May is Celiac Awareness Month- Are you knew to going Gluten Free?

May is Celiac Awareness Month- Are you knew to going Gluten Free and wondering where to start?         

                                                                                                                                             

        Here Are Some Important Things to Remember:

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, oats, rye, kamut, spelt, couscous, triticale, and bulgur.

Grains you can have are corn quinoa, millet, amaranth, teff and rice- try to stay away from parboiled rice as brown, basmati and wild have many more nutrients in them. You can also have arrowroot, tapioca, cassava, sorghum, chickpea and almond. All these make great substitutes when baking.

Flour Alternatives

1 cup wheat flour =    1 cup millet flour

             1 cup cassava flour

3/4 cup brown rice flour

3/4 cup chickpea flour or other bean flour

1 cup quinoa or amaranth flour

 1 cup sorghum flour

1 cup almond flour

For Gluten free baking you can use a combination of chickpea flour and brown rice flour. I use 1/2 and 1/2 of each.  Or I combine chickpea flour, brown rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, and potato starch with some baking soda. This is in descending order, in other words higher amounts of chickpea and brown rice flour than the others. This usually works well. For more information on how to substitute in baking check out my cookbook, Finally... Food I Can Eat.

Thickeners

1 tbsp flour = 1 ½ tbsp arrowroot

                       ½ tsp cornstarch

                       1 tbsp tapioca flour

                       1 tbsp potato starch

Remember to tell your pharmacist that you are gluten free as many prescription drugs, supplements, toothpastes etc can contain forms of gluten.  Make sure to read labels as gluten can be hidden and is sometimes found in foods like instant coffee, spices, sausages and frozen foods.

Hidden Gluten: names to watch out for

  Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein (HVP), unless made from soy or corn

   Flour or Cereal products, unless made with pure rice flour, corn flour, potato flour, or soy flour

   Vegetable Protein unless made from soy or corn

  Malt or Malt Flavoring unless derived from corn

  Modified Starch or Modified Food Starch unless arrowroot, corn, potato, tapioca, waxy maize, or maize is used

  Vegetable Gum unless vegetable gums are carob bean gum, locust bean gum, cellulose gum, guar gum, gum arabic, gum aracia, gum tragacanth, xanthan gum, or vegetable starch

 Soy Sauce or Soy Sauce Solids unless you know they do not contain wheat .Tamari, is wheat free soy sauce

 Any of the following words on food labels usually means that a grain containing gluten has been used; stabilizer, starch, flavouring, emulsifier, hydrolyzed protein.