Cooking Should Not Be Rocket Science
Whilst it has been interesting to go through the motions of developing gluten-free recipes, making precise measurements of ingredients, this is slow and tedious for a "production" environment. If everyday cooking gets this complicated, it will end up not getting done.
Everyone has advised me that precision is, however, required for gluten-free recipes for them to be successful. As one who normally cooks by gut feeling, I decided to see whether this really was the case and decided to "guess" a fruitcake.
Ingredients
- 1 cup green pea flour
- 1 cup chickpea flour
- 2 cups rice flour
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- Heaped teaspoon guar gum
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups caster sugar
- Handful brown sugar
- 1 cup water
- 500g mixed dried fruit
- Large pinches of ginger, cinnamon, cardamom (all ground)
- Packet dried yeast.
The ingredients above were not measured with any precision. They were mixed, with the exception of the fruit, with a hand whisk to form a very stiff batter, after which I combined the fruit with a wooden spoon.
Dividing the mixture into my usual (greased) silicone bun and loaf tins, I gave the mixture a full hour to rise, as size increase was very much slower than that of the "precision" batter. A rise did occur during baking.
Results
I was half expecting to get a result which was rather solid, but the result was lighter than anticipated and had a texture of "real" (wheat-based) fruitcake.
It now remains to be seen if I am able to replicate my results, still using rough measurements fine-tuning by the look and feel of the batter, as I would in "normal" cooking.
Smiffy at LinkedIn