GFCF diet -- questions about substituting -- please help :o)

[kimmie-pooh]

I'm starting my family on the GFCF diet today and I'm already having trouble. I need help finding substitutions for some of our favorite foods.

Oatmeal -- I bought some gluten free stuff by Red Mill. I cooked it up, added apples, cinnamon, and sugar. Ds didn't like it and he loves oatmeal! I tasted it (even though I don't like hot cereals) and the texture is weird. Any suggestions for a substitution for oatmeal?

Good recipes for pancakes and waffles?

Good bread recipes? I bought different flours and I'm going out to buy xanthan gum today. Is it your experience that your regular bread recipes with a sub. for flour works well?

Recipe or good sub for tortillas/pitas?

That's it for now! I'm sure I'll have more questions later.

Thanks so much!!

[wendy1221]

This makes the BEST pancakes! I fed it to my neighbor and her kids and they didn't believe me that they were completely free of the top 8 allergens (I made them w/ Ener-G egg replacer) http://www.recipezaar.com/124781 The muffins are decent as well. Definitely add raisins or something if you make muffins. lol. We can do oats, so sorry I can't help you w/ the oatmeal dilemma. I've been told hat Irish oats are gluten free, though, so you might want to look into that.

I haven't tried bread yet. i like the Food for Life rice almond bread a lot. And use corn tortillas instead of wheat. I just buy the ones right in the grocery store. We have a large hispanic population in our area, so it's not hard to get lots of things made w/ corn instead of wheat. Don't know about the pitas. I'd probably try the corn tortillas for that as well. Just make sure they're warm when you fold them otherwise they crack and crumble. If you fold them while warm, they stay together.

[kimmie-pooh]

Thank you, Wendy. I appreciate your response.

[Panserbjorne]

Bob's red mill gf pancake mix is AWESOME! It actually resembles bisquick pancakes-light, fluffy and no weird overwhelming taste. Irish oats are gluten free, though they are sometimes a bit crunchier than regular oatmeal. We use rice tortillas because I'm not a fan of the corn. As far as baking flours, do yourself a favor and buy a mix. The problem with GF flours is that they need to be combined for a good taste/texture. Rice alone is grainy, sorghum alone is pasty and has little taste, buckwheat is too strong, potato doesn't do well on it's own etc. Combined they can actually resemble regular old flour. Unless you're doing ALOT of baking abd want to own a pound of several different flours...just buy some. Bob's Red Mill gf baking mix is good, but GF Pantry as a great bread mix. Namaste is pretty darn good too-and they're pizza dough is outta this world (as are they're Blondies...)

[Village Mama]

I am on the other side as far as buying prepackaged mixes. Maybe because I am on a budget... but I find the prepackaged mixes to be very expensive. Most only contain a couple of ingredients anyhow. I stick with buying a variety of acceptable flours. I premix flour mixes in airtight containers.... try celiac.com .... they have lots of different options for recipes.
We use millet for a hot cereal... the kids love it, but be careful of cross contamination.
We found a really great recipe for waffles and had them for the first time yesterday. I must warn though... we didnt get rid of our old waffle iron. We scrubbed it really well... and we had only cooked spelt products in it before. Today and all yesterday we have been suffering with reactions... So if you suspect that gluten is causing physical or behavioral reactions.... beware!
1 3/4 cup flour blend (even if you buy one bag of all purpose celiac mix it will work well in the meantime before finding your own mix)
1 T sugar or honey
2t baking powder
1t salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup oil (or melted butter or vegan marg)
1 1/4 cups buttermilk or substitute milk of choice with 1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar added

1t vanilla extract (natural)

mix dry ingedients. Beat eggs in separate bowl and add al wet ingredients.Mix wet and dry together well.Use batter in your waffle iron like you usually would. They get browned and crispy and delicious!
we added a handful each of sunflower and flax seeds buzzed up slightly... yum.
We doubled the recipe and they warm nicely in the oven.... supposedly they freeze well too!

[Panserbjorne]

That's kind of what I mean. We very few baked goods. I am not a fan of having alot of grains in the diet, so baking is rare. As I said, if you do ALOT of baking, then it's worth mixing your own.

[Satori]

I've gotten lazy and have been using Bobs Red Mill Pancake mix, it does well with adding things like blueberries to it but we do have to add 2-3T of sugar to it because we like a sweeter pancake For bread I only use Toms Bread recipe which is killer, you can make it an oven or bread machine pretty easy. You can get the recipe off the gfcfrecipes yahoogroup or buy the mix which gluten free pantry is now making but I ask that you don't buy more then 1 mix if you do buy it, they gave him the royal shaft and no credit for the recipe. I won't buy their stuff anymore after knowing what happened. For oatmeal is we McCanns Irish Oats and love them but you really don't want to try oats until you've been on the diet for at least a year and know it well so if you react you know its the oats and not something else.

[Electra375]

No good sub for Oatmeal that I know of. Quinoa is supposed to be it, but I haven't even tried it.
Becareful with mixes b/c some have dairy in them.
Just buy some Enger-G bread to start with, it takes a long time to perfect bread especially if you didn't make bread before. I've been making bread for 10yrs and it has taken me a while to begin experiementing when my first attempts failed.
You must follow a GF recipe, you can't just substitute stuff in a regular recipe and you just can't leave the nonfat dried milk out if the recipe calls for it since the milk is a binding agent that is working w/ the other weird ingredients to 'act like gluten' from the wheat flour that isn't there.
Bette Hagman is a cookbook author for GF recipes, go to the library and check some GF cookbooks out -- I don't know why I waited months to do so, it was a great experience and answered a lot of my questions.
www.gfcf.com or org ? it has recipes
www.celiac.com or any google search for celiac will get you gluten free recipes. Web recipes have not been tried and proven like cookbook recipes, so heed the warning.
Your local ROCK group might also be helpful (Raising our Celiac Kids), but they also include those doing the autism gfcg diet, here they do.

[mpeel]

We love quinoa instead of oatmeal. I have a good pancake and bread recipe. PM me and I can get them to you.

[LaLa]

cream of rice or the instant quinoa flakes would be close to oatmeal . The Bob's mix you probably used was the one with buckwheat, corn, rice....the corn adds some roughness to the texture!

[mariposita]

Originally Posted by wendy1221

This makes the BEST pancakes! I fed it to my neighbor and her kids and they didn't believe me that they were completely free of the top 8 allergens (I made them w/ Ener-G egg replacer) http://www.recipezaar.com/124781 The muffins are decent as well. Definitely add raisins or something if you make muffins. lol.

i just looked up that recipe and it lists rice flour twice, but says to mix everything together (nothing's reserved). do you know if it's a typo? i'd like to try it sometime this week. thanks!

[wendy1221]

Originally Posted by mariposita

i just looked up that recipe and it lists rice flour twice, but says to mix everything together (nothing's reserved). do you know if it's a typo? i'd like to try it sometime this week. thanks!

Oh yes! I forgot about that! I assumed the first rice flour was white and the 2nd brown since there's usually more white than brown in most of the recipes I've seen. Sorry!

[danaan]

I use BROWN rice flour plus xanthan gum to substitute for wheat flour in almost any recipe (not yeast breads, though). Tinkyada has my favorite pasta.

I use squash and potato mixed with onion cooked down and pureed with broth for creamy sauces.

I like almond milk best, if you can do nuts. Rice milk is fine, too.

Any favorites you are looking for a sub for?

[mariposita]

Originally Posted by wendy1221

Oh yes! I forgot about that! I assumed the first rice flour was white and the 2nd brown since there's usually more white than brown in most of the recipes I've seen. Sorry!

thanks for the clarification! i can't wait to try it!