Easy Homemade Mayo recipe

I’ve been making my mayonnaise for about six months now. It’s easy, but I tended to forget about it until the minute I needed it, which rarely coincided with when it was convenient to make it. That was annoying so I would generally also buy a small jar of night-shade free mayo when we went to the “big city” for our monthly grocery shopping trip.

That all changed last month when I found that the store had replaced the Spectrum mayonnaise that I had been buying with a new paleo mayonnaise that cost over $10 for a small jar! And it had basically the same ingredients that I already use! That was all I needed to commit to making a small batch of mayonnaise every Saturday so that I could enjoy chicken salad, or slaw, or a sandwich whenever I wanted.

Here’s the basic recipe that I use. Check the notes below for ingredient options.

Ingredients

1 tsp. (6 g) salt
1 tsp. (4 g) sugar
1 tsp. (2 g) ground mustard
1 large (50 g) egg
1 1/4 c. (350 ml) oil, separated
3 Tbsp (45 ml) vinegar

Instructions

Add mustard, salt, sugar, egg and 1/4 c. (50 ml) oil to food processor and give it a whirl. Scrape down sides if necessary, then turn the food processor back on and very slowly drizzle in 1/2 c. (150 ml) oil. If your food processor has the handy little insert with a hole in the bottom, use that! Check the mayo to make sure that it has emulsified (if not see below). Turn the food processor back on and drizzle in the vinegar and then the remaining half cup (150 ml) of oil. Once the oil has been completely added in, give the mayo a stir and put into a food storage container and refrigerate.

Ingredient Options

Oil: you can use olive oil, grapeseed oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, walnut oil, etc. Taste your oils and make sure they are not rancid before you add them. Rancid oils are bitter and do not make good mayo! I always buy my oils in metal containers so that they are protected from light.

Vinegar: I’ve made this recipe with lemon juice, lime juice, apple cider vinegar, white vinegar and kombucha vinegar. If you’re using kombucha vinegar or a vinegar with a live mother, then you may choose to leave the mayo at room temperature for several hours to allow it to ferment.

Biscuits are a form of pastry, and as such the three main ingredients are flour, fat, and liquid. The type of each ingredient that you use and the techniques that you use to mix them together greatly affect the outcome. When you add sweet potato into the mix, every major ingredient and technique is affected and I quickly saw that I would need to allow for that in my recipe and instructions.

Let’s look at flour first. I compared the amount of flour in the sweet potato biscuit recipes to the amount of flour that I use to make regular biscuits. As I suspected the sweet potato biscuits use less flour. The starch substance of the potato itself takes the place of some of the flour so I ended up using approximately 3/4 c. less flour than I ordinarily would. The only remaining question that I have is whether I should adjust the relative amounts of the various flours in this recipe to account for the starchiness of the potatoes. But that is a small tweak and one that I’ll probably only test because I’m curious.

The difference in the liquids was even more dramatic. Mashed sweet potatoes are very wet and the reference recipes tended to use 2/3 cups of water when I would normally use 2 cups. Because gluten free flours absorb water differently, I could only use the reference recipes as a guideline. I left the water amount blank when I wrote the recipe and then measured how much water I needed in order to incorporate all of the flour. I ended up using 2/3 of the amount of liquid that I use in my classic gluten free biscuit recipe.

The final key ingredient in a biscuit is the fat. You have two options with biscuits: you can work the fat in so that so that most of the fat is in crumb-sized pieces and the larger portions are pea-sized or you can leave the fat in large chunks. The crumb and pea sized bits of fat give you a “tender” biscuit; the larger chunks give you a “flaky” biscuit.

In either case, you want the fat to stay in its solid form until it goes into the oven. This is generally not something that I have to pay much attention to. My butter is always frozen, so it’s always cold enough to stay solid. But…..when you add the sweet potato in you can quickly mess things up.

Recipe testing happens in the normal course of our life, so one Sunday morning I decided that it was the morning for testing the sweet potato biscuit recipe. I was not thinking ahead and didn’t leave any time in my morning to chill the mashed sweet potatoes. In fact, it wasn’t until I was draining them that I realized that hot sweet potatoes would melt the butter in the dough, which would mean no flaky layers. The recipes that I used as reference had mentioned that the sweet potatoes should be chilled, but somehow I’d just mentally skipped over that part. I assume that the same might happen to you, so in the moment I made a mental note to mention it in a way that would stick with you. Hopefully, I’ve been successful!

The sweet potato biscuits were a huge hit with my children and husband. The color of the biscuits is slightly darker than my usual recipe, and there are lovely orange flecks throughout since I mashed the potatoes rather than pureeing them. We toasted the leftover biscuits the next morning and served them with strawberry jam during our morning tea time and they were just as lovely. These biscuits are definitely going on my holiday baking lists, or for whenever I have leftover sweet potatoes. They would be lovely with sliced ham and Jezebel sauce and if you used a small biscuit cutter, they would be an appropriate size for an hors d’oeuvres platter.

Now that I know that sweet potato biscuits exist I’m wondering if there are other special kinds of biscuits that I’d like to make. What is your favorite kinds of biscuit? Let me know in the comments.

Ingredients

175 g brown rice flour
250 g corn starch *
75 g sorghum flour
25 g baking powder
12 g salt
6 g xanthan gum

150 g butter, frozen and thinly sliced*

350 g sweet potatoes, cooked, mashed & chilled
300 g water
50 g maple syrup
50 g egg (1 large chicken egg)

Instructions

1. Begin by cutting 3 medium sweet potatoes into bite-sized chunks and boiling them in salted water until tender. Drain and mash. Chill, preferably overnight.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and combine with a fork for 2 – 3 minutes. Add butter slices and toss until well-coated with flour.
4. In another bowl mix the remaining ingredients until egg is thoroughly incorporated. Add these ingredients into the flour/butter mixture and stir until no dry flour can be seen.
5. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and sprinkle flour over the top and sides. Roll the dough out to 1/2″ thickness and fold in thirds vertically and then horizontally. Repeat this process once, then roll the dough out to 3/4″ thickness and use a biscuit cutter to cut out the biscuits. Combine the scraps, roll and cut again as the dough allows.
6. Bake the biscuits on a baking sheet for approximately 25 minutes. When they are done, you will be able to lightly press the top of one with your finger and it should rebound rather than holding the dent.

* I’ve written the recipe as I tested it. Tapioca starch and arrowroot starch are generally acceptable substitutes for corn starch. Lard or shortening would be good substitutes for the butter; coconut oil is not a favored substitute for this recipe due to its melting point.

First of all though, I just want to tell you how excited I am about all of the questions and comments that have been pouring in on the previous posts/videos in this series. If you havenâ€t had a chance to watch or read them, you may want to start there (some of my comments today will allude to things that Iâ€ve already explained in more detail in previous posts):

Previous Videos:

1) What Most GF Recipes Don’t Tell You

2) Easy Solutions To The 3 Most Common GF Bread Disasters

And when you do watch them, please do post more questions and comments! I love to hear from you!

The 3 Things That Stand Between You And Good Gluten Free Baking
This series of posts started when I asked my email readers a couple of questions: “ If I came over to your kitchen, what would you want to bake together?” and “Assuming I was a genie who knew everything about GF baking, what would you ask me?” After pouring through hundreds of responses, I decided to just start filming videos and writing posts and answering all of those questions.

It is absolutely possible for each of you to finally put a stop to the cardboard-like gluten free bread, dry cakes, gummy brownies and all of the other things that are keeping you from enjoying being gluten free.

There are only three thing between you and and a future where you enjoy everything that you bake, where no one believes you when you tell them it’s gluten free, and where they even compliment you and say, “This is the best _____ Iâ€ve ever eaten”.

• The first thing is to learn the little tricks and techniques that arenâ€t in recipes and that dramatically improve the results of everything that you bake. I touched on that in Video 2, so if you havenâ€t watched it – go do that!
• The second thing to learn is how a particular kind of dough or batter should feel. As I mentioned in the earlier videos, the quickest way to learn this is to watch an experienced GF baker make something several times.
• The third thing that you need to gain is a general knowledge of different kinds of recipes and how they work. Thatâ€s what weâ€re going to start talking about today.

Thatâ€s it! Based on my experience with hundreds of students you can easily learn all 3 of these things and have fun while doing so.

Before we get to how learning 5 recipes can teach you 80% of everything about gluten free baking, I wanted to answer a few questions that have come in.

“How Can I Minimize The Cost/Waste of Learning To Bake?”

Question: Gluten free baking is expensive. Iâ€m afraid to try it in case I make a total mess! Even if it doesnâ€t come out perfectly, do you think that it will be at least edible?

Answer: It depends. Most peopleâ€s first attempts, and even second and third attempts do not turn out well, and may even be so dense and hard that you risk breaking a tooth. The reason are two-fold.

First, most recipes donâ€t give you weight measurements and donâ€t tell you enough information to replicate the recipe exactly. They assume you know things that you donâ€t (actually the writer of the recipe may not know them either and just got lucky) .

Second, the consistency of gluten free doughs and batters is often very different from wheat-based recipes. Consistency is very hard to describe in words and pictures, and so people often end up adding too much water or too much flour trying to attain the consistency that theyâ€re imagining in their heads. If they are experienced bakers they have the added difficulty of knowing what the dough “should” feel like when made with wheat flour and they try to adjust towards that consistency, even when they know itâ€s the wrong consistency. (Itâ€s a weird phenomenon – almost like a mental tractor beam that they canâ€t escape!)

Obviously you donâ€t want to have failure after failure. The best way to learn to bake gluten free while minimizing failures is to get someone to teach you in a way that allows you to see the dough. You also want to learn from someone who knows what theyâ€re doing. The way that I pick those people out is to see whether they recommend using weight measurements rather than volume measurements and whether they can give a some-what scientific answer to how a specific recipe works – preferably the one that you want to learn about. If they can do that, theyâ€ll know enough to get you off to a good start.

“I Think You’re Making This Too Complicated”

Question: Does gluten free baking really have to be so complicated? I use recipes from ______ cookbook and they always turn out well and Iâ€ve never had any problems.

Answer: You, my friend, are one in a million. Keep doing whatever is working for you! Yes, there are great gluten-free cookbooks available. The challenge is finding the ones that are great and that work for a given familyâ€s mix of food allergies/intolerances and immune issues. It is rare in the gluten free community that someone is able to use all of the recipes in a cookbook without making ingredient substitutions. We, as a community, need to understand how gluten free recipes work and how the individual ingredients work, so that we can make substitutions. In addition, at some point, everyone runs into recipes that donâ€t work. Itâ€s frustrating, and figuring it out can be expensive. The additional techniques and procedures that I recommend are simple, quick, and inexpensive and are used as a matter-of-course by professional bakers to ensure consistent results.

“Is baking gluten free even worth it? Will it taste as good?”

Question: Is there a gluten free recipe that tastes as good as regular home made bread?

Answer: Yes! In fact there are gluten free recipes for pretty much everything that you could want to bake and they all taste as good as or better than the regular home made version!

The key to the actual taste of the bread is finding a mix of flours that you like and the right ratio of flours to starches. Different people taste things differently so that part of it came take some trial and error. The primary thing, however, is to learn how to make sure the bread rises and sets properly, because without that the bread is is not going to turn out well. Donâ€t give up hope! You can make this happen!

How Paretoâ€s Principle Simplifies Baking To 5 Recipes

Now letâ€s talk about the big picture of gluten free baking. How can you quickly get to the point where you can make whatever you want with gluten free flours and have it taste great? To do this weâ€re going to focus on the Pareto Principle, with which Iâ€m sure that youâ€re already familiar. 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. We can put that rule to work for us with gluten free baking by learning master formulas.

What are master formulas? They are the essential ingredeints in a particular kind of recipe. For example, the master formula for bread is flour and water. In regular baking using only what your, the master formula for bread is 5 parts flour to 3 parts water. With gluten free baking, the actual ratio of ingredients can vary greatly depending on the flours that youâ€re using, but a bread recipe is still, at itâ€s core, just flour and water. And thatâ€s really helpful information. For one thing, if youâ€re allergic to dairy or eggs, you can quickly see that itâ€s possible for you to have bread because it doesnâ€t depend on the ingredients you canâ€t have. It also tells us that most of our structural problems with bread are going to be about flour and water.

This holds true for the other major categories of recipes. Everything that you bake falls into 5 broad categories: bread, pastries, cakes, cookies, and “things that go poof” (Iâ€m still working on a good name for those, but if it depends on air and steam it goes in this category – think eclairs and funnel cakes). By learning one basic recipe in each category, studying the master formulas and learning a few basict techniques you can quickly develop a deep understanding of what makes all of the recipes in a given category work. When you have that depth of understanding, pretty much everything that comes out of your kitchen will be amazing.

In their most basic form, the Master Recipes are as follows:
Breads are flour and water.
Pastries are flour and water and fat.
Cookies however are flour, fat and sugar.
Cakes are flour, fat, sugar and eggs.
Puffs are flour, fat, eggs, and water.

Do you see how each one is just one ingredient different from the one before it? The difference between a pie crust and a pizza crust is very small, just one ingredient The addition of fat, and the way technique with which it is incorporated into the recipe makes a world of difference!

When you start looking at recipes for what they really are, and you understand how those few ingredients work together to become what they are supposed to become, your baking changes forever. And itâ€s not a hard change. Itâ€s a interesting one!

Your Own Custom Plan For Learning To Bake Gluten Free

If youâ€d like to create your own custom plan for mastering gluten free baking, this is how it would work in real life.

First, learn how bake a loaf of sandwich bread. In learning to do that, youâ€ll be learning almost everything that you need to learn to make pizza, bagels, doughnuts, and any other sort of bread you want. They are all just variations on a them.

After bread, learn how to make a pie crust or a flaky biscuit. Now the entire world of pastries is your oyster.

The third recipe to learn is a classic cookie. I prefer chocolate chip cookies because they serve as a great base recipe for experimentation. But, learning any one cookie recipe will make all cookies possible for you because you now understand cookies.

Next on the list it to learn how to make a great chocolate cake. Itâ€s one of those things that most everyone wants to be able to make and once you an make cake, youâ€ll know what you need to know to make gluten free cupcakes, muffins and quick breads. They are all in the same family.

And then finally, you top it off with the most fun thing – puffs. Learning this is not essential. Itâ€s just for fun and amazing desserts! The master recipe for this category is pate choux. When you can make that you can also make beignets and eclairs and funnel cakes, just to name a few.

Once once youâ€ve learned these 5 recipes, you will know 80% of everything you need to know about gluten free baking.

Good Idea Alert!

Actually, while I was writing this up, I realized that learning these 5 recipes in just a few weeks would be a lot of fun and would lend itself very well to a group class. But before I say anything about it, I need to check my calendar and see if itâ€s possible. If it is, there will most probably be a super-awesome bonus that Iâ€ve not done in a couple of years and that I know some of you have been waiting for. If it all works out and I can make the dates work, the sign-up period for this class will be very short, because pulling off the bonus is rather time intensive for me and has to happen in a very short time frame so that you can get the bonus before class starts.

That means that if you think you may be interested, you need to keep a very close eye out for emails from me later this week. I only do this special bonus for email readers, so there wonâ€t be any information on the blog or FB page; you have to have the email!

Alright, now, back to what we talked about today – master recipes. Which of the master recipes would you most like to learn how to make? go down below this video and let me know in the comments.

Watch Video 1: Two Lightbulb Moments That Instantly and Permanently Improved My Gluten Free Baking

Bonus: A few weeks ago I drew out the mental process that I go through every time I’m helping someone figure out what is going wrong with their bread. Once you know what’s causing the problem, it’s so much simpler to fix it! Go ahead and download it and tape it to the inside of a cupboard door for easy reference. Diagnose Your Bread Disaster in 60 Seconds CheatSheet

Bonus: In this video I mentioned that if your bread is falling in the oven, or seems to be done but turns out to be a gooey mess, then the flour mix may not be able to create a structure that is strong enough to hold the weight of the fished loaf. Here is a quick guide to the flour mixes that I like to use to get phenomenal results.

Lightbulb #1

The first lightbulb moment was when I realized that baking is a science. Back in the day of all of my gluten free disasters, I thought that a good recipe was all you needed. Just follow the recipe and everything should turn out well. This is WRONG. Recipes are shorthand. They give you a list of ingredients and the most basic instructions on how to put them together into a finished product, but they leave so much out.

What recipes leave out are the science – the rules – that all of baking, even gluten free baking, follow. There are formulas and procedures that guarantee success. Read that a second time, because I did say guarantee. If you follow the formulas and procedures (that arenâ€t necessarily in the recipe) then everything works. If you donâ€t follow the formulas or procedures then disaster results…..in a very predictable way.

Lightbulb #2

My second “lightbulb moment” came when I realized that baking is also an art. Most everything about baking improves when you treat is as a science, but there are still some aspects of it that are a craft. For example, when youâ€re making bread, the amounts that are given for water are just a guideline. (No one ever told you this, right?)

The consistency of the dough always governs how much water you add. If youâ€ve added the full amount that the recipe calls for and the dough is still not right, then you absolutely add more. Or, if youâ€ve added 3/4 of the water and the dough looks just like it should, then you definitely donâ€t add any more water. This is not a GF thing; it is a baking thing. And so, in order to bake bread, you need to learn what the dough should look like. And itâ€s not hard; it just takes seeing the right dough consistency enough that your intuition automatically says, “Stop! The bread dough is perfect right now.”

Hold on A Second!

At this point, you may be thinking, “There is Absolutely. No. Way. that I can learn or even want to learn all of that. If baking is going to be a science, then Iâ€ll just keep buying the manufactured stuff and suffer through it.
I totally get where youâ€re coming from, but the rules of baking donâ€t really take a lot of time or effort to learn.

Itâ€s kind of like weather. At some point when you were a child, you learned that if the sky is cloudy it might rain. And if the sky is blue, with no clouds, then itâ€s not going to rain. You just have to look at the sky and you know what is going to happen. Sure, weather can be a lot more complicated than that, but you donâ€t really need to know about barometer and pressure troughs to have a good grasp of whether you need to take an umbrella.

Baking is exactly the same. There are a few general rules to learn and then you understand what is going on. Understanding bread baking becomes as simple as understanding that rain falls from clouds.

Whatâ€s Next:

In the next email which Iâ€ll probably send out Friday Iâ€m going to start teaching you some of those rules and Iâ€m going to tell you exactly what causes the three most common gluten bread disasters:
1) bread that wonâ€t rise in the pan,
2) bread that falls in the oven, and
3) bread that falls after it comes out of the oven

Right now though, I want to do a bit of an experiment. I want you to scroll down and leave a comment telling me the things that you know to be true about gluten-free baking. I want you to document what you know right now, so that you can come back to it in a few days, and realize how much youâ€ve learned and how easily! It doesnâ€t have to be long, just finish this sentence: The things that I know for certain about gluten free baking are ….

P.S. If youâ€ve already taken one of my classes, your comment can include what you used to know about gluten free baking and what you know now.

This recipe should be enough to ice a 2 layer cake, but, if you’re like me and only ice a few cakes a year, you may have to make an extra 1/2 batch to finish the cake. I also make sure to reserve some icing for decorating the top so that I can pull out my handy dandy food colorings and create whatever custom colors I need.

Ingredients

• 16 oz. confectionerâ€s sugar
• 8 oz. cream cheese*
• 1 stick butter, softened*
• 1 c. chopped nuts (optional)
• 1 tsp vanilla

Instructions

1. With a mixer, cream the confectionerâ€s sugar, cream cheese, and butter.
2. Mix in the vanilla and chopped nuts.
3. Spread over cooled cake.

*I’ve made this using vegan cream cheese and butter and it was still wonderful.

Well, actually I don’t do “bleh” cakes at all. If I’m going to bake a cake, then it’s got to be the kind of cake that makes someone say, “Wow, this is the best ______ cake I’ve ever had!” (That blank is not for what you’re thinking. Insert your choice of chocolate, pound, carrot, etc!)

Bleh cakes start with a box. Good cakes start with flour and sugar and eggs and fat. But even then, that’s actually no guarantee of a good cake.

What does it take then?

Careful recipe crafting. Each ingredient of a good cake recipe is chosen for a specific reason and it’s particularly important with gluten free cake recipes, where one simple ingredient change can take a cake from moist and delicious to some thing that cannot even charitably be called a cake.

If you think that you don’t like gluten free cakes, I challenge you to try this one! Make it exactly as I’ve written it – no substitutions to make it “healthier” – and see if it doesn’t change everything about what you thought a gluten free cake could be.

Ingredients

Yield: Two 8″ layers

Instructions

1. Place rack in lower third of oven with a baking stone on it. Preheat oven to 350F.
   Grease and flour two 8 x 2-inch round cake pans.
2. In a large mixing bowl combine the flours, xanthan gum, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and orange zest and mix well with a fork for at least 60 seconds.
3. In another bowl, whisk the eggs and brown sugar. Stir in the oil, orange juice and vanilla extract.
4. Gradually add the liquid mixture into the flour, stirring constantly by hand.
   Stir in the carrots.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and use the scale to make sure the batter is divided equally. Drop each pan onto the counter from a height of 4 inches (10 cm).
6. Place both cakes on the baking stone and bake until the interior temperature is 209F/98C. This should take approximately 30 – 35 minutes. If you donâ€t have a thermometer, the center should spring back when touched and the cakes should not have pulled away from the sides until after you remove them from the oven
7. Cool on a rack for 10 minutes before removing the cakes from the pan. Continue cooling until they reach room temperature.
8. Ice the cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

After many requests for paleo recipes, Elizabeth Barbone stepped up to the challenge of figuring out grain-free baking once and for all. In this interview below, you’ll get to find out a bit more about the secrets that she discovered as she crafted the recipes for her newest cookbook, World’s Easiest Paleo Baking: Beloved Treats Made Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Dairy Free, and with No Refined Sugars.

Buy a copy on Amazon today:

When I was a little girl my absolute favorite thing was to spend the night with my grandmother. I have many sweet memories of those nights – dressing up in her fancy clothes and dancing to Lawrence Welk, learning the catechism at bedtime, and lots of chocolate milkshakes with graham crackers. But the memories that I think of first when I think of my grandmother are memories of being with her in the kitchen.  I can still clearly see the mounds of sausage and cheese that I squeezed together as she sifted flour over my hands while we made sausage balls; feel the spray of corn as we cut kernels from the cob every summer, and her hands over mine as she helped me learn to make the special “pocketbook” yeast rolls that we only had for Sunday lunch.

That is the ideal way to learn to cook -  to stand in a kitchen with someone, many times, doing the work together. The learner soaks up knowledge like a sponge. As they mix the dough a question occurs to them and they can ask and receive an answer when it has the most meaning to them.  Unexperienced hands struggle to shape a dough and the watchful eyes of the experienced baker see that and she comes over to show you an easier way.

Our Great Grandmothers Would Have Rocked Gluten Free

Over the past 50 years this way of learning to cook has become more and more rare. When you add to that the fact that gluten free cooking and baking has only been around for a few decades, you find that we have a very real problem. Multiple generations have never cooked from scratch, yet we are in the midst of an epidemic of autoimmune diseases, some of which can only be treated through diet.

My culinary mission in life is to teach people to master gluten free (and multiple allergy) cooking and baking so that we can restart the tradition of passing cooking knowledge down from generation to generation. This must happen if we are to continue enjoying our food while we figure out what will allow our bodies to heal.

The problem is that there are relatively few people who have a depth of knowledge of gluten free baking that is required if we want to bake as well as our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. And honestly, we’re going to have to know more than they did, because multiple-allergy baking is much more complicated. The first step is to find a way for the knowledge of those few to be disseminated as widely and effectively as possible, so that the knowledge of cooking and baking can once again be passed down within families. The solution to this will be gluten free cooking classes.

Three Questions You Should Ask About Any Gluten Free Cooking Course:

For the remainder of this post I’m going to focus on learning to bake gluten free. Learning to cook gluten free foods is much easier than learning to bake gluten free  because there are so many things that you can make that don’t use flour. With baking it’s a bit hard to escape the need for flour of some sort, and it is additionally complicated by the fact that most baking recipes also include ingredients to which many gluten free people are also sensitive.

What our are options for learning to bake gluten free? And how should we evaluate those options?

Let’s deal with the latter question first. As I’ve mentioned, learning to bake from an experienced family member would be the absolutely best situation. The reasons for that give us the three questions that we should ask about any gluten free cooking class we take.

1. Do I get to experience the process? Great classes require you to get your hand dirty. You do the work so that you learn how the dough or batter should look, feel, smell and taste. I was listening to an podcast last week about Homer and discovered that the ancient Greeks thought of knowledge very differently than we moderns do. Among other things they believed that knowledge came through participation, whereas we tend to think that knowledge comes through thinking. Obviously thinking is required for any learning, but the acquisition of knowledge needs to start with participation and observation. A cooking lesson that allows the learner to do the work is the sort of lesson that it going to facilitate quick and effective learning.
2. How long does the class last? Baking is an art best learned over time; there is just too much to take in all at once.  (This is true even for the experienced what baker that is learning gluten free baking.) Lessons that extend over time (and I mean weeks or months, not hours) are the best. This is what happens naturally in the home.  You will see and question things the fifth time that you bake a recipe that you didn’t notice the first time you baked it. Eventually you will make mistakes and those mistakes  will generate new questions.  Any course that does not give you an extended time period for learning is going to fall short in some way.
3. How much do I get to interact with the teacher? Learning can happen from listening and watching a teacher, but it most naturally happens when we experience something and then ask a question.  Being able to ask questions and have the teacher respond in a meaningful way customizes a class so that it more effective. Any sort of cooking lesson needs to have the ability for the student to ask questions at a minimum. The more conversation that can happen, the better.

The Pros And Cons of Different Kinds of GF Cooking Classes

The In-Person Group Class

This is the kind of class that most people think of when you mention a cooking class. You go to a location with a kitchen, at a set date and time, and the instructor prepares several recipes. Some of these classes are observation only; in others you get to participate in making the recipes, though it may just be a part of the recipe.

Coverage of Topic: Light; these classes usually cover 3 – 5 recipes, so the instruction is focused on how to prepare a recipe. At the end of the course, you will have seen the recipe prepared (and perhaps prepared it yourself) and picked up some tidbits of information from the instructor along the way.

Length of Class: 2 – 5 hours

Cost: $85 – $250 for one session

Pros:

• The teacher is right in the room with you and you can ask questions in the moment.
• It’s an event, so there’s a definite time and place. You can’t procrastinate!
• You can take the class with friends as a fun outing.

Cons:

• You may not get to participate in every aspect of the recipe.
• Limited locations and availability. I only know of a few teachers around the country that I would feel totally comfortable recommending to you. In addition these classes are limited in size, so you may have to wait to get a seat.
• It’s a one-time thing; you don’t get to ask questions when you make this recipe a week later in your own kitchen.

The Online, Self-Paced Class

There are a few different kinds of online classes, and this is the sort that you’d sign up for on Craftsy or Udemy. You register and pay for the class, but there are no beginning and end dates, and there are generally not any assignments (or if there are, there is not accountability for assignments). You just work on it as you want, and when you’re done, you’re done.

Coverage of Topic: Again, these courses tend to try to cover a lot of recipes in one class, so they necessarily to not dig deeply into any one topic.

Length of Class:  1 – 2 hours of video content, broken into short segments.

Cost: $25 – $50 for one class

Pros:

• You can work on this class anywhere, any time and at any pace.
• Most people would consider this to be extremely affordable.

Cons:

• The quality of these classes is variable. I’ve previewed several lately and the content ranged from appallingly incorrect to quite good, depending on the extent to which the teacher has mastered gluten free baking. The reputation of the company hosting the class does not seem to equate to good content, unfortunately.
• There is generally not any interaction between the student and teacher or between students, though some classes allow you to submit questions.
• Zero accountability. Statistics show that most online classes like this are purchased but never completed.

The Online Course with Group Coaching

At first glance, this kind of cooking course seems very similar to the one described above. The major differences are that a course extends over longer period time and includes 4x – 12x the content. This classes tend to have a start and end date, which allows the teacher to provide a lot more coaching since the commitment is not open-ended. Each segment of the class will often have assignments for the student to complete, which facilitates and back and forth interaction between the student and the teacher.

This sort of class also may include a group-coaching component which creates community and allows the students to develop a relationship with the teacher *and* with the other students. And as it happens, the students end up learning a lot from each other. These classes may also incorporate live coaching sessions where students can work with the teacher “live” by video feed.

Coverage of Topic: Because these classes extend over a longer period of time, there is definitely the potential for going in-depth,but this will vary from course to course.

Length of Class: 2 – 12 modules spread over weeks or months; each module usually contains an hour or so of video content with another hour or so of student work.

Cost: $197 – $997 – it really depends on how long the course it and how much coaching/customization is provided

Pros:

• This type of class is about as close as you can get to working with a teacher over time in the same kitchen.
• The group-coaching and live-coaching allow for relationship and a more effective learning environment
• Since the course is delivered digitally, you generally have perpetual access to the materials even after the course is over.
• Students can ask questions as they work through the material and the teacher’s will sometimes respond by creating new content for the whole class.

Cons:

• There will be some people who need and want this type of class, but aren’t easily able to afford it.
• Since these classes have a definite start and end dates and move at a set pace, some people become discourage if the “fall behind”.
• These classes may be limited in size and are offered at set times, so you may have to wait to get a seat.

Which Kind of Class is the Best?

Ultimately, the class that you should take depends on your goals. Some classes are great at teaching you how to make a certain kind of recipe. If that’s what you need, choose a class that has that kind of focus and one that provides as much interaction with the teacher, and actual hands-own instruction as possible.

If you’re dealing with multiple-allergies, than a recipe-focused class (and by that I mean one that teaches you how to make a set of recipes, typically chosen by the teacher) is generally not going to be very helpful. Often the recipes chosen will include other common allergens. And even if they don’t, the shallow focus of the class does not give you the kind of information that you need in order to make substitutions on your own or to create your own customized recipes.

Other people want to feel confident in the kitchen again. Regardless of whether they have multiple allergies to deal with, they want to know that they can bake what they want and it will turn out well and taste as good or better as the recipe they used to make with wheat flour. They definitely want to be able to play with their recipes, convert recipes, and generally tweak to their heart’s content. Again, a deeper course that specifically focuses on the how and whys of gluten free baking is probably going to be the best choice -even if that means that you have to save up for the class. After all, you’re likely going to be baking gluten free for the rest of your life, and have children and grandchildren that need to be gluten free as well. It’s worth the investment to be able to satisfy that innate desire to feed your family excellent food and to be able to pass the knowledge of gluten free baking on to them yourself.

And don’t forget – once you’ve found a class that promises the kind of results that you want, you still need to ask:

1. Do I get to experience the process?
2. How long does the class last?
3. How much do I get to interact with the teacher?

Please Note: Registration for Gluten Free Mess to Masterpiece is now closed.

I am so excited to announce that I’ll be teaching a new class this spring, and especially this class: “Gluten Free Mess to Masterpiece in Four Weeks: How to Bake Perfect (and Tasty) Gluten Free Bread”!  I want to thank everyone from my email list who has answered surveys over the past few weeks and help me narrow down exactly what class was most needed. Below you’ll find a bit of sneak peak of what’s included in this class, so that you can be thinking about whether it will be a good fit for you. Registration will be limited to 50 persons, so I want to give you as much thinking time before registration opens so that you can be sure to get a seat in the class! Be sure to read though and see what you need to in order to participate in this unique experience, in which you get to help create the class with me.

Gluten Free Mess to Masterpiece in Four Weeks: What To Expect

The goal of this course is transform your experience of gluten free baking. You are starting from a place of frustration, where you feel like you’re just running into the same walls repeatedly and no one has the answers you need. This course will take you to a place where you can walk into the kitchen, make any baked good that your family desires and have absolute confidence that it will turn out well and taste (and feel) as good or better than the version that you used to make with wheat. This class could be taught with any number of recipes as the focal point, but we’ll be using bread.

Along the way, we’ll cover these topics:

1. Gluten Free Flours – GF Flours can be so confusing and inadvertent flour goofs can really wreck a recipe. I’ll teach you what they all do, which ones play well together, and how to choose the best flour mix for a given recipe.
2. The “Master GF Bread Formula”. Do you know the formula that all bread recipes follow and how to change it for gluten free ingredients? In this section, you’ll learn how the ingredients in a bread recipe work together to make bread, instead of something like cake. Knowing the Master Bread formula gives you incredible insight into how a bread recipe works and allows you to create your own gluten free bread recipes with whatever ingredients work for your family.
3. The Secret Techniques of Bread Baking. Yes, there are things that you should do while you are baking bread that are not written in any recipe, because it’s assumed that you know them. Unfortunately, most people don’t know them anymore and the result is a lot of failed recipes. I’ll walk you through the bread-baking process in recorded and live sessions and show you exactly what to do.
4. How To Convert A Recipe As the final part of the course, we’ll pull together everything that you’ve learned so far and convert a bread recipe that uses wheat flour to gluten free flours. I’ll walk you through the process that I use to quickly craft new recipes and then you’ll actually do the work. After you’re done, I’ll review your work and point out any potential snafus before you bake your final loaf of the course.
5. Other Things That You Request: Along the way, I’ll be taking your input as to what to cover lightly and where to go in-depth. So, if you’re particularly concerned about dairy or egg substitutions, or how to do baked goods when only one person needs them to be gluten free, that’s the kind of thing that you’ll tell me before we get started and I’ll fit it in as we go.

By the end of the course, you can expect these results (plus others that I’ve likely forgotten to mention):

1. Gluten Free Flours – With this you should expect to have a clear understanding of the major groups that you can divide flours into and why each flour fits in that group. You’ll also know how to combine flours from those groups to make custom flour mixes that works for your family. You’ll also understand which flour mixes work best for different kinds of recipes and what changing the flour mix does to the whole recipe (it’s a pretty big deal!).
2. The Master GF Bread Formula – At the end of this section, you’ll be able to go up to anyone who you can get to listen and explain to them why each component in GF bread is required to be there and what to substitute in case you’re allergic to the most commonly used ingredient for that component. And if you can get them to stick around, you’ll also be able to explain how those ingredients and why some of them are required in GF recipe, but not in wheat recipes. If you can’t find anyone, you can give me a call and I’ll listen =)
3. The Actual Baking Bread Part – You should expect to know how and when to use a scale and digital thermometer and to know procedures to follow that eliminate the possibility of errors. You’ll also know how to perform experiments and take notes on each loaf so that you can learn from your own bread-baking and dramatically reduce the number of experiments that it takes to get a new recipe just right.
4. Converting recipes – Ah! The ultimate accomplishment in gluten free baking. You will successfully convert a wheat-flour based bread recipe to gluten free flours, bake it, and have it turn out well within two iterations. You’ll also know how to do single-serving sized tests of a new recipe, before you try the scaled up version.

Class Registration: Tuesday, February 16th

Class registration opens Tuesday, February 16th. This is not the typical online class; there will be a definite start and end date.  This class will most likely be offered again, but not until June or October.

Class Dates: Tuesday March 1st through Monday, March 28th

The class officially starts  on Tuesday, March 1st, but between Feb 19th and March 1st we’ll have about a week to start getting to know each other,  decide where we want to have our online community (Facebook or something else), and I’ll gather questions for the first module.

New content will be emailed out to you each Tuesday, and you can view the video(s) and work on any assignments as your schedule allows.

“First Class” Program & How To Get A Big Discount

This course is going to be unique among the classes that I’ve offered before. This time I’ll be creating the class as we go, based on the input of the students who are taking the class. That means that if you opt in for this first class of “Gluten Free Mess to Masterpiece in Four Weeks” you will get more than the normal amount of interaction with me. There will also be the expectation that you will actively contribute, ask questions, post your results, complete the lessons, and, in general, help make it a great class.

In exchange for that additional input on your part, you’ll also get a huge discount off of the price of this course. I’m not sure what the ultimate price will be, but it definitely won’t be this low.

This class will be capped at 50 participants to make sure that I will have ample time to respond to everyone’s questions and review everyone’s converted recipe in a timely manner.

Your Investment

This course will take 4 weeks and you should expect to spend approximately 2 hours each week on the class. This includes watching the video, completing any exercises and interacting with me and the other students. If you’re going to have a more than usually busy March, this may not be the best time to take this class. However, all of the videos and exercises will be short so you can definitely work this into the nooks and crannies of your day. Except for the baking parts. You’ll probably want to be in your kitchen (and not the subway or carpool line) for those =)

The cost of the course is $197, and includes ongoing access to all of the class materials, coaching via our community group, and a review of your recipe conversion. Depending on what tools you already have, you may need to spend $50 -$75 on a digital scale, thermometers, and bread pans.

I think that’s all for now. Be on the lookout over the weekend for additional posts, including a sneak peek at one of my live coaching sessions. And if you have questions, please do post them in the comments or email me.

Talk to you soon!