Gluten Free

Asked by scott.rankin. Answered on 23rd January 2011

Full question

I'd like to know if you have a collection of gluten free recipes, particularly for those things that normally contain gluten such as pies, pastries, and pasta. A lot of the commercially available alternatives are very bland tasting.

Our answer

Nigella does try to flag when recipes are gluten free, particularly for baking. In Kitchen the Coffee Toffee Meringues, Lemon Polenta Cake, Venetian Carrot Cake and Flourless Chocolate Lime Cake are gluten free. The Rice Krispie Brownies can be made gluten free if you use a puffed rice cereal without added malt (made from barley so regular Rice Krispies are not gluten free) which should be available in natural food stores. The Sweet and Salty crunch nut bars need some caution as Crunchie bars don't contain gluten themselves but carry the warning that they may contain traces of wheat. The Devil's Food Cake should adapt well using Doves Farm Plain White Flour as a substitute for the plain four in the recipe and check that you use gluten free baking powder. However we haven't tested it using this flour.

For advice on gluten free cooking and recipes a good source is the Coeliac Society:

http://www.coeliac.org.uk/

Doves Farm also has a great collection of specially blended gluten free flours for baking and some advice and recipes for gluten free baking.

http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/

In the US try celiac.com:

http://www.celiac.com/

Bob's Red Mill has a wide selection of gluten free flours and baking mixes

http://www.bobsredmill.com/