Customer Reviews

The Gluten-Free Gourmet: Living Well Without Wheat

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When my husband was first diagnosed with Celiac-DH I bought this book to try to make some of the baked goodies we had been so accustomed to eating. The recipes are easy to follow, contain ingredients available at any health food store and taste as close to the "real thing" as can be possible. The selection of recipes cover every taste and lifestyle. She also gives tips for making up gluten free packages of all the little convenience food items we take for granted in the grocery store. A must for anyone cooking for a Celiac.

I was diagnosed as gluten intolerant about the time that Bette's first book was published. She guided me through the stages of grief ( how can I exist without wheat breads?) to a state of amazing health. I have eagerly bought and used each of her new books, but since she doesn't repeat herself, I still use many of the recipes from her original book. You need all three!!

This book is perfect for the person whose medical advocate has told them simply, "Don't eat wheat." and, "Most people find this diet so difficult to follow that they don't succeed -- good luck." She shows hidden glutens in foods I thought were safe, and how to create dishes I enjoy. I learned so much I've regained my health.

Whether you are just getting started and are tired of only eating potatoes, rice, meat, and vegetables, or you've been gluten-free for a while you'll like this book.
The revised edition of this book explores the "new" flours like Sorghum and Garfava. Have you bought those rotten boxed mixes with only rice flour in them, or tried to bake with JUST rice flour? This book will help you make something not only edible, but good! By using Tapioca flour, potato starch flour and others with the rice flour baking gluten free can actually be delicious! I baked rice bread many years ago (with rice flour only), and just decided I had to buy that rotten old dry, expensive stuff from the health food store. Yesterday, I tried the Tapioca Bread from this book. The flour combination makes it wonderful and tender.
This book is a great basic primer. I am happy with this author and plan to buy her other titles.

This is a great book. The Yeast-Rising Thick Pizza Crust is absolutely amazing. Even my little boy loves it. Though it is much easier to make a realistic crust if you have a sturdy stand mixer. Also I whip all the ingredients but the rice flour in my mixer until it is completely smooth then I add the rice flour. This gives the tapioca starch a chance to mix well, otherwise it beads up quickly and takes my mixer three times as long to get it smooth, again. Though I would highly recommend this book to anyone on a GF diet, especially a beginner, I have had the worst luck with the buttermilk biscuits recipe (pg. 83 in the breads section). I have tried this recipe multiple times, each time following it to the letter. But, each time, my "dough" turns out soupy, more like pancake batter. The instructions are to "cut" the dough into biscuits, but I just end up pouring it into greased muffin tins because I haven't figured out how to cut liquid. Has anyone experienced this same problem? I have tried chilling the batter and everything, with no luck. Note: Get your rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch at the Asian market, it is about $2 cheaper per pound than a health food store.

I have bought several cookbooks in the past 15 years for people who are allergic to wheat and/or dairy. Many of them provided many recipes for dishes that would not normally have wheat in them, which was not of great value. Bette Hagman specializes in providing recipes for those foods that are normally made with large quantities of wheat, and her recipes really work. The results are better than many similar recipes in other books that I have. I have largely gotten rid of most of my other cookbooks for those with allergies. I see from another reviewer that Ms. Hagman now has a third book out, which I will be sure and buy. I highly recommend her first two books.

Bette Hagman is a pioneer and has performed a great service to those who are diagnosed with celiac disease, and nobody can take that away from her. Unfortunately, she's not much of a baker if this book is any indication. If you are unable to eat wheat, then this isn't a bad place to start. You can make better GF baked goods than you can buy simply by following her recipes to the letter, and if you have no desire to do more than that, then by all means buy this book.

BUT, there are problems with many of the recipes in this book. They are inconsistent. So much so that I wonder if she's even tried them all. Then there are telling errors that make one wonder whether she truly understands what she'd doing.

For example:

Everyone's favorite (and mine too), the Yeast-Rising Thick Pizza Crust has 4 cups of various flours and 1 tsp of salt. Result: fairly flat (I double the salt). However, the thin crusts on the previous 2 pages have 1 cup of flours and call for the same 1 tsp of salt, the equivalent of quadrupling the salt on the yeast crust. Result: a salty crust made edible only by diluting the salt with the toppings.

All of the breads that I've tried are flat. She tends to use 1/4 tsp of salt per cup of flour (including the yeast crust), which isn't enough, at least not for me. I like about 1/2 tsp per cup, or the bread has little taste.

Then there are outright boneheaded things like my personal cookbook pet peeve: 3 tsp. The Challah recipe calls for 3 tsp of xanthan gum. And the muffins. Wow. She warns you not to overbeat your muffins! This is gluten-free flour! You can't overbeat it! The lack of basic food knowledge and kitchen arithmetic is depressing.

The buttermilk biscuits are a mess. They're by no means a cut-out biscuit, they're drop biscuits. But even then they have nothing to hold them together and just crumble. You can't very well butter something that disintegrates when you look at it wrong.

I try to always follow a recipe exactly the first time, just to see what I have to work with. I can't really do that with this book. The times I have, the results have gone from mediocre to disastrous.

If you get (or have) this book, then if nothing else, remember 1/2 tsp salt per cup of flour, and everything will be so much better. If you have another GF cookbook and can wait, then rumor has it that Chef Richard Coppedge, Professor in Baking and Pastry Arts at the CIA, is going to publish a gluten-free cookbook sometime soon. The only thing I have to go on is the word of a current CIA student, but I hope it's true. I am personally looking forward to it, and will be getting it as soon as I see it.

I was diagnosed with a wheat allergy about 7 years ago. After trying many expensive premade mixes, I decided to find other alternatives. I discovered Bette Hagman's books and really love them, not only for the recipes, but also for her thoughtful and informative introductions. Of all her books, this one is my favorite.

Like one of the previous reviewers, I too am a fan of the pizza dough (except that it sometimes sticks to my baking stone). I also love the banana bread, muffins, pie crust, and noodle recipes. Her pre-made mixes are great to have on hand (and most store just like regular flour) say if you are in the mood to make cookies. You can usually find rice flour, potato and tapioca starches cheap at Chinese grocery stores.

I also recommend Against the Grain: The Slightly Eccentric Guide to Living Well Without Gluten or Wheat by Jax Peters Lowell. And if you live in the Philadelphia area and want to find freshly made goodies, there is a gluen-free bakery called Mr. Ritt's (www.mrritts.com). I haven't found a quick fix for GF pretzels though. It's easier to buy those by the bag.

I have celiac disease, which is essentially an allergy to wheat protein, and I've been GF for 5 years now. (Why does that sound like I'm at an AA meeting?) Bette Hagman's books are the first couple of books that I got, and they're pretty good. *GFG-Revised* is a really great book with a lot of the staples that you need in there. The initial couple of chapters about what you can and can't eat are worth the price of the book (sure, you can't have wheat, rye, or barley, but how about quinoa, teff, spelt, or millet?) (Answers: yes, yes, no, yes.) but the recipes are what you should buy it for. The "Revised" edition has been updated with the new "four bean flour" blend.

My favorites:

Corn muffins - p86 - uses a polenta technique to be utterly different than cornbread
Pumpkin bread - p76 - fabulous.
Sandwich bread - p55 - the closest thing to, well, you know.
Muffins - p77 - done in less than an hour and tasty-tasty-tasty.

TK Kenyon
Author of Rabid: A Novel and Callous: A Novel

We routinely use the bread recipes from this book for dealing with our child's multiple food allergies. Until we had this book, we did not think you could bake decent bread without wheat - but you can!

Between this book and "Great Foods Without Worry" by Cindy Moseley we have a lot of good choices for recipes that are compatible with multiple food allergies.