Baked to Perfection: Winner of the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards 2022

FOR MY PARENTS.

Thank you for your love and support and endless patience in dealing with all the food (and the dirty dishes), the let-me-test-this-just-one-more-time experiments and the overthinking that went into creating this book. Love you so much.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

GLUTEN-FREE BAKING BASICS

CAKES

CUPCAKES + MUFFINS

BROWNIES

COOKIES + BARS

PIES, TARTS + PASTRIES

BREAD

BREAKFAST + TEATIME TREATS

AROUND THE WORLD

CONVERSION TABLES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

We’re here to talk about the quantum mechanical analysis of the behaviour of sugar molecules when surrounded by particles of gluten-free flour. Wait, wait, wait, I’m kidding. Don’t put the book down yet. Truly, the scariest things in this book are the heart-stopping, jaw-dropping, ultra-fudgy, caramel-stuffed brownies, simply because they’re so delicious they’re borderline dangerous.

Let’s start this again.

This is a gluten-free cook book. Whether you’ve picked it up because you or someone close to you has a gluten intolerance, because you really, really loved the cover, or simply by accident, it matters not. Because this cook book and these recipes are for everyone.

My own gluten-free journey started – well, as most gluten-free journeys do. With feeling ill and miserable and then, partly by chance and partly by hours of research that involved reading through one-too-many online forums, coming to the conclusion that eliminating gluten might help. It did. And it also brought along the question of, what on Earth do I eat now?

I like smoothies and quinoa as much as the next person, but I also love chocolate cake. And brownies. And apple pie. And all the other delicious things that I’ve baked a hundred times before – with plain wheat flour.

So, unless I wanted to give up cookies and cake and brownies – oh my, what a dreadful thought that was – I needed to master the intricacies of gluten-free baking. Thankfully, I had an ace up my sleeve. That is, my knowledge of chemistry and an almost obsessive love of research.

You see, my gluten-free baking adventure started just as I was finishing my undergraduate Chemistry degree at the University of Oxford, and then continued through my PhD studies of Inorganic Chemistry. Therefore, it felt natural to approach the development of gluten-free recipes as I would a new research project in the laboratory.

What’s more, my scientific background gave me a particular insight into the ingredients, their properties and their interactions with each other. I wasn’t just mixing together gluten-free flour with butter, sugar and eggs, and hoping for the best. Instead, I was thinking about the wet:dry ingredients’ ratio, the different moisture responses of the various gluten-free flours, and the speed of heat penetration as it varies with the shape and depth of the baking tin.

Pair my scientific knowledge with a heaping tablespoon of stubbornness and a generous pinch of nerdiness – and you’ve got yourself a mess of overcomplicated Excel sheets, endless notes and illegible scribbles at the sides of numerous recipes covered in suspicious blotches of what might have been (once upon a time) cupcake batter and chocolate buttercream.

More importantly, you’ve got yourself (over time and after prolonged systematic experimentation) gluten-free recipes that work and work well. Gluten-free recipes that are simple and give mouthwatering, drool-inducing results – in a reproducible manner. Because if there’s one thing we scientists are all about, it’s reproducibility.

Don’t worry. You won’t have to go through the whole process of experimentation. There are no three-here Excel sheets in this book. I’ve done all the experiments for you and condensed them into simple, reliable recipes that will make your own gluten-free life so much richer and infinitely more delicious.

But there’s more! The recipes in this book don’t just give you the list of ingredients and instructions. They also give you the evidence – the scientific explanations, if you will – for why the recipes work.

This isn’t just to satisfy my own nerdiness. It’s primarily to help you become a more skilful (and successful) gluten-free baker. Once you understand the why, you can easily afford to deviate from the recipe and adapt it to your own taste. Because here’s the thing I love: baking isn’t as rigid as many would have you believe. Yes, it is a science of sorts, but rather than making it restrictive, science actually makes baking very flexible, as long as you know which things to leave alone.

It could be a specific step (such as whisking the eggs and sugar into pale, fluffy submission) or a set of ingredients (such as the ratio of wet:dry ingredients), but as long as you don’t change that, you can do pretty much anything else you want. Adding flavours, tweaking textures, substituting ingredients… it all becomes incredibly simple once you understand the why.

That’s my goal with this book. Yes, I’m giving you tried-and-tested (and then tested again, and again) gluten-free recipes that work and work well; and I’m giving you an insight into the world of gluten-free baking that shows that ‘gluten-free’ doesn’t equate to ‘delicious-free’, but I’m also giving you the knowledge to make those recipes your own and develop them further, beyond my ingredients and instructions.

LET’S TALK MORE ABOUT GLUTEN-FREE

Years after I started my gluten-free journey, gluten-free still has a bad reputation. At best, you’ll find people claiming gluten-free can be ‘just as good’ as the ‘real thing’. At worst, you’ll find the words ‘bland’, ‘dry’ and ‘cardboard’ thrown around like sad, depressing confetti.

I disagree. On both counts. Because here’s the thing: gluten-free isn’t just as good as the real thing – gluten-free is the real thing. The luxurious, moist, indulgent gluten-free chocolate cake isn’t delicious despite being gluten-free. It’s delicious while being gluten-free. And that’s all there is to it.

Of course, in order to master gluten-free baking, you first need to shake off the rules and notions of wheat-based baking. It’s a different set of ingredients with a different set of properties – naturally, then, the rules are different too. And yet, we persist in trying to use recipes developed for wheat-based baking, and then, when the results are dry and claggy and not at all pleasant, we blame gluten-free.

Let me ask you this: if you attempted to make brownies by following a cookie recipe, and they turned out crispy instead of gooey, hard instead of fudgy… would you blame the recipe? Would you give up baking and brownies and chocolate for ever? Would you proclaim brownies a waste of time?

Of course not. (At least, I hope not.) You would wise up and use a brownie recipe next time. You would accept the fact that you’re playing a different game and you would change the rules. The same is true with gluten-free baking.

WHERE THE SCIENCE COMES IN

You’ve heard it said numerous times before, and you’ll probably hear it a hundred times more: baking is a science. And gluten-free baking even more so. Rather than being restrictive, there is a particular freedom to be found in the scientific understanding.

I know that science isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time, and you might be having nightmare-ish flashbacks to school Chemistry lessons right now. But, before you despair, this isn’t a dry encyclopedia of the exact science of gluten-free baking, complete with pages-long formulae and complex terminology. The science we’re talking about here tells us how to achieve that elusive, shiny, paper-thin crust on brownies – every time and without having to rely on sheer dumb luck. Or why gluten-free baking usually requires a higher wet:dry ingredients’ ratio. Or what is the ‘reverse creaming method’ and why it gives a more delicate sponge with a velvety crumb texture. It’s the delicious kind of science. The kind that results in fudgy brownies, melt-in-the-mouth cookies and gluten-free bread that actually has the taste, texture and appearance of bread.

For best results, treat this cook book as the slightly nerdy friend you turn to when you get stuck and your gluten-free pie crust is too crumbly or too soggy. It has all the answers, right where you need them, presented in short, easily accessible blurbs.

You can find the science in three places in the book: in the next chapter, in the opening sections of each recipe chapter and as footnotes in individual recipes (I might have on occasion snuck it into the recipe descriptions as well). The science in this introduction serves as a gentle foray into the world of gluten-free baking and the general things you should keep in mind as you start making the recipes.

The science in the opening sections of each chapter focuses on ingredients, methods and other things specifically relevant to that kind of baking. Finally, the notes in the recipes explain and give details on the most important ingredients and techniques.

‘THERE’S NO WAY THIS IS GLUTEN-FREE!’

Once you begin to understand the whys and hows (that is, the science) of gluten-free baking, prepare yourself to gain a new and constant companion – the exclamations of wonder from people who cannot possibly comprehend that your mouthwatering bakes truly are gluten-free. (Usually accompanied by shocked faces and followed by requests for more, please and thank you.)

What’s even more exciting is that as you use the book, you’ll become more confident and comfortable wielding the whisk, mixing the batter and adjusting the baking time. Straying from the well-defined path of a written recipe, you’ll start making tweaks and scribbling notes about potential new flavour combinations and substitutions to try.

Once the science is clear, it’s as though a whole new world of gluten-free baking stretches out before you. Luxurious cakes, dainty cookies, the gooiest of brownies, proper crusty bread, even gluten-free éclairs so beautiful like they’ve popped straight out of a French pâtisserie – nothing is impossible or beyond your skill. And if a bake fails (spectacularly and dismally, as it does and it will, no doubt about it), rather than seeing it as the end of your fledging gluten-free baking adventure, it’s just a new chance to learn and figure out what’s going on in your bake both in and out of the oven. As it happens, the answer to your question probably already lies between these pages.

THE KIND OF RECIPES YOU’LL FIND IN THIS BOOK

1) Fundamental, basic recipes

The point of this gluten-free baking book is to function less as a collection of innovative, never-seen-before recipe ideas, and more as a go-to manual with all the fundamental, core gluten-free recipes from which all other gluten-free bakes follow. The majority of recipes within these pages belong to this category.

That’s not to say that these recipes aren’t ground-breaking. They are. But in a subtler way than you might expect. They’re ground-breaking because of the way in which they combine the ingredients, the techniques they use and the ingredient ratios, to result in gluten-free bakes the likes of which you might never have encountered before.

While the flavour combinations and the recipes themselves are more than likely old, familiar friends (like a chocolate cake or burger buns), the reasons behind using a specific ingredient, or a particular step or technique, might be less familiar.

At first, the world of gluten-free baking can seem overwhelming. And even if you’re a far more experienced gluten-free baker looking only to refine your skills, you may find that going back to basics is the best way to do that. Now, don’t get me wrong – yes, I do want to inspire you. But I want this inspiration to come more from an awareness of what’s possible and achievable and less from a flavour combination you’ve never seen before.

And finally – while an elaborately decorated, three-tiered cake or a 15-component entremet are amazing and breathtaking, nothing (and I do mean nothing) beats a slice of perfectly baked chocolate cake or a piece of warm apple pie topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream when it comes to comfort and that all-encompassing sense of happiness.

2) Recipe variations

I know I just spent half a here talking about how it’s all about core recipes in here, but I do want you to go forth and experiment further in your own kitchen, creating your own unique masterpieces. Once you’ve mastered the basics, obviously.

To kick-start your sense of gluten-free-baking adventure, I’ve included my own suggestions – just gentle nudges – for twists and variations at the end of some recipes. For example, you could add tahini paste to the chocolate chip cookies for an additional layer of flavour that pairs beautifully with the chocolate chips. Or, you might add raspberries to the white chocolate brownies if you were looking for a perfect match that gives a fruity tang.

You see? Once you start thinking about it, the possibilities are endless. As you go through the recipes in the book, I want you to always think beyond the ingredients I’ve listed. And that’s why understanding the science is so crucial to becoming an independent, innovative baker – once you know the why behind each and every ingredient and step, you know whether changing or replacing it will affect the bake. What’s more, you’ll know how it will affect the bake. And with that – nothing is impossible.

3) Recipes you can’t live without

Okay, I realise that calling them recipes ‘you can’t live without’ might be misleading – because, in fact, all the recipes in this book are so spectacular, you’ll want to make them again and again. But this last category includes recipes that introduce only few (or no) new nuggets of knowledge, and yet I simply couldn’t not include them in the book because of their sheer, heart-stopping deliciousness.

It’s the marshmallow brownies, with the tantalising combination of a fudgy, chewy brownie and a fluffy cloud of toasted sweetness that is Swiss ‘marshmallow’ meringue (see here). It’s the babka that has a very similar dough to the cinnamon rolls – but I simply couldn’t bear not to share the beauty of the chocolate fudge filling swirling with brioche dough in the most delicious, drool-inducing dance ever to happen in my kitchen (here).

Depriving you of these recipes would be rather cruel – so I didn’t. You’re welcome.

THE RECIPES YOU WON’T FIND IN THIS BOOK

While it’s incredibly important you know what kind of recipes I’ve included, it’s probably even more important that you’re aware what sort of recipes I’ve omitted and why.

Clearly, my reasoning for what’s in and what’s out is subjective and entirely my own. But I made those decisions in order to create enough room for the recipes and information that will most help you truly to master gluten-free baking.

1) Healthy recipes (or rather, recipes whose main claim is being healthy)

Listen, I’m all for healthy recipes and a balanced diet. But this book is not about that. If you’re looking for a collection of recipes that are not only gluten, but also grain, sugar, dairy, egg and whateverelse free, this isn’t a book for you. Too many times I’ve browsed the web and the bookstore for gluten-free-cake or -cookie recipe inspiration, only to encounter one ‘healthy’ recipe after another.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But here, in this book, I want each and every bake you make to be decadent and indulgent, to warm your food-loving soul and to bring you that unique joy that only comfort food can.

That said, I am aware that certain starch-heavy, gluten-free flour blends are a cause of concern for some. With that in mind, one of my DIY gluten-free flour blend recipes (see here) isn’t based on white rice and it contains significantly less starch than many store-bought brands (only 40% to a more usual 70% starchy flours). While you might think that I should eliminate starches altogether, in fact that would negatively impact the texture of most bakes. Moreover, many recipes in here are occasional treats and indulgences, and meant to be enjoyed as part of a balanced, soul-nourishing lifestyle. (And, in my humble opinion, such a lifestyle pretty much requires a cake or brownie every now and then.)

2) Naturally gluten-free recipes

I admit, finding naturally gluten-free recipes in gluten-free recipe collections is something of a pet peeve of mine, especially when it comes to collections that claim to teach you all the intricacies and how-tos involved in gluten-free cooking and baking. That’s not to say I can’t appreciate the chocolatey decadence of a flourless chocolate cake, or the comfort that comes along with a scoop of homemade ice cream.

To me, such recipes would take away valuable space from the very recipes that actually require our attention; recipes that might seem impossible to accomplish in the absence of gluten – fluffy cakes, chewy cookies, fudgy brownies, the perfect boiled and baked bagels. Why (in a book that’s all about mastering gluten-free baking) would I waste space telling you about making crème brûlée, when I can use it to explain why the recipe for the gluten-free choux pastry actually works?

Therefore, if a recipe is naturally gluten-free in that it doesn’t contain any flour to begin with – no, you won’t find it here.

3) Unnecessarily complicated recipes with inaccessible ingredients

We all know those recipes that seem almost to require you to grow your own apple tree, harvest the apples, cut them into precisely 1.3mm thin slices, douse them in a rare kind of sugar with an exact type of sugar crystal, drizzle them in 2⅕ tablespoons of lemon juice from lemons that can come from only one particular village in southern Italy, and then marinate this in the fridge for 3 days… to make a simple apple pie.

As a scientist at heart, I’m all about precision – but only insofar as it actually affects the final result in an important, can’t-live-without-it way. So, when you attempt my recipes, do so knowing that when I tell you to do something or to use a particular ingredient, there’s a reason behind it. And you should do it.

But because I don’t want you merely to follow blindly my instructions, I’ve included notes that explain any unusual and/or important step or ingredient. All the ingredients should be easily available either in your local supermarket or online.

4) Hacks and shortcuts that compromise on flavour or texture

Just like I don’t unnecessarily complicate recipes, I don’t believe in simplifying them to the point where simplification negatively affects the bakes’ flavour or texture. The same goes for the time it takes to make a recipe from start to finish. If, say, a bread dough will be easier to handle and have a better flavour after an hour chilling in the fridge, I won’t go recommending you skip that step just to save time.

I know many of us are short on time and, believe me, I’m a very impatient baker. But for 99% of the recipes in this book, the active time (that is, the time you actually spend doing active work on the bake) is much, much shorter than the total time required to make a recipe. I’ve included the most relevant timings at the top of each recipe. First, there’s the ‘prep’ time, which is the time you’ll spend actively engaging with the bake (stirring, beating, whisking, assembling and so on). Then, there are the other timings (such as baking, chilling and rising) that are there to help you judge how long you can (and should) allow the bake to do its own thing. If you’re feeling particularly organised, you can, of course, get on with other parts of the recipe during that time. For example, you can make the buttercream while your chocolate sponges are cooling; or prepare the tart filling while the pastry crust is blind baking. Some recipes also require a cooking step (like preparing a caramel or reducing the fruit juices when making a pie), which is summed up in the ‘cook time’. Note that the ‘cook time’ doesn’t include simple heating steps, such as heating the double cream for a ganache or the egg whites and sugar for Swiss meringue.

GLUTEN-FREE PERFECTION AWAITS YOU

It’s a lofty claim – that all the bakes in this book have the potential to be perfect. Some might say I’m setting myself up for failure. But here’s the thing: I want you to approach the bakes with high expectations. I don’t want you to start your gluten-free journey thinking you’ll be merely content or ‘okay’ with them. I want you to take your first gluten-free baking steps convinced you’ll taste sheer and utter… perfection.

There’s another reason I like to almost overuse the words ‘perfect’ and ‘ideal’ (they come up a lot). Any and all who know me ‘in real life’ know that I’m a perfectionist, and (when I’m not driving myself crazy trying to improve on an already improved recipe) rather proud of it, in a roundabout way. Almost every recipe in this book has gone through a minimum of ten variations, some through as many as thirty or forty. Some of these refinements were minuscule, so small many would think me insane. Does ¼ teaspoon of baking powder or 1g of xanthan gum really make that much difference? Does whisking the eggs with the sugar rather than simply stirring them together really give a drastically different brownie? Sometimes, it does. Other times, it doesn’t. But it took making all those variations to determine the truly best incarnation of a bake – and the knowledge I’ve taken away from both the successes and the failures is even more valuable than all the recipes I’ve developed along the way. Talking about perfection in the context of this book, therefore, doesn’t refer only to the quality of the recipes themselves, but also to the process of getting them to that point.

Of course, it would be incredibly easy to go down the rabbit hole of the question: what is perfection anyway? Especially when it comes to food, perfection is incredibly subjective. What I might find pleasing, you might find less so. That said, here’s the wonderful thing about a cook book that gives not only the recipes but also the reasoning and the science behind them: yes, I’ve taken these recipes to my own point of perfection (one that I think you’ll love too), but I’m also giving you the tools you’ll need to achieve your own gluten-free perfection.

GLUTEN-FREE BAKING BASICS

WHAT IS GLUTEN?

Before we delve into the (not scary at all) science of gluten-free baking, it’s important to understand what gluten actually is and the role it plays in wheat-based baking. Because at the end of the day, a large part of gluten-free baking is trying to recreate textures and structures that occur effortlessly and naturally in the presence of gluten.

The basic definition of gluten is ‘a mixture of two proteins present in cereal grains, especially wheat, which is responsible for the elastic texture of dough’. The origin of the word dates back to the 16th century, to a Latin expression for ‘glue’. These origins tell us much about the role that gluten plays in baked goods – it gives them the characteristic elasticity and essentially acts as a glue that keeps the bakes together.

Moreover, the gluten proteins determine other characteristic properties of wheat flour, such as its water-absorption capacity. That is, how much moisture or liquid it absorbs both before and during baking. When it comes to baked goods, the gluten proteins therefore determine how dry or moist, crumbly or ‘springy’ your bakes are.

Even in wheat-based baking, however, most bakers will have a love–hate relationship with gluten. While it’s the most diligent helper when it comes to creating the characteristic crumb of a loaf of bread, it takes on the role of tricky opponent when making things like cookies and pie crust. For these, a baker needs to minimise the effects of gluten, lest he or she ends up with gummy cookies and a tough crust.

In gluten-free baking, the problems we face are exactly the opposite. Now, the cookies easily remain crisp (or chewy, as desired), the pie crust buttery and flaky, and the cake sponges delicate and with the perfect crumb. Bread, however? There, it gets trickier. That’s not to say that baking proper gluten-free bread is an impossibility, it means only that we need to go about it in a different way.

GLUTEN-FREE FLOURS

The world of gluten-free flours can be overwhelming – there are just so many of them! In this book, I’ll focus on my go-to ones, those I use daily in everything from cakes and cookies to pastry and bread. What follows is by no means an exhaustive list. Rather, it is really meant as a gentle introduction to gluten-free flours and their properties. Don’t get me wrong: you could comfortably go on for years using only the flours that you’ll encounter within these pages (with mouthwatering, eye-popping results) – but do also keep in mind that there are many, many flours beyond the ones I mention.

That said, the way we think about gluten-free flours, their properties and applications is universal – and once you understand the hows and whys, you’ll be able to use pretty much any new gluten-free flour with no problem whatsoever.

Starch + protein flours

Gluten-free flours fall roughly into two groups: starch flours and protein flours. This distinction is primarily based on the protein content and the elasticity each flour gives to the bakes, and it also closely correlates to the way the flours interact with any liquid ingredients in the recipe (what I call their ‘water-absorption capacity’).

Broadly speaking, protein gluten-free flours (brown rice, buckwheat, maize, millet, oat, quinoa, sorghum and white teff flour) are the flavour- and structure-carriers of a gluten-free bake. They provide (a very small amount of) elasticity, preventing the bakes from being too crumbly. They also have a higher water-absorption capacity, which means that bakes with a higher protein-flour content are slower to dry out, all other things being equal.

Starch gluten-free flours (arrowroot starch, cornflour, potato starch, tapioca starch and white rice flour), on the other hand, are there to make the bakes softer, fluffier and airier. Because they have a smaller protein content and a lower water-absorption capacity, they make sure the cakes have a pleasant, open, melt-in-your-mouth crumb and the pastry isn’t too gummy.

However, the real magic of gluten-free baking comes from choosing the right mixture of protein and starch flours that give you the right balance of elasticity, fluffiness and moistness and an open, airy crumb. A cake made from only starch flours will crumble away to nothing, whereas using exclusively protein flours might transform it into a dense, sticky brick. That’s where gluten-free flour blends come into play – but more on that below. For now, let me just tell you that I’ve done the work for you, and figured out the perfect ratios of starch and protein flours that give the most delicious results across the board.

The distinction between the starch and protein flours is not the end of the story. Especially within the protein-flour group, there’s a gradation of properties – particularly when it comes to the elasticity and the ‘heaviness’ they impart to the bakes.

‘Additional’ flours

To make things even more interesting (and, truth be told, confusing), there are additional flours that don’t really fit in either of the two primary groups. I’m talking about almond flour (and other nut flours), coconut flour, chickpea flour and similar. While I’m not the biggest fan of chickpea flour because of its almost overwhelmingly strong flavour that isn’t best suited to desserts and other sweet treats, I do use almond flour quite frequently, especially for cakes and cupcakes.

While they resemble starch flours in that they don’t contribute to the elasticity of the bake, they also give the bakes a certain weight. This, in addition to their rather high water-absorption capacity, is quite reminiscent of a protein flour. These mixed properties mean that it’s best to treat them as a separate group, which often acts as an add-in rather than a central component of a gluten-free bake.

Are you overwhelmed yet? To make your life a bit easier, I’ve summed up the main gluten-free flours in Table 1 (below). But to really gain a proper understanding of gluten-free flours, you’ll have to use them. Feel their texture, see how they behave in baking. A good test of their properties is to mix about 1 tablespoon of the flour into ½–1 tablespoon of water. The amount of water the flour absorbs will tell you much about its water-absorption capacity, and the texture of the mixture will show you whether you’re dealing with a protein or a starch flour. The former, when mixed with water, will form a ‘dough’ with varying degrees of elasticity (of course, nowhere near that of wheat flours), whereas the latter will form a runny paste.

In Table 1, you’ll notice that I categorise brown rice flour as a protein flour, but white rice flour is in with the starches. White rice flour does contain slightly less protein than brown rice flour, but its protein content is still greater than that of, say, tapioca or potato starch. Nonetheless, when it comes to how it behaves in actual bakes, I’ve found that white rice flour is closer to starch flours than protein ones. So, while this is by no means a perfect classification, it works well in practice. It does mean, though, that you can’t reliably substitute white rice flour for other starch flours (or vice versa) – more on that later.

The importance of finely ground flours

A final note on gluten-free flours: always make sure that you use finely ground gluten-free flours (or blends). They should have a fine, powdery texture – think regular wheat flour rather than polenta. Using a coarse flour inhibits its interaction with the rest of the ingredients and will lead to disappointing results.

Table 1: The most important gluten-free flours and their relative protein contents, water-absorption capacities, and assignments to the groups of starch, protein or ‘additional’ flours.

[1] Note that while a higher protein content does contribute some elasticity to the bake, this elasticity is defined within the realm of gluten-free flours and is nearly negligible when compared to that of wheat flour.

[2] The amount of water absorbed by dry powders at room temperature (tested by mixing together 10g flour with 10g