Overwhelmed... help me bake gluten free!

[Rdesonia]

I've only made a few things and mostly from mixes. I'd rather not use mixes and want to try baking gluten free from scratch. So I bought all kinds of stuff with no recipes in mind and admittedly no clue what I'm doing.

What I got :
Corn meal
Soy Flour
Cornstarch
brown rice flour
buckwheat flour
tapioca flour
tapioca pearls (We used the Alton Brown recipe for pudding... yum!)
almond flour
white rice flour
soy protein power
baking powder
whey protein powder

Other stuff I could easily grind/mill into flour
Quinoa (Red & regular)
flax seed
Peas/lentils, Pintos, garbanzo, lima bean, white rice, forbidden black rice, (possibly other beans ?)

I got all the normal stuff like yeast, nutritional yeast, vinegars, oils, butter, eggs, salt, honey, sorghum (syrup not flour), sugar, brown sugar, milk, and random spices etc.

I didn't buy xanthum gum. Can I bake without it? Can I make bread with what I have? Are there any recipes you love that include ingredients I have?

OR.... what do I need to buy?

Help me bake!

[Mummandherboys]

Okay, so I am totally new to GF/Diary free baking/cooking myself...but I was told about the blog glutenfreegoddess and let me tell you, she has some great food on there! I have made some breakfast bars, cookies, bread, and a few other dinner thngs, and everything has been wonderful and so tasty!! I highly recommend glancing over her recipes on there...you won't be dissapointed. As for the xanthum gum...yes, you will absolutely need it for GF baking...I think it's been in every single recipes I have made since going GF! let me know if you have any questions about her blog/recipes... I might have tried them already!

[iris0110]

As far as I know you need the Xanthum Gum for pretty much everything other than a couple of types of peanut butter cookies.

[Rdesonia]

I went and got some xanthum gum. I found it at the local Wally World. Mostly I can't get many gluten free stuff locally except mixes. Most of what I got was from a store over an hour away. I though the tapioca starch might work to replace the xanthum gum? I swear I read that somewhere but I can't find it.

DH is looking for a Cheesecake recipe to make me for my b-day this weekend. I think I'm going to look to see if I can find an Anise Biscotti recipe. Or a lemon poppyseed biscotti?

We've made cornbread without Xanthum gum. We toasted the leftovers in cubes and made stuffing.

We still haven't made gluten free bread from scratch yet.

DH wants to know if there is a way to have a gluten free sourdough? (We had a sourdough starter and he got rid of it. He'd rather not bake with flour due to cross contamination. Now he's missing his starter. )

[slimy72]

I have commented on several threads in here with some baking stuff. Sourdough - YES I LOVE my starter and use it all the time. Google gluten free sourdough starter and you'll get several methods. And somewhere in here there is a thread with a seattle sourdough recipe and that's what I use for bread.

[photocat]

Elana's pantry is all gluten free and paleomg is paleo so by default, it's all gluten free. Really good baking type stuff on both of those.

[bcb1961]

I'd get some coconut flour too!

[agl]

Xantham gum makes recipes taste more fluffy and delicious in my opinion. I made cookies without xantham gum- they were flat and kind of hard. Then made them with xantham gum and they were delicious- more like regular cookies.