Tag: opinion

It Can No Longer Be Denied: Allergen-Free Baking MUST Be Precise Kitchen Chemistry

Baking Chemistry BWAfter a solid 13 months of attempting various types of allergen-free baking, I can no longer deny that allergen-free baking must be approached as chemistry. I can no longer hold onto the notion that there can be any flexibility in baking that eliminates the three most essential chemical elements: wheat gluten (reaction base), eggs (leavening/binding) and dairy (liquid and/or fat).

After wasting hours of kitchen time (and precious dollars), I have come to the very disappointing realization that this is – in no way – anything like wheat baking.  I have officially been forced to accept that my 15+ years of experience in wheat/dairy/egg baking has given me a sense of over-confidence with which I have scoffed at allergen-free baking authors that have warned me to either weigh correctly and/or use the exact ingredients listed. I have had a cavalier attitude about my ability to achieve great success with my recipes while saving both time and money by bypassing measurements and substituting ingredients. The results of these baking endeavors have laughed in the face of my over-confidence. That biscuit above does seem to have an under-bitten smug laugh, doesn’t it? Yeah, I’m not as brilliant in my baking as my wheat experience has led me to believe!

The only thing I can endeavor to do at this point is to no longer deny my un-brilliance in baking and that the science of it must be absolutely understood in order for this to work effectively and consistently. I must accept that the comprehensive information on gluten-free baking just does not exist, especially not in the common areas of the Internets or in the popular cooking and baking consortiums, societies and schools.

After reading about gluten-free baking in every resource I have been able to get my eyes or hands on, I STILL do not understand the reasons that there must be potato starch AND tapioca starch in nearly every basic gluten-free flour mix. Why potato starch if tapioca starch can do everything that potato starch can do? I admit that I have not googled this question. Or, if I have, I did not get a satisfactory answer. I do not understand why sweet white rice flour should be added to a mix or not, other than that I noticed that my banana bread came out a little more tender when I added it, but that sadly, it has also made my pancakes a little gummier (an effect I did not desire). Said sweet white rice flour could also be making the elusive tender biscuit too dense or heavy. I don’t know exactly why my biscuits have sometimes come out too dense/heavy or too light and crumbly. I do not know if it is the switch to a superfine brown rice flour (which could be taking up more airspace than the more grittier Bob’s Red Mill version) is to blame, or if the new aluminum-free baking powder is affecting performance.

As of this writing, I have attempted an allergen-free biscuit at least five times with varying results. All attempts have been adapted from the basic Fannie Farmer baking powder biscuit recipe. The first two attempts were a somewhat stunning success using only sorghum flour with the addition of the appropriate amount of xanthan gum. The only problem is, the biscuits were freakishly filling and did some very strange things to our digestive systems (I’ll leave out the details of those effects). Another attempt was made with the standard gluten free flour mix that I made with Bob’s Red Mill products. Then I made the biscuits and didn’t notice that I had forgotten the xanthan gum until the results were extremely crumbly. I made the biscuits again with the same mix and they were nearly perfect, with the exception of the “gritty” texture.

So, after a year of reading in various allergen-free baking books and blogs, and upon the insistence of many gluten-free recipe authors, I finally ordered some superfine brown rice flour with the goal to eliminate as much as possible, the grit texture. I waited this long because I really didn’t want to have to order a flour. All along, I have wanted all of my recipes to be accessible to everyone but I thought, if it’s really worth it to do it, it would justify the insistence from many other gluten-free recipe authors. And really, most people can order online now and it isn’t that cumbersome. It is just a matter of waiting.

A few days later, my order of Authentic Foods superfine brown rice flour came in from Amazon. When I opened the bag, I had every member of the family come into the kitchen to feel the texture. We were almost breathless with awe. It felt powdery the way a wheat flour does. And although, you’ll get down to the smallest possible grit (that is how you know that it is STILL not exactly like wheat), it was not nearly as much gritty as with the Bob’s Red Mill Brown Rice Flour. With Bob’s Red Mill (BRM), you can feel the grit between your fingers almost immediately and it is a larger grit.

Superfine Flour
Superfine brown rice flour feels just like wheat flour.

I was so impressed and happy with the texture, and the potential for all of my baked items to have that wheat-like tender crumb without the grit, that I really could not wait to start working with it. I wasted no time in preparing my basic gluten-free flour mix and then went right to work on biscuit recipe, which, up to this point, has been ALMOST PERFECT.

I did another thing, too (mostly because a cake I made the other day came out tasting metallic), I also used aluminum-free baking powder instead of the alum kind because, sheesh, who needs to eat alum and taste any tone of tin to their baked products? So, make I did. Then I baked. Then we ate.

The results were abysmal.

:-/ No rise. Not tender. Dense. Kinda hard.
:-/ No rise. Not tender. Dense. Kinda hard.

It’s was like taking ten steps backward in all of my biscuit making weekends. How frustrating is it to get SO CLOSE with the sorghum and BRM mix and then this, with the flour that is supposed to make every gluten-free endeavor that much more perfect, come out so hard, so dense, and with so little rise? Ugh!

A similar disaster has been going on behind the scenes with a Boston Cream Pie (which is really cake) and I’ve been so anxious to develop really good recipes for that as well.

I’m SO VERY CLOSE to having recipes that are worth posting but I refuse to post recipes that have not been tested, or do not taste good. I tend to hate untested and untasted published recipes and won’t do that to my readers.

In the end, my fiance is right, I can’t just embark on this like the wild wheat baker I once was. I need to get out some books, do some research and know precisely how each ingredient is going to work and how it will affect the others.  The good part about this is that by the end of  THIS year, I will have compiled some comprehensive information on the function and purpose of the various flours that is hopefully more comprehensive than what is currently available. And yes, the Culinary Institute of America has not even divulged the science behind the performance of each gluten-free flour. I’ve gone to the library and searched every single gluten-free baking book for this information. The most I’ve been given is that yeast breads require higher protein flours. But why garfava flour in some recipes and garbanzo flour in others? I don’t know! And neither does anyone else except that it “seems to work.” Oh so vague! Exactly how much higher is the protein content in each of these flours? I will have to do a lot more reading and determine this myself. Unless there is a comprehensive resource out there on the science of gluten-free baking that I don’t know about.

I will say that the one place that I found some somewhat more comprehensive information on baking with gluten-free flour is from a blog called Gluten Free on a Shoestring and she has even authored a few books. While I can’t defer to this site much for totally allergen-free baking (we have to avoid dairy around here), she goes into a great explanation on the reasons for weighing flours and the ratios of flours-starches-gums that work best for her. Click Here for What You Need to Know About Gluten-Free Flour and you will find some good information. I have not tried any of the recipes yet. They look gorgeous. And if you are not allergic to diary and eggs, then these gorgeous recipes are worth a shot. (And let me know what you think of them).

As for allergen-free baking, I still defer to Cybele Pascal’s book. The recipes are great. But, unless you know about the secret of weighing flours instead of measuring them by cup, you will still end up with inconsistent results. And there is still the economy issue. I really don’t want to have to purchase egg replacer, agave nectar, and expensive organic palm oil for every recipe. Is there a way that more of those items can be made with more economical ingredients such as oil instead of shortening? I’m hoping. So far, I’ve had luck with both the banana bread, chocolate cake and pancakes using oil and applesauce instead of shortening and egg replacer.

Still more recipes to play with. Many more – with a mission for the recipes to taste good and be of good texture while be as economical and accessible as possible. With that, I want to include information on how and why each flour-starch-leavener-binder works and how to make it work consistently.  After all, everyone does not have an unlimited food budget. And everyone deserves a consistently successful Sunday biscuit breakfast, or sandwich for lunch or to have an occasional slice of their favorite Boston Cream Pie.

We will get there, young dairy-free and egg-free Glutanawans. Soon.

Now, it’s time to get that kitchen scale I’ve been meaning to pick up and get seriously scientific about this.

Parent upset about school nut ban loses lawsuit.

peanut butter jar

The fact that this story exists demonstrates such a lack of caring.  It’s but one of many examples of what parents of food allergic children have to deal with. It is so sorely disappointing that it takes a court to mandate protection of a child’s life.  Even worse, that adults are capable of this behavior:

“…some parents sent their kids to school with peanut products and appeared in the cafeteria to prevent enforcement [of the nut ban that was put into place to protect students with life-threatening allergies to peanuts and nuts].”

http://www.wsbt.com/health/wsbt-parent-upset-over-school-nut-ban-loses-lawsuit-20130807,0,1672724.story

The Little Lifesaver

2Have you ever seen, before your very eyes, a real life little boy, become a real life little hero? Last night, what I witnessed was something truly amazing. My son looking up at me with those sparkling and inquisitive hazel eyes. His eyebrows raised real high like kids do when they are excited about learning.  He was coloring at the counter while I was washing dishes and he asked if I had remembered to go get a product called Sunbutter, a peanut-butter substitute that is made from sunflower seeds and is safe for those with a peanut and nut allergies. I almost forgot that I bought it. I said “Oh!”, and ran to the grocery bag on the dining room table and retrieved it like I pulled a bunny out of a hat, “I did get it!” He smiled really big and said, “That’s awesome, Mom! Can we try it?” To which I happily replied, “Absolutely!”

You see, my son is really interested in what I’m doing on this blog. He knows that I’m constantly writing, researching and talking about food allergies. He has been wanting to participate and help me come up with recipes.  He has been particularly interested in the Natalie Giorgi story. I didn’t let him watch the news story, but I did tell him, in terms that were honest, what happened to her. It sparked a conversation about his own diligence in food inspection.

He has been a bit scared about it. He has asked if he will die from his food allergies (gluten and dairy). We told him that it is unlikely from the gluten and dairy, but that he really has to be careful about exposure anyway, because – and I had to be honest – the body will react stronger each time. That is how an allergy works. The body sees it as an invasion and it sends in more of its “troops” to fight it with each exposure.

It is fact and important for him to know. It is a conversation that was not fun to have with him but I believe that gentle honesty and a very thorough explanation of strategies that he can use to protect himself eased his anxiety about it.

After answering a lot of questions about Natalie and other food allergies, he mentioned that he has a girl in class that has a peanut allergy and that he really wants to protect her. My darling talkative seven-year old even began lecturing me to make sure I don’t ever put anything in his lunch with peanuts or peanut butter so that she doesn’t get hurt, All I could say was, “Baby, you know who you are talking to, right?” He said, “I know Mom, I just want to make sure.” I smiled at him in pride. He was right. After all, I taught him to double check on adults -even me – and applauded him for doing so.

All of that said,  he was anxious and excited to try the Sunbutter.  As I toasted the gluten-free bread, and carefully swiped a very thin layer (with a generous helping of grape jelly to help mask any weird flavor there might be), I was worried that he was going to hate it. I really wanted this to work out.

Lo and behold, we were pleasantly surprised and impressed that there was virtually no difference in flavor from real peanut butter. My son wasn’t just excited about the flavor, he was excited that he found something that protects his friend. I am inspired by my son’s curiosity and compassion. I’m also wondering how scary it must be for him, and other kids, to hear the story of Natalie Giorgi. She was a girl, diligent in her own care, trying to live her life like any other kid. One bite of of a rice krispie treat in the dark at a camp potluck event (not knowing the cook had put peanut butter on the bottom of these treats), three EpiPen treatments,  and less than an hour later, she was dead.

This story has struck a nerve in our household as much as the Sandy Hook Elementary event did. For Natalie and her parents, there was no room for error. None. And the world has done nothing to help them avoid that error. Peanuts have not been banned. Schools still allow peanuts on the property. If you think about it, peanuts are everywhere and in thousands of things. And despite these news stories, people will still do what that cook did.

They say  that charity begins at home. Do we really have to have peanuts and peanut butter in our life? What if something I make kills somebody’s kid? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to carry the knowledge that my cooking/baking killed someone. What if we could all honor Natalie and remove peanuts and peanut butter? This is America. We can be a country of people that can make progress. We can also be a country of people who live in blissful ignorance and throw tantrums when we have to be inconvenienced by others’ needs.  What kind of reputation do we want? How inconvenient would it be to use Sunbutter instead of peanut butter? Or just forgo the culinary need for the peanut? To the parents of the peanut and treenut allergic children, this small inconvenience would hold the same value as jumping into a whitewater river to save their child. Alternatively, serving the allergen would be the equivalent of pushing them into it, just to see what happens. Which would you rather do?

My son’s request for me to make a safe sandwich to protect his friend’s life demonstrates so much compassion and thoughtfulness to the value of life of others. It means he would rather save her life than harm her. And that makes me proud.

What If The Next Great Pandemic Comes From Within?

Milk or Bleach? To his body, there isn't a difference.
Milk or Bleach? To his body, there isn’t a difference.

Milk or Bleach? To his body, there isn’t a difference. We need a fundamental shift in public attitude to protect our kids and find a cure for food allergies.

As of this writing, August 2013, the consensus is that an average of 2 kids per each classroom in the nation suffers one or multiple food allergies (See: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db10.htm) It is also considered to be a genetic inheritance. Also consider that when something is “on the rise,” it is because we have become better at diagnosing it. Years ago, someone might have said “milk doesn’t sit well with me” and they’d just avoid it. Today, people say “I have a confirmed milk allergy and must avoid it.” So, part of the increasing numbers is due to a more frequent diagnosis.

HOWEVER, what is new, and increasing, is the severity and toxicity of food allergy reactions. Not long ago, it was unheard of to hear of someone dying from ingesting commonly safe food. In the case of my own family history, my Dad had a hard time digesting something, although he doesn’t really know what it was. He said he felt nauseated every day from about age 5 to age 9 and then outgrew it. We will never know what caused his nausea and occasional vomiting, though I’m told he drank milk in abundance. It was also unpasteurized raw milk from the family farm. My maternal Aunt is also mildly lactose intolerant. I ended up with a similar bout of nausea as a kid as my Dad did, but it was off and on. At age 21, my morning cereal was causing me to have heartburn so bad that I could not function. As I told my doctor, “if there were such a thing as digesting razor blades, this would be what it feels like.” So, I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance but still can digest yogurt and cheese. My child had formula and I put him on regular milk as a toddler and he was fine with the exception of severe eczema that I just could not control. His pediatrician told me he would outgrow it, and he did, about the time he started complaining of belly aches at about age 5. It took a while to figure out that he had become allergic to dairy, as well as developing a severe gluten intolerance. He absolutely cannot have a drop of anything dairy or gluten without projectile vomiting for 8 hours straight and suffering severe intestinal damage that takes months to repair.

How did this get to be so severe? I let him play in dirt. I wasn’t super-sanitary. How did this happen?

I am not a scientist, and I only know what the average person knows about genetics, but now I want to learn everything there is to know about it. So much so, that I want to become a dietitian and then go to medical school with a focus on food allergy research. I need to know so much more. I wonder if the food allergy gene is going to be dominant like the brown eyes gene. I wonder if there is a gene therapy that could cure this. I wonder if it is true that food allergies are more prevalent in colder metro areas, and if so, why?

What is clear to me is the fact that we evolve and that we pass things down. So, right now, 1 in 13 children have a food allergy. What does that mean for the next generation? We can only speculate as to what will happen.

What if the children now end up having children with allergies that increase the list from “the 8 common allergens” to “20 common allergens” that cause a severe reaction? And of the 8 common allergens (milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish)  that are harsh/severe in this generation, what of those will become the next life-threateningly sensitive allergen like the peanut allergen is today? Will my grandchildren die if they accidentally ingest milk powder in something that an adult thought “a little will be okay”?

Did you know that there is such a thing as being allergic to water? It’s true. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquagenic_pruritus

Will we die off way before the supernova because humans become increasingly allergic to the very substance that their body is composed of? Does it sound far-fetched? Maybe, but I’m sure that dying from ingesting peanuts also sounded far-fetched to our great-grandparents.

We can’t deny that it is getting worse. We need a cure now like we needed one for polio.

As for the medical research, there is still a long way to go. So far, they have only been partially successful with exposure therapy and it doesn’t always work. And the children right now are the guinea pigs. As I write this, there are children sitting on doctors’ office beds getting drops of their allergen and waiting to react so that scientists can learn from them. Those children are BRAVE! They really ARE a legacy for the future and don’t even know it.

Tell an adult to sit on a doctors’ office bed and take a few drops of Ipecac each day to try to build a tolerance or immunity to it. I know that, personally, I’d be seriously loathe to do it. I don’t like feeling bad on purpose so that someone can use me as research.

Any advances we make in food allergies now are because of these kids. I like to call them little soldiers, courageously being walked into a medical research office by the hand of their parent, taking proverbial food bullets to help save the next generation. Amazing.

In my opinion, using a child as a test subject is already a serious ethical and moral issue. And if food allergies continue to become more and more severe in the generations to come, it will be criminal to test children.  Give the child a drop of milk and have an epi-pen ready? What if the epi-pen doesn’t work and he/she dies? Just last week, if you haven’t already seen the news article, died last week after three epi-pen doses. See: http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/31/health/california-peanut-allergy-death/index.html?iref=allsearch I am so sad for her parents and cannot imagine the grief they are suffering. My heart goes out to them. I can only hope her life can be honored with a public attitude that aims to take the issue of food allergies more seriously than they do now.

Everyone on this planet needs to start taking this more seriously, not just the ones who suffer. This is why we get upset when previous generations dismiss a food allergy as paranoia culture of my generation. We need to help them understand that we are not trying to be a pain, we are protecting lives. Yes, previous generations outgrew their food intolerances, and yes, those of us in the X Generation outgrew some of it too, but not easily. But now our children are dealing with a level of it for which the world isn’t prepared.

The super bug is something we all worry about, and rightly so, but the food allergy pandemic – the kind that kills, the kind that no epi-pen treatment will cure – could become a reality.

The best way to address this issue right now has to start with a change in public attitude. Everyone needs to know about the new severity and toxicity of food allergies, not just the people who are dealing with it. Teachers, care providers, family and friends all need to know how and why this can’t be taken lightly anymore. Our culture needs to stop dismissing people with food allergies. Even doctors need to start suspecting food allergies more in their diagnostic process when a patient isn’t responding to standard therapies. There has to be an overall acceptance that this is a real problem.

Beyond a fundamental change in public attitude, friends and family can read more information so that they can enter into conversations about food allergies with intelligence instead of an arsenal of myths about it. A great place to go for this information an organization called FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education) at http://www.foodallergy.org. They have articles and webinars that even address the issues of food allergy bullying, a thing that kids do when they sneak an allergen into their allergic classmate’s meal to see what will happen.

I am looking forward to a time when understanding and compassion become more common than skepticism and dismissive attitudes. It is among the most important steps right now to keeping our kids safe.

The good news is that it’s finally being taken seriously by our lawmakers. Yesterday, the FDA mandated that products will have to be tested as being no more than 20 ppm to be claimed as gluten-free. This means that an establishment won’t be able to say a product is gluten-free without being diligent about cross-contamination. More work needs to be done, but it’s good to see that a more helpful and compassionate attitude is going to be required.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/02/fda-gluten-free-labeling-rules/2610841/