I recently discovered I have a gluten sensitivity. Due to this, I have started to eat gluten free. While some weeks I am very good at sticking to the GF (Gluten Free) lifestyle; other weeks I indulge in glutenous goodies. Overall though, being gluten free has not been crazy difficult for me. I worked in the natural food industry for five years, so I was able to develop quite a bit of knowledge about the GF lifestyle, which made the transition less scary.
There are a couple things I really crave. The first is delicious craft beer. I mean I am a Sconnie girl, so beer is in my blood. I have found some tasty GF craft beers, but I miss some of my local brewery favs. The other thing I crave other than glutenous craft beer is bread. Delicious, warm fresh bread. I love bread. Well, I love fresh, homemade bread–not the processed variety. While I LOVE bread and baking, I don’t normally bake my own bread. Yeast is scary to me. So, I am not sure why the first gluten free goodie I chose to make was French Bread. It was probably because I had been craving bread, and because I am overall good at baking, I figured it would all work out. It did not.
I tried a recipe from a great Gluten Free Cookbook. I won’t mention its name because of my failure, since I truly believe the reason the recipe did not work out was not due to the recipe, but operator error. HUGE OPERATOR ERROR. My first mistake was overworking the dough. Once you do that, there is no going back. After that, I tried really hard to make this bread work out…but it was too late. I wish I had pictures to show my french bread making process, or rather large mess. But, my hands were so covered in dough I would have forever wrecked my iPhone. I did eventually get the dough to be bake-able. However, bake-able does not mean it turned out. I would say rather than french bread, I made a new creation. I give you “French Bread Biscuits.” Fancy, huh?
I let Mr. Jack try some. Even he was not so sure about them at first, but he did end up eating some. Whew, I passed the dog test.
Then, my boyfriend very kindly tried them. Trying to make the best of a bad baking outcome, he suggested we have Biscuits and Gravy. This was a great idea. I mean, if you put enough delicious homemade sausage gravy on something, it’s got to taste good…and it did. So good! I made Pioneer Woman’s Sausage Gravy. I adapted the gravy by using GF All-Purpose Flour. I also don’t have seasoning salt, so I just subbed regular sea salt with a dash of cayenne pepper. It all turned out great…the gravy that is. Maybe just use Pioneer Woman’s biscuit recipe too.
Moral of the story: When you fail at baking bread, put sausage gravy on it.