Gluten Free Baking

When you don't have a TV, you find other things to do. Tonight I find myself listening to my latest audio book from the Rapid City Library, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. Julie walks through life exploring her mother's copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This is hilarious and really inspiring for those of us who think time spent in the kitchen is exciting and fun.

What Julie says is what I think and believe. In fact, as I hear the book, I see my friends and my life sort of unfold.

So I teeter on what I can do in the kitchen and often it's all about gluten free baking. Tonight I made pizza what I just now call "Jack's pizza" and I'm getting quite good at it. The crust is a combination of potato starch, arrowroot starch, chick pea flour, quinoa flour, brown rice flour, baking soda, xanthum powder, salt mixed with EVOO and water. I make a big batch which totally fills my round and rectangular pizza stones I purchased at a Pampered Chef party I begrudgingly attended over 10 years ago. I am not dissing PM but those parties are usually not my thing. On top of the crust goes a healthy layer of Prego mushroom sauce which is rather healthy aside from the fact sugar is about #5 on the ingredient list. Other than that, it's all natural. I cut it all up in little squares and freeze it. It freezes very well. The whole event takes about an hour. Jack can go through this in 2-3 days.

I also made gluten free pumpkin bread which is pretty tasty. At least Jack thinks so.

Fortunately for our gluten free, casein free, soy free baking, dowtown Spearfish has a great health food store, the Good Earth. I'd share their website but they don't have one. We are frequent visitors. I've also discovered fresh dates which are obviously not a local SD food. Wow, weird but very delicious.