Breads

gluten-free buckwheat crepes

Sometimes, when life feels complicated, it helps to go back to the simple things.   Sunlight on a wooden floor. Dancing to Aretha Franklin, then stopping to belt it out with her. Talking late into the night, vulnerable, saying exactly what is. Sleeping in. Lunch with Lucy, the three of us sitting at the little [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free scones

gluten-free scones

I’ve eaten a lot of bad scones. And I don’t mean gluten-free scones, although I haven’t had much success with them before this week. I mean regular gluten scones, the ones I ate before six years ago. You know the ones, right? The big-chain coffee shop scones. The ones that crumble like cheap grocery-store cake [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free lemon poppyseed bread

gluten-free lemon poppyseed bread

In the past few days, I’ve made three batches of lemon poppyseed bread. Each of them was quite different from each other. Each of them was delicious. For one batch, I replaced the butter or oil I would have used with an equal weight of applesauce. I know this is a popular solution for people [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free Irish soda bread

gluten-free Irish soda bread

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Okay, I’m going to admit this. It’s a little sad. When I was a kid — and sort of well into my adulthood — I only had three associations with St. Patrick’s Day. Leprechauns with leering grins. Green shirts for fear of being pinched. And the Shamrock Shake. Remember that? [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free soft pretzels

gluten-free soft pretzels

I’ve been waiting awhile to post this recipe for gluten-free pretzels. It’s not just that I have been making batch after batch with various recipes until I found the combination of flours and techniques that made them look like this (and taste as good as you imagine from the photo). That’s the usual routine around [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free bread

gluten-free bread

You know, it’s said that it takes 10,000 hours of practicing a craft, over and over again, until you can expect to master it. If that’s true, then I’m nothing but a humble apprentice at making gluten-free bread. And frankly, I’m fine with that. I learn so much every time I bake. I can’t wait [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free Super Bowl

gluten-free Super Bowl

Back in January, when Danny and I were planning out the food we’d make for the blog in February, we both looked at the calendar and thought, “We should probably make some Super Bowl food.” Good idea, right? Most of the country seems seized by the need to sit in front of the television and [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free pizza

gluten-free pizza

Pizza. When you first find out you have to go gluten-free, this is probably one of the first foods you remember with genuine grief. I can’t have pizza anymore? What am I going to do? You make gluten-free pizza. And I don’t mean the pizza that tastes like cardboard painted brown, or the pizza that [...]

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how to make gluten-free breadcrumbs

Someone wrote to me recently to ask, “Do you know where I can buy gluten-free breadcrumbs? I can’t find them in any store.” When I read it to Danny, we had the same reaction: “Oh honey, you don’t need to buy them. They’re so easy to make.” If you were wondering how to make breadcrumbs, [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free zucchini bread

gluten-free zucchini bread

We love potlucks in this house. There’s something humble and lovely about a potluck. Sure, dinner parties are great: the day of prepping and anticipation, the smells coming from the kitchen, the moment of lowering the main course onto the table and listening to everyone’s happy sighs. But the only problem with dinner parties? You [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free hamburger buns

gluten-free hamburger buns

Last week, I had a lovely post planned for this space. Memories of barbecues from when I was a kid, and evocations of the taste of well-charred meat, and elaborate analogies to make you laugh. But you know what? That farm-to-table dinner that Danny and I cooked on Friday took most of our minds’ space [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free English scones

gluten-free English scones

This is pretty much my favorite spot in our house. Oh, I love the feeling of our bed when Danny and I can finally fall into it together, dead tired from working and running after Lu all day. I love the sound of Lu’s giggles bouncing off the walls of the bathtub. I love the [...]

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Thumbnail image for banana oatmeal raisin bread

banana oatmeal raisin bread

Sometimes the mistakes lead to great places. Last week, when we were cooking out of C is for Cooking, I spied a recipe for pumpkin muffins. Remembering a can of pumpkin puree left over from the holidays, shoved in the back of the cupboard, I gathered all the ingredients we’d need. I love teff flour [...]

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Thumbnail image for Irish soda bread buns

Irish soda bread buns

So we’re back from Arizona for less than 24 hours. The suitcases are spilling clothes, the living room is cluttered with opened books and toddler shoes, and the refrigerator needs cleaning. Besides that fact, I didn’t touch the computer for longer than 10 minutes while we were away, spending most of the day sitting on [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free crusty boule

gluten-free crusty boule

If you don’t want to eat this bread, I’m going to have to check your pulse. This is gluten-free. I wrote the sentences for this piece in my head, long before today. However, they have all disappeared in a haze of too-much coffee, too-little sleep, notes scrawled in orange marker, and a darling toddler interrupting [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free dinner rolls

gluten-free dinner rolls

(We’re thrilled that this recipe is being featured at Oprah.com’s roundup of holiday recipes for 2009. For more of our featured posts, visit Oprah.com today.) Baking gluten-free seems daunting at first, doesn’t it? I had grown used to scoop and dump. Soften the butter, rip open the bag of white flour, turn on the KitchenAid. [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free gingerbread

gluten-free gingerbread

(We’re thrilled that this recipe is being featured at Oprah.com’s roundup of holiday recipes for 2009. For more of our featured posts, visit Oprah.com today.)Gluten-Free Gingerbread, adapted from November 2009 issue of Gourmet Rain is hitting the windows on the door behind me so hard it sounds like little pellet guns full of pebbles are [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free English muffins

gluten-free English muffins

Whenever I have felt just a mite constricted about being known as a “gluten-free blogger,” instead of someone who loves food and the chance to write about it, I have tended to say, Yeah, like all people want is a gluten-free English muffin recipe. The rest doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I always chose [...]

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please eat pie

When I was in my first year of college, my best friend Sharon and I sat in my bedroom on a hot summer day and wrote letters to David Letterman. Not love letters, although we did adore him with a certain fervor. No, we wrote pithy messages, brief missives, hoping to make it onto the [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free cornbread

gluten-free cornbread

I have been wanting for weeks to tell you about this cornbread. Look at that golden crust. Don’t you just want to admire it for awhile? Oh, you don’t? You’d rather cut a slice and dive right in? Understandable. Be my guest. I had this piece gathering in my mind, about the essential subjective quality [...]

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just after

(We’re thrilled that this recipe is being featured at Oprah.com’s roundup of holiday recipes for 2009. For more of our featured posts, visit Oprah.com today.) When I was in my 20s, I liked the moments before, the most. Ten minutes before a party, if I wasn’t running around trying to throw a shirt over my [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free sandwich bread

gluten-free sandwich bread

Sometimes, people ask me, “Why don’t you have more recipes for bread on your website?” It’s a funny question. There are so many recipes here. But it’s true. I haven’t put up a recipe for gluten-free bread in nearly two years. It’s not that I don’t like bread. Believe me, before I went gluten-free, I [...]

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Thumbnail image for buttermilk biscuits, gluten-free

buttermilk biscuits, gluten-free

“Biscuits in the oven going to watch em rise… right before my very eyes. Hey hey.” We have been dancing around here, to music we never expected to love. Our friend Monique gave us a cd before Little Bean was born, telling me it was one of her kids’ favorites. When I saw the name, [...]

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arepas

One of the gifts of going gluten-free, continuously, is discovering foods I never knew existed. This strange paradox strikes me, nearly every day: when I thought I could eat everything, my diet was fairly limited. I ate the same twelve or fourteen meals, in some semblance of order, over and over. Restaurant experiences provided me [...]

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Thumbnail image for the gifts we give each other.

the gifts we give each other.

Every day, I feel blessed. I have my health (thanks to discovering that I have celiac disease), I have work I love to do (you are reading it here), and I have the love of my life, the most adorable, gentle man I have ever met. How I found the Chef and a book deal [...]

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Thumbnail image for i am stubborn. i don’t give up.

i am stubborn. i don’t give up.

Eureka. A few weeks ago, in the midst of the end-of-book frenzy, I posted this piece, about my gluten-free attempt at the no-knead bread going around the internet, slavishly reported upon by blogger after blogger, all of them able to eat gluten. Dutifully, twice, I followed all the instructions, with gluten-free breads. Both times, my [...]

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sometimes, i fail.

bad bread, originally uploaded by shaunaforce.   Most days, I artfully compose my photographs of food so that I catch the light with a perfect gleam. See the reflection of the sky through the skylights on that egg yolk? Ah, there’s a perfect accident. Golden light, just before dusk — these days about 3:30 — [...]

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how he made me cry

the Chef’s pizza, originally uploaded by shaunaforce.   Last evening, I sat on our couch, next to the Chef, with tears rolling down my cheeks. I looked up at him, honestly moved and unable to convey it fully with words, and said, “You made me pizza.” In our hands were slices of gluten-free pizza, the [...]

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Thumbnail image for a slice of warm cornbread on a cold night.

a slice of warm cornbread on a cold night.

gluten-free cornbread, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Last night, it snowed in Seattle. For those of you who live in the Midwest or the Northeastern part of the United States, this may not sound like much to you. But here, in our lovely grey-skied city, snow is an event worth mentioning. It seems to snow only [...]

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Thumbnail image for an old tradition made new

an old tradition made new

bagel with lox II, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Every Sunday morning, the last two years that I lived in New York, my friend Sharon and I had a definite Sunday tradition. We always rose late and sleepy on a Sunday, me in my bedroom close to Broadway, the street noise so familiar it had the [...]

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Thumbnail image for Finnegan, begin again.

Finnegan, begin again.

Irish soda bread, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. I have so many Irish stories that I could sit here all day, telling them. That is one of my most enduring, favorite parts of the Irish people I met while I was in Ireland — the stories. They’re a nation full of storytellers, warm and open, hilarious [...]

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Thumbnail image for the joy of biting down on that crust

the joy of biting down on that crust

Madwoman pizza, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. When I was a kid, pizza brought a certain set of sense memories: small round pepperoni slices, curled up at the edges, orange oil pooled in each one, crowded together on a thin layer of cheese. Mostly, we ate frozen pizza when I was growing up. Cardboard-tasting crusts. Toppings [...]

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Thumbnail image for and finally, there’s teff

and finally, there’s teff

tef flour chocolate bread II, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Today is the darkest day of the year. Outside my window, rain splashes down in furious puddles on the Seattle streets. People walking by look harried, clutching packages and bags with fraying handles, their hands loaded down by last-minute presents. We’re all fighting the darkness with [...]

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Thumbnail image for a house full of friends, and food

a house full of friends, and food

BANANA BREAD, originally uploaded by shaunaforce.  “I think I’m going to start up my own website,” Meri said to me at the end of the evening. “Friends of the gluten-free girl.” I laughed and handed her a big bag of fresh pasta salad to take home. Thankfully, she joked about starting another website as a [...]

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Thumbnail image for making corn tortillas by hand

making corn tortillas by hand

homemade corn tortillas, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Okay, I admit it. I’m crazy. You want to know why? This morning, before the first pot of coffee had finished brewing, I made corn tortillas by hand. Let me back up. All during the week, I have been eating gorgeous food. Not just at home, where I [...]

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