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How to bake a wheat free cake?
Generally when you have wheat intolerance you have to eliminate all food with wheat, which includes one of our favorite dessert like cake. If you are a fan of cakes or pastries, do not despair. It is not the end of the world. Good news is you can use other wheat free flour in your cooking.
Even though wheat is the most common flour used in baking, it doesn't mean that it is the only one. There are various other types of flour which can be used for baking. You can also find some specialty shops which has premixes of the various wheat free flour ready for baking. Besides that it is also possible to try recipes for flourless cake.
When looking at a substitute for wheat flour in baking cake, a few considerations have to be in place:
1. Find out the texture of the flour. Some substitute is more refined, by others are coarser. Choose one which is suitable. For example brown rice flour is grainier than the regular flour that you are used to. It is also heavier and normally is not used alone.
2. Taste of the flours. Certain substitute like potato flour has strong potato taste, some like buckwheat can be bitter. Some flour has nutty taste. When choosing a substitute, you may want to opt for those with minimal taste, so that if you add any essence e.g. vanilla or strawberry essence to your cake, you know what it will taste like when it's done! You can also test baking with additional condiments. This may mask the flour taste e.g. adding cinnamon or even chocolate. This is very true especially if the flour taste is very mild.
3. Mixing flour and binding agent. One of the reasons why wheat flour is commonly used for baking is because the gluten in wheat flour binds the dough. If the flour that you choose as substitute doesn't have gluten, then there are several ways to bind the dough. You can substitute half a cup of water with egg white. Another common substitute is guar gum or xanthan gum or add some plain gelatin to your mixture.
4. Color of the flour will affect the looks of your cake. Most likely if you are baking a chocolate cake this doesn't matter very much because the color of the cake is dark. However, if you plan to bake Swiss roll or plain cake then you have to consider the color of the flour itself. Rye flour for example is dark in colour and has a strong flavor. This is very easily done by checking on the color itself before you buy.
5. Gluten content of the flour will indicate whether you need to any binding agent. When baking a wheat free cake - for yourself as well as others, you have to find out whether that person can tolerate gluten. There are people who are allergic to not only wheat but also gluten. In which case the substitute that you choose must also be gluten free.
6. Experiment - no doubt the result that you get may be very different than your normal baking. It may be better! Or....it may not taste as good. Do some experiment because you may come up with tasty and delicious recipes just like others. You may look back with a sense of achievement and gratitude when you discover wonderful recipes which are also nutritious and good for your body.
Good luck in your baking!
