Unless you’ve bought the rice noodles already I highly recommend Barilla pasta products. DH has to limit his gluten intake so a lot of the things I make are GF. Barilla pasta tastes like normal pasta, if a little more inclined to break up if you over cook it. For lasagna I don’t precook the noodles, just make the red sauce a little wetter.

For bechamels, gravies etc I just sub all purpose GF flour or corn starch for the regular flour. I have found some brands give better results than others, presumably due to different amounts and types of GF flours used in the blend. You’d need to experiment a bit as my favourite brand is a local one so I doubt it’s available in the US.

You can make GF breads a bit less inclined to fall apart or crumble to bits (burger buns are especially prone to this) with the addition of Xanthan gum, which works a bit like gluten to strengthen the starch bonds. Don’t ask me how much though as I don’t use it often enough to offer expert advice, but it’s on the order of a teaspoon or two per batch.

I found the rice based lasagna noodles at the local Whole Foods. Barilla is the only pasta I use, but there were no lasagna noodles at either King Soopers or Whole Foods. Since time is short (everyone is coming for lasagna dinner on Saturday night) I'm going to have to use the rice based ones I found, but I'll have Amazon get me the Barilla ones.

Colleen - yes, hers is definitely an allergy to gluten and just wheat. Fortunately for both of us, it's her only food allergy.

One more important thing for gf breads! get yourself a USA Pan pullman loaf pan. They give a much better rise and shape (straight sides, but with horizontal ridges for the dough to climb).

FYI I buy quite a few products from a website called VITACOST.com They often run deals with discounts, but I find their prices to be fair even without the added bonus. To be sure, register and get on their email list for discount offers. They won't bombard you or sell your name to others. Right now Gluten Free products are 15% off

Compumom, somebody just told me about vitacost the other day! I'll go take a look. :)

I keep a bag of Bob's Red Mill GF 1-1 flour. I find it works quite well for "sweets" and as a thickening agent for gravies and sauces when I'm cooking or baking for GF folks.

Oh and Google Shauna Ahern aka Gluten Free Girl for all things GF.

I've been experimenting with gluten-free pancakes and have had many, many fails according to my family. I stumbled up this below at Costco, though, and it makes the closest thing to the texture and taste of a regular pancake that I've found. Made them yesterday with homemade Meyer lemon syrup and everyone loved them.

We aren't gluten-free or paleo, but I'm becoming more sensitive to gluten as I age, and I wanted to satisfy my family's occasional pancake craving with something that had more substance in it.

https://birchbenders.com/collections/pancake-waffle-mix/products/paleo

I also make pancakes and waffles with the gluten free Bisquick, and the kids eat them without complaint. My favorite gluten free blend is King Arthur GF Flour and like Colleen, I find that the Barilla GF pasta is so similar to regular that my family cannot tell the difference.

There is definitely a learning curve with gluten free baking, gluten free cooking is much easier, IMO. I've found cornstarch crepes easier to deal with than regular ones, a lemon bar recipe from NancyinNC that's better than my regular one, but GF biscuits are still too crumbly and although I make a decent dinner roll, bagel and pizza crust, I still haven't figured out a GF crescent roll dough and haven't made a really suitable loaf of sandwich type bread. All the GF cornbread mixes I've tried just taste too sweet and are kind of....odd, it's easier to just make cornbread with no flour.

Good luck!

Annie

Annie, try this recipe for gf biscuits! The dough is soft and sticky so I drop them onto the baking sheet and pat them to about 1/2" thickness. They're excellent!!! Robin Batterson's GF Biscuits

Thanks, PM, I've not seen a recipe with cornstarch, I'll have to try that one. The cornstarch works really well in crepes, and I use it as a thickener for gravy, sauces and pudding/pie filling, so I always have it on hand.

Annie

Annie, do you use 100% cornstarch for your crepes? I planned to try making some gf crepes when I have the right occasion. lol! I've switched to using my gf ap flour mix for thickening gravies because I think it works better than cornstarch... I pre-make my mix like the KAF recipe, using brown rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch.

ETA: I switched to all cornmeal cornbread long ago. The stores keep changing which brands and grinds are available, so I've tried all kinds of combinations of corn flours/meals. I recently used 100% Aunt Jemima brand cornmeal and it worked perfectly for me!

Yes, PM, I do. As I said, I like them better, and they aren't as fragile, so they are easier for the kids to handle if The Princess wants to make some. They also are a bit more substantial for the spreading of Nutella/etc.

I did grow some corn and grind my own meal, but I use Aunt Jemima brand too, it's the only thing available at my local groceries. I did buy some Brinser's at the local Amish grocery and liked it very much, but the kids didn't like it as well. It was coarser and not as sweet, which made great hoe cakes and cornbread, but the kids want those sweet/fluffy muffin type cornbreads.

Southern cornbread that Elery grew up with has no flour, no sugar and white cornmeal. I grew up on "johnny cake" which is sweeter and has flour and yellow cornmeal. So I use his recipe and it's gluten free anyway, and the kids just put butter and honey or sorghum on it and it's sweeter, LOL.

I use this recipe for the crepes. I've used coconut milk in place of the dairy successfully, but I've never tried to leave out or replace the egg.

Gluten Free Easy Crepes
Recipe makes 10 crepes (depends on your pan size!)
Ingredients:
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup (or 50g) cornstarch
1 egg
2 teaspoons olive oil or melted butter
pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Mix (I used a small whisk) all ingredients until very well blended.
2. Spritz a pan (small, nonstick) with olive oil. Preheat the pan over medium-high heat.
3. Pour 2 Tablespoons of batter into the pan while swirling the pan.
4. Continue to swirl the pan – OFF the heat! – until the batter begins to bubble and there is no longer excess batter to swirl.
5. Cook for 20-40 seconds (the first crepe takes the longest… this time is for the quicker crepes) or until steam is puffing out the sides.
6. Quickly and with some care, flip the crepe and cook and additional 15-20 seconds.
7. Continue until all the batter is used. (Depending upon your pan, you may not have to spritz it with oil between crepes.)

Annie

Thanks for posting your crepes recipe, Annie! Do you let the batter sit/rest like you would with ap flour? and have you tried making blintzes yet? :)

PM, I can't make blintzes yet, Elery and I are still doing the Weight Watchers thing. It's making me crazy, I can't cook at all. (sigh)

I do not let the batter rest because it's usually a "spur of the moment" kind of breakfast, one of the grandkids will ask if we can have crepes and I just make them. It works out fine. I have to confess that I don't usually let regular crepe batter sit either. Yeah, I know, I'm impatient...

Annie

For baking, try King Arthur's Measure for Measure for non-yeasted baking and their new blend for breads. I've not tried the bread one yet, but have used Measure for Measure in several things and my son's friends use it regularly (she has a gluten allergy too). Let Them Eat Cake has a GF variation for every recipe and some of them can be used as ideas that can be adapted to other things. GF has come a long way.