The Posting of Recipes (Gluten Free and Other)

I’ve had a few people ask for recipes in response to some of my recent facebook posts, and so I shall do something I never really thought I would. I shall post recipes, with a few caveats:

• I will only post recipes that are my own, are public domain or creative commons, or that I have changed so much that they would be considered new recipes.
• I won’t post recipes from cookbooks, because, aside from the issues of copyright or intellectual property, I like encouraging folks to buy good cookbooks. The more gluten free cookbooks that sell, the more that will get published. The more that are published, the easier it is for my family to find holiday presents (I am apparently hard to shop for).
• I will, however, link to cookbooks and online recipes, and provide reviews of those.

With that, I give you:

Gluten Free Croissants (from the excellent Gluten Free Gobsmacked)

My Results:

I must note that I actually do not like croissants. I have never liked croissants. That said, I love this recipe.

The thing with most gluten free recipes is that they often turn out denser than the original gluten-full version. In this case, that worked to my advantage. This recipe is insanely rich and makes a brilliant pastry.

I used it to make cheese turnovers and, I will admit, one chocolate turnover. Simransmiles, who told me about this recipe in the first place, used it to make an apple turnover. I suspect it would also make great hamantaschen, if I can ever remember when Purim is.

Tonight, I intend to experiment with it to make tyropita. If I am very clever about it, I will manage to take a decent picture of the results. In the meantime, here’s a semi-decent picture of a turnover (taken with my iPhone and missing a bite):

The Last Turnover (approx. 2 inches long)

Tips & Tricks:

Upon first glance, I was intimidated by the process, but it’s actually a lot less hassle than I’d feared.

1. Plan to make the dough on one day and do the rolling and baking on another. In addition to letting you chill the dough overnight, it also makes each step feel simpler.
2. When the dough warms (which it will do while you’re rolling it) use an ice pack on top of the upper layer of parchment paper. Just don’t leave the ice pack so long that condensation begins to gather and wet the parchment paper.
3. Be okay with getting butter on your hands. Although I froze the butter both before and after grating it, it clumped up and I had to break the clumps into smaller pieces for rolling out the dough. (This may also be due to freezer suckage, so YMMV).
4. If you have a food processor, and it has a grater attachment, use it. It is a blessing.
5. For the flour mix, I used Arrowhead Mills Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Mix, which worked just fine.
6. I suspect you can make these more properly croissantish if you role the dough thinner than I did.
7. Each quarter of the dough should be approx. 700 calories, taking into account the rice flour and grated butter used during rolling. I overdid with the grated butter on that first batch, which is why I put in a range above.