Since I’ve had such great success with Bob’s Red Mill’s pancake mix and Namaste’s Pancake and Waffle Mix, I thought I was on a roll when I grabbed the All Purpose Gluten Free Baking Mix, also from good ol’ Bob. The bag says 1:1 replacement for regular flour in any recipe, so I took that to mean any recipe.
Turns out, baking is it’s own thing.
When I put it into the Whole Grain Pancake recipe from The Vegetarian Mother’s Cookbook, it turned into super thick dough – and the more liquid I added, the thicker it seemed to get. It reminded me of griddle biscuits, so I went for it anyway.
It looked promising until it was time to flip them, at which point everything stuck and they took forever to cook through.
Rather than battle them for the whole double batch, I figured it looked enough like biscuits to just pop them in the oven. Why not?
I think I had them at 375, and I left them til they were golden on top and bottom. Meanwhile, I figure I’m experimenting already – why not try my mom’s old donut trick? Fry up some biscuit dough? (Seriously, my metabolism is going to catch up with me one day..or I will catch up to it. However that works.)
Once they come out, roll ‘em in sugar and cinnamon…easy donut holes!
By this point, I had 3 pans of food going, and not one was certain. I’d earned something fried, I’m pretty sure of it.
First things first – the pancakes. Overall, I give it a “meh” but I won’t ever use that mix for pancakes again. It never occurred to me that pancakes weren’t “baking,” so maybe that was the deal. They burned trying to cook through, and they never really made it that far, either.
The biscuits had a pretty good texture, except they didn’t cook through all the way either. I suspect that it’s because I had mixed it as though it were pancakes. A real biscuit recipe has definite promise with this stuff.
These were the rousing success of the day. The high temps cooked it all the way thru, and it was just like I remembered as a kid. I won’t make them often, and definitely not as any pretense of a healthy breakfast, but every now and then will be nice.
All in all, I’m pretty sure that this is a fab baking mix, and that I just completely skipped out on brain function that morning. I’m anxious to try it in a few of the baking recipes in The Vegetarian Mother’s Cookbook, cos I think it’ll be an easy peasy substitute.
Have you tried Bob’s GF baking mix? Know any tricks?
Try Bob’s Red Mills pancake mix and use buttermilk. You may have to add a bit more milk but you’ll get great pancakes! I also use Bob’s corn muffin mix and also use buttermilk with it as well. I ususally make them as mini-muffins and my husband (non-celiac) thinks they are the best ever muffins.
Good to know! It’s always a good compliment when a non-gf person likes a gf bread! I will have to try those. I have used the pancake mix before. I think the texture is spot on. For some reason, I thought the baking mix would be the same. Lesson learned..haha
I’m guessing that you aren’t someone who cooks gluten-free normally. My daughter and I have celiac disease and learned the hard way how different gluten free cooking/baking is from “regular” cooking/baking. Most gluten-free flour mixes require xanthum gum (powder) to make the mix somewhat pliable. The xanthum gum is supposed to hold the food together similar to what gluten would have done. GF flours can more easily be subsitituted into cooking (using small amounts) than baking. When baking, I’d use a true gluten free cookbook instead of trying to re-create the baked good using gluten free mixes. That would only work if you bought, as mentioned above, the gluten free complete mix like Bob’s gluten free pancake mix. Good luck!
Hah, am I that obvious? Yep, I am a complete gf noob. Thanks for the tips! I have stuck to complete mixes since then…currently hooked on Bob’s choc cake mix, yum! But I do want to be able to bake from scratch again. It is just so intimidating!