Reviews

La Petite Assiette: Simple Gluten-Free Baking by Patricia Harrington

snowmaiden's review against another edition

4.0

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway about a year ago and was resistant to trying it. I don't have gluten issues, but I have been intolerant to wheat for several years. I've been hopeful that one day wheat would be ok for me again, so I haven't wanted to invest in the many types of ingredients that gluten-free baking entails. But when I finally looked at the book carefully, I realized that most of these recipes require only brown rice flour, white rice flour, and flaxseed meal. (Although there are a few that use almond meal or some other specialty flour.) I bought those three staple ingredients and have just spent the morning baking. While these recipes aren't exactly like wheat flour baked goods, they are very close, and certainly miles better than anything I've ever baked from a gluten-free mix. The two recipes I made this morning (chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon streusel muffins) are good enough that I think my family members who could eat wheat will chow them down anyway, and that's always the real test.

So why only four stars? Well, the recipes in this book are clearly one woman's personal inventions and reflect her preferences. There are two specialty waffle recipes (yam and pecan), but no basic waffle recipe. Likewise, there are several cakes, but no basic yellow cake. I think with some backtracking I can arrive at these recipes, but it would be nice if the book had done that work for me.