My three fav GF cookbooks:

1. Gluten Free Baking Classics by Annalise G. Roberts
2. The Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread by Bette Hagman
3. More from the Gluten Free Gourmet by Bette Hagman

The first one is my fav.  A must have!  Most of my baking is out of there; everything was very good so far- too many to list here…  For basic white bread I bake a white bread recipes from the second book; not made much else from there but like this bread a lot. Have made 3 variations so far.  I slice ½ the loaf and keep it in the freezer for when I want some.  I freeze part of each thing I make for later; doesn’t keep all that well.   Bread thaws by slice quickly.  Just wrap well, label it with a date and what it is and use within a few weeks.

For cookies I make oatmeal ones, biscotti and brownies.  I eat cookies right out of freezer; crunchy good. The brownies are phenomenal; see later post.

I  found an amazing GF French Bread recipe on food.com –excellent.  Makes two loaves, freeze one.  It does stay fresh for about 3 days if you wrap it up well.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck has 2 books out on GF; I made her coconut raspberry muffins; really good too, almost like a cupcake!  I also love “The Gloriously GF Cookbook” by Vanessa Maltin- full of ethnic stuff particularly Italian, Asian and Mexican recipes.

The national celiac site; celiac.com is good; has recipes too.  There are scores of celiac support websites and blogs; do a websearch and investigate.

I buy flours from Wegmans and two health food stores; Freys in Hellertown and Queens Nut Shop – back behind Airport Road is good too.  I like to go to Echo Hill Country Store out in Fleetwood; great place for bulk flour, GF pasta and rice mixtures; incredible selection there and good prices for those things.

There are some support groups; one that meets the second Tuesday of each month in Phillipsburg at the hospital.  And one in Allentown at Sacred heart H; 4th Tuesday; 4/23 [The first one is now moved to Shoprite in Phillipsburg, Starting April 3, 2014.]

Let me know if you ever want to go to either with me; easier to go with a friend! I am going to the one in Philipsburg next week to check it out.

Bob’s brown rice flour is highly recommended as it is finer ground than others.  Bob makes many good flours as well as GF oatmeal.  Still, I got some white bean flour at Echo Hill which I use for bean flour in recipes; works perfectly. These days I use a lot of brown rice flour in my baking- the Baking Classics cookbook has several flours that are based in brown rice flour.

You can use white rice flour to flour cake pans, thicken gravy, and to to make white sauce.  You can’t bake with it alone but there are lots of flour mixes you can pre-make with a wide variety of freaky flours.  I have used the brown rice bread mix in Ms Robert’s book to bake bread although so far I like the breads in Ms. Hagman’s bread book better.   I made a big bag of the mix which I can measure out flour mix, add yeast and the wet ingredients and get bread rising in less then ten minutes. I take leftover GF bread and dry in a low oven and grind into bread crumbs in my blender; commercial ones are like out of cornmeal; not tasty!  A good place to keep your homemade GF crumbs in freezer.

I suggest you keep some pastas around for feeding those in your family who are not GF when you make spaghetti.  Heat two separate pots of water and boil up both kinds as GF pastas are very expensive.   Frankly, white rice pasta is not that great tasting; go for brown rice pasta over white rice every time.  Some one gave me a package of corn spaghetti I want to try. 

Best of luck going GF; just do it!  You will feel better!

This post was originally published April 1, 2013.  I have updated some of these things since then as to what I recommend….