan Shortbreads (from NIGELLLISSIMA) are melt-in-the-mouth savoury bites that are perfect with a pre-dinner cocktail. The shortbreads are made with plain wheat flour.

The UK has a good selection of gluten-free flours, including flour blends that are formulated specifically for baking. If you are going to try the shortbreads with gluten-free flour then we would suggest choosing a blend that is labelled as a substitute for plain (all-purpose) flour, which you can usually buy in most large UK supermarkets. You may find that you need to add some extra egg yolk to help the mixture to bind into a dough. Unfortunately, due to the lack of gluten, it could be more difficult to slice up the cylinders of shortbread without the dough crumbling. If this happens you may need to press the sliced discs of dough back together again before baking and we would suggest chilling the discs before baking to prevent them from spreading too much. And please note that as we have not tried the recipe ourselves with gluten-free flour, we are unable to guarantee the results. You can also filter your recipe searches on Nigella.com for gluten-free recipes by using the "refine your search" option and clicking on the "gluten free" box.