Mad Science: Kitchen Experiments and Gluten-Free Baking

It has often been said (by me, at any rate), that she wins who has the best technology.

This adage is especially true for a gluten freedom-fighter newly drafted into the war on wheat, since she spends so much of her time in the kitchen trying to figure out how to Make Things Work.

A casual observer might not see the point of the exercise. Indeed, several well-meaning individuals have said to me - repeatedly and with much eye-rolling, I might add - that I should stop banging my head against the wall, reinventing the wheel, making life so difficult for myself, etc. etc. and just go ahead and buy a gluten-free cookbook already. As though that would solve my problems.

Example. Gluten-free pasta. Most g/f recipe collections will say something like, 'Cook the pasta according to the manufacturer's instructions,' before outlining a procedure for a sauce that one could easily find in a zillion different places. Do they address the vital question of what gluten-free pasta? where or when? They do not. It is left to insurgents such as myself, motivated and with plenty of time on their hands, to do the research and come up with the answers. Corn pasta! Quinoa pasta! Rice-flour pasta! Pasta made from amaranth, lentil powder, and tree bark shavings! I've tried 'em all. Is there some method for cooking them that yields a result worth the non-renewable energy it takes to keep the pot at a rolling boil? Not in this universe.

Then there is the minefield that is wheatless baking. Weeks' worth of meticulously-documented taste-tests have produced the finding that most gluten-free flour blends are metallic-tasting and tongue-coatingly awful because weird high-protein ingredients such as chickpea flour are often added to simulate - oh, I don't know - something to do with gluten, I suppose. And xanthan gum! After much trial and error, my motto has become, 'If you need it in a recipe, figure out another way.' The High-Ratio Cake Theory (deployed in conjunction with the USDA National Nutrient Database) is an invaluable aid for determining which conventional baked goods might prove ripe for rebellion.

Do you want truly to understand chemical thickeners and their wily ways? Know to what degree the volume of gluten-free flour is affected by repeated sifting? The best technique for producing peerless mozzarella cheese at home? Whether conventional (as opposed to organic) russet potatoes will ever sprout? How to make a wheat-free profiterole puff?  Dare to challenge received wisdom and don the regalia of the resistance: a Moleskine notebook, a metaphorical lab coat, and a sceptical frame of mind.

In addition to the usual culinary experimentation required of recent recruits, a new line of inquiry has recently opened up before me - one that is so exciting, so thrilling, so positively charged with possibility I can barely contain my enthusiasm. I speak, of course, of Modernist Cuisine - the brigade's new training manual for all things molecular, deconstructed, and crazy beyond belief. I thought I knew how to poach an egg, but I didn't realize until I'd done it the Myhrvold way (which requires several hours, four hands, and two reasonably well-educated brains working at full capacity) how deep my ignorance lay.

There's still a lot to learn, but learn we must. After all - an army marches on its stomach.