When my husband couldn't eat gluten anymore

Does life starts and ends with gluten?

For me, it was that way not long ago.

Bread, cakes, tarts, pies, cookies. Name it, and I'd had it.

There was a boiling passion inside me since the first time my lips touched something sweet.

And I wavered between becoming the college graduate my parents wanted me to be and following something I was yet to discover as a career.

Oh! Being young and dumb.

You guess it. I moved to another city, and six years later, I was holding my degree in Economics with a less proud smile than expected.

Unhappy, lost, angry, and tired.

Should I also add that I was jobless at the time?

I'm sure it isn't surprising to know I was drowning in negativity and self-doubt.

I baked, baked, and baked until I was out of it.

I met my now husband while baking at home, and I'm not ashamed to say I fed my way to his heart.

But then his doctor said he had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. And gluten makes his symptoms worse.

I won't lie. Part of me died the first time I tried baking gluten-free.

I'm even ashamed to share some of the things I created at the time. My pride was hurt, my pocket was empty, and I was, once again, lost.

I have to admit I thought the only solution was to stop trying.

But then this voice inside of me couldn't keep quiet, whispering from time to time.

Why can others do it but you?

And oh boy.

Rice does not taste like regular flour at all.

And some gluten-free homemade mixes that you can find online are lies.

To avoid losing myself, I decided to write about my struggle.

And keep trying.

I'm aware that it will never taste the same. Heavens knows I was a perfectionist before.

Letting go was too hard.

I wanted all my pastries to look and taste almost the same as they would with wheat.

I haven't had a butter cookie that pleases me in the past year.

But I've had some cakes.

The tasting process can be exhausting, and I still had to eat most of the failures.

Can you guess what my goal was when making my gluten-free flour mix?

Yes, something I could use weight by weight to substitute regular flour.

Baking is a science.

Don't worry. I will share the recipe I'm currently using with you at the end of this article.

I want to keep rambling a little more about why it works for cakes and not for butter cookies.

First of all, I don't consider myself lazy, but I have a bunch of good recipes already.

Finding a mix that worked with what I had was a better option.

I also have to mention my husband doesn't react to oats. This mix uses a little oat flour to balance the moist absorption. If you are lucky, you'll find gluten-free oat flour.

Can you use sorghum instead? I still need to try that one out. Almond flour? Too expensive for my budget.

Let's keep things cheap, ok? I still live in Argentina.

You might wonder why I use so many starches! Aren't they supposed to be interchangeable?

Sadly, I don't feel it gives me the right taste and consistency when I use one or the other alone.

Every single ingredient is like a different person.

You can say they look the same. But they aren't the same.

7.5 grams of oat flour in 100gr of the mix instead of 15 grams is the difference between a dry cake and a moist one.

Anyway, in the end, I don't know why it produces good-looking cookies, but they don't taste right. But cakes do.

Here it is, by the way.

Let's make 100 grams of flour.

- 30 grams of white rice flour.

- 19 grams of brown rice flour.

- 10 grams of potato starch.

- 10 grams of corn starch.

- 10 grams of nonfat dry milk.

- 7.5 grams of tapioca starch.

- 7.5 grams of oat flour.

- 5 grams of potato flour.

- 1/8 teaspoon of pure powdered pectin

- 1/8 teaspoon of xanthan gum.

I'm sure you have noticed it uses an unusual ingredient, pectin. Can you use 1/8 teaspoon of pectin and skip the xanthan gum? You can, it will turn out wonderfully soft and delicious, but the cake will dry out quickly.

And I mean it. It won't last a day without start crumbling.

Can I skip the pectin and use only xanthan gum? Since I'm doing this to improve my husband's intestinal life, I try to keep our gums consumption to a minimum. And 1/8 might not be enough to hold everything together as we wanted.

Every single little part of this recipe does something. I've adjusted it, tried, and tried again. I still have a long way to go, though. At least until I have the perfect mix for cookies and the perfect mix for bread.

Do you want a tip I've been using for my gluten-free cakes to take recipes to a new level?

Substitute milk for full-fat yogurt or whipping cream instead. Fat does make a difference.

And keep an eye on your cakes while baking! If you are turning gluten-free, and your recipe used to take 40 minutes in the oven, it will probably take 30-35 instead.

I added a picture of the last recipe I made using this mix.

I want to be as transparent as I can, it was someone else recipe, and I don't think it was as good as it looked. The taste was lacking. Not the way I want my chocolate loaves to be.

As I said, bloody perfectionist.