Monday, December 1, 2008

Carol Fenster

If you're gluten free, and have not heard this name, you need to investigate it. NOW!

She is the author of a fantastic cookbook entitled
1,000 Gluten Free Recipes.
I picked this up at my local Barnes & Noble, but I'm sure you could find it at any number of bookstores, or probably much cheaper than what I payed at Amazon.

At any rate, it was worth every penny. She has created this fabulous flour mix of sorghum, tapioca starch and potato starch, which is useful in just about any recipe that you would otherwise use wheat flour.

So, anxious to try out my new book, I ran by the store and got some yeast ( I wanted to make bread) and headed home. My first endeavor was focaccia bread, which didn't quite do as I wanted it to. I'm pretty sure that was a pan issue, believe it or not. It tasted good, but it didn't rise like I wanted.

But then, still feeling sort of unsatisfied by my pizza experience last weekend, I ventured to the pizza section of the book. And after feeling brave enough to try to make my own dough from scratch, I got started. The dough was actually pretty easy to make. Yeast used to scare me... but then I found these things called thermometers. You should invest in one if you don't have one. So, I made my crust, and I wasn't quite sure how it was going to turn out. But after following the recipe to the letter, which is actually rather hard for me, I ended up with this pizza that was knock your socks off good! The crust was chewy, and kind of crusty; just as I remember pizza tasting. I'm not sure if it was so good because I haven't had "real" pizza in a year, or because it really is that good. Either way, I thought about sending it on to Lilly's and telling them to ditch the rice and go for this crust.

The best thing about it: It's egg free AND can easily be made dairy free! How great is that??

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