Gluten-Free Dinner Rolls

Let it roll, Baby, roll.

We've been slurping lots of soup this week while the temperatures hover well below my chilly bones' preference of 72 degrees. I hate to complain about 42 degrees, but, honestly. I'm shivering like a kitten in a Steve Martin movie. This is PDX, not New Hampshire. Where is my sunshine and technicolor blue sky? Hiding its good humor behind wrinkled duvets of fuzzy gray clouds, that's where.

So we make our homemade gluten-free soup.

But the soup needs a companion. Our potage is lonely. And so I play matchmaker. I've been inviting gluten-free roll recipes to come and play. I've been flirting with their quirks and grainy idiosyncrasies, trying to be a good host. Coaxing their prickly little batters into behaving. As in, taste GOOD. And I've had some almost there success. But nothing to brag about. Nothing blog worthy.

Until today. These rolls are a balance of whole grain flavor and softness. Just crusty enough. These were tender and lovely warm from the oven. Not gummy. Not heavy. Not too grainy.

Just right.

Karina's Gluten-Free Dinner Rolls

Recipe originally published March 2011.

I based my recipe on my Delicious Gluten-Free Bread Recipe and used a unique blend of gluten-free flours to get the texture I like in a dinner roll- soft and tender pull-apart goodness you can serve warm (you know- to melt that slather of vegan butter). I used a little bit of hazelnut flour and some coconut flour to add flavor and moisture.

Ingredients:

1 cup sorghum flour
1 1/2 cups potato starch (not potato flour)
1/2 cup millet flour
1/4 cup GF buckwheat flour
1/4 cup hazelnut flour or almond flour
2 tablespoons coconut flour
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 packet rapid rise yeast
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups warm liquid (3/4 cup non-dairy milk plus 3/4 cup hot water)
1/4 cup light olive oil
2 free-range local organic eggs, beaten or Ener-G Egg Replacer
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Instructions:

Turn your oven on and off briefly to warm it. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan and sprinkle the cups with GF flour; set it aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flours and dry ingredients.

Add in the wet ingredients and beat until a thick batter forms. This bread dough is not puffy and stretchy like wheat-based dough, it is more akin to a sturdy muffin batter. Beat until smooth.

Spoon the bread dough into the twelve greased and floured cups. Even out the tops using wet fingers or the back of a wet tablespoon. Place the pan in the center of the warmed oven to let the dough rise.

Set your timer for 50 minutes.

At 50 minutes, turn your oven to 350ºF. (It should come to temperature within a few minutes.)

Bake until the rolls are golden and firm- about 22 minutes. Thump them with a fingertip- they should sound hollow. Note: If your oven is slow to heat, you may have to bake the rolls longer to cook all the way through.

When the rolls are done baking, remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool a bit. Using a thin knife, loosen the edges of the rolls from the pan and ease the rolls out. They are tender when warm.

Serve immediately with vegan butter or the real moo-cow thing, if you prefer. Wrap and freeze leftovers.

Recipe Source: glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com

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Recipe Notes:

These bread rolls are a little bit crusty on the outside, soft and tender inside, and not gummy at all. I attribute this to finding the right dry to liquid ratio. Remember, Darling Cooks, weather (humidity) and ambient temperature affects the behavior of dough and batter.

If there's too much moisture and you've got a thin batter, add a sprinkle of GF flour to thicken it. And if the dough seems too dry and stiff (or does not look soft and happy because of flour substitutions you've made), add a little more liquid, a tablespoon at a time.

I tried to balance two needs with this recipe. My preference for a light soft roll, and my need for good taste and texture. That means balancing starches (which give lightness and rise) and whole grain flours (which impart flavor and heft). Too many whole grains create a heavy product.


Cook time: 22 min

Yield: 12 rolls

For substitutions, please see my guide to baking with substitutions here.

More Gluten-Free Bread Roll Recipes from Food Bloggers:

French Bread Rolls from The Gluten-Free Homemaker

The Art of Gluten-Free Baking's Dinner Rolls, Gluten-Free

Pumpkin Quinoa Cookies - For Breakfast?

Pumpkin cookies with quinoa flakes. Like oatmeal- but better.

Iced Pumpkin Quinoa Cookies. Yum.

Dear Reader (yes, Babycakes, I'm talking to you)- you know how I feel about you, right? I'm crazy about you. I read your kind and thoughtful comments on various social media. I am humbled by your generous,  warm and giving e-mails (I save them). 

Your feedback and support keeps me going and inspires me.

I started this whole crazy blogging adventure back in a village on Cape Cod famous for quaint. One of those slow paced leafy communities with whitewashed churches and a town grist mill. Salt weathered shingles and white picket fences and roses in June. You know, historic. Beachy. The magical stuff of regional painters and windswept poets prone to melancholy.

Then an empty nest ignited the urge for going and my husband and I moved west to the rural high desert of New Mexico where the cobalt beauty of an oceanic sky met the hot iron of isolation and a certain individual's proclivity toward brittle bones. My broken hip changed my body forever.

Four- er- now thirteen!- years later (relocated to Austin, Texas) I am profoundly grateful. And I am wrestling with new ideas and facing certain limitations post-you-know-what (still waiting for Margaret Mead's promise of post-menopausal zest). Days are often a stew of conflicting realities, losses and gains stirred so close together they emulsify.

There are days I feel thirty and days I feel eighty. 

Sometimes in the same single moment. 

Forgive my habitual drift into philosophical territory here, but here's the thing. A growing, deepening awareness of how little we actually control has sparked my need to surrender. And shake loose some assumptions. Including the perception of Other (risking a messy and complicated expansion of the heart, the awareness of Yeah, I am that too). Which startles you with a sharp clean view of what is valuable and true. 

What is bare bones rock bottom important.

Important not in some airy-fairy PC New Agey or even dyed-in-the-wool religious way. I chafe inside any system and its man-made rules. I'm old enough now to look back upon entire decades with an estrogen-free seasoned eye. I see the need behind belief. I see the old paradigm. 

I see why people judge and separate, critique and belittle. 

I see the reason why unruly concepts are snipped down to size and labeled and tucked safely into rehearsed little packages of fear whisked with a pinch of faith. 

The Ego rules. And the Ego loves conflict.

I also see the powerful few at the top doling out platitudes to the millions who struggle with so much less. 

And we are not blameless, either, we who are so willing to consume what masquerades as inclusion and progress when it is anything but.

So here's the thing.

Before I share my recipe today, before I conjure words about cookies and yummy flavors and how much vanilla to beat into the dough, allow me some food for thought, if you will.

We are all given moments of grace.

Far too many of these moments are missed, floating by the fuzzy edges of momentum, a stream of invisible assumptions. And needs. Life guarantees change, but really, what else? Opportunity (what are you going to do with what you've got?). Choice. Self explanatory, right? We cut a swath of choices every single day. Trivial choices (would you like whipped cream on that?). And loaded choices (some requiring nothing less than moral courage to execute). Each and every choice spins us off in a direction, a trajectory with consequences.

And what I am coming to realize, even cherish, now more than ever, is this. The choices boil down to a choice between love (connection) or fear (separation). 

So what will you choose today?

Think about it.

As for me?

I vote for love.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cheesecake

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cheesecake, Darling.

Quick question. It is officially Autumn. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. The annual Pumpkin Spice Love Fest has been tickling our tastebuds for weeks. So I ask you. Are you tired of the sensible, traditional pumpkin pie? Wanna kick things up and create some gluten-free love food for the vegans and dairy-free folks visiting this holiday season? Every family has one. Or two. Or six.

Are you with me?

Because I am here to lure you- with a silver fork-worthy dessert recipe totally worth baking.

This is a silky, creamy pumpkin cheesecake that begs for a party. Or a family rumpus. One of many last hurrahs as daylight dwindles darkly toward the Winter Solstice low point, flickering her last sigh Northward before the pale glare of January dawns in all her cold and sober glory (and I step- ever so gingerly- on the reality check scale). And maybe sigh. A little hint of a sigh.

Because even though it is pre-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas, pre-Hannukah and all the pre-holiday jazz I can already see that the annual jean shrinkage has begun. It's that time of year when (mysteriously!) my favorite jeans come damp-dry out of the dryer a size too small. And that familiar jolly pie roll affectionately known as Doris is itching to start rolling her merry way up and out of my favorite black leggings. It's rather comical. And honestly, she makes me smile. I pat her affectionately.

Like a pet bunny.

Because the truth is I am not about to start counting calories.

Though I admit I may possibly probably definitely feel the need to cleanse my palette in the bright new year that lurks and leers around the post-holiday corner. Detox mulligatawny is surely in my future, come 2017.

If for nothing else, for the sheer love of shedding old stuck energy. A fresh start feels good.

If you do it with a big dash of humor.

And humility.

I know from experience that January will ignite the urge to clean out closets, chase those dust bunnies and walk off our collective Doris's. Or would that be Dori, for plural? We'll have ample time, come 2017, for detoxing and courting virtue with ginger laced green soup, and recipes that will encourage our lovely pinchable pie rolls to skedaddle. I promise. I'll be first second third in line with fresh whipped smoothies and cleansing soup recipes come January.

But this month? Nah.

There's a vegan pumpkin cheesecake recipe to share.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Icing

A Pumpkin Cupcake that doesn't taste gluten-free. Seriously.

But before I get to the recipe, I need to wander off a bit. Because it's who I am. A person who wanders. Ponders. Finds solace in books. I've been like this since girlhood. Curious. Serious. No good at catching balls. Or dressing dolls. I am beyond inept with hair. And eyeliner. Nail polish. I get anxious and non-verbal if I have to wear anything that isn't a pair of jeans.

I hold the opinion that there is more to life than collapsing in front of the television and microwaving hot dogs. I think that beauty- as Steve Jobs believed- is important, has value. That we are deeply interconnected. That life on Earth is precious- from the house sparrow to the living sea. That we are part of a vast and mysterious collective- not merely of our absurd egos (who natter inside our heads and squander our attention on drama, conflict, acquisition and the need to control)- but of a newly unfolding awareness of astonishing inner space and outer space. Infinity in every direction.

Which begs the question.

Who am I? Really. I know I am not the car I drive or the laundry detergent I use. I know I am not what I identify with. I am not what I embrace- or reject. Though for years I thought so. I believed my opinions created a self. Made me Me. Now that I am old enough to have lived through countless opinion reversals, I realize opinions are temporary. And not defining.

Just as I am not my baby teeth. Or my once lactating voluptuousness. Or my sprouting silver hair. Or what music I listen to. Or what jeans I outgrow. I am not even the woman baking pumpkin cupcakes for her readers. Or am I? Well, maybe I am. Just a little. But wait. Doesn't that make me the sum of what I do? I bake therefore I am?

I am trying lately not to be so much of a human doing. And more of a human being.

It's not as easy as one might think.

And therein lies the trouble. The whole thinking thing. Our brain. Our wired hardware. It disconnects us. It addicts us. It overrides the heart and soul of what is really going on. The being we really are. Beneath the seductive and glossy surface of things. The spark that burns from the greater whole.

I see that spark in you.

It's why I made you cupcakes.

Best Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bread Recipe

A rather perfect loaf. From me to you. A favorite recipe from when we lived in Portland, Oregon.

Autumn in Portland is soft and rainy. Foggy. And slow to frost. The scents of Ponderosa pine and red cedar infuse our morning walk with a woodsy familiarity my New England soul craves, as yellow willow leaves flutter earthward, dreamlike, cinematic.

Time to pull on sweaters. Dig out a favorite scarf. Stack kindling and firewood. Choose a new book to love (I am reading Mink River by Brian Doyle- a lovely, lyrical, michievous book infused with Irish-American sensibility and Salish stories).

And best of all, it is finally time- for pumpkin lovers everywhere- to fill the pantry shelves with tins of our favorite curcurbit. Because, Dear Reader... it's time to bake. And I have a fabulous, flavorful, autumn-worthy gluten-free pumpkin bread recipe for you.

A huge, gorgeous pumpkin loaf.

Enjoy warm from the oven, with butter or cream cheese. Or make it ahead: Bake it. Wrap it. Freeze it.

And Babycakes, it will feed a crowd.

Best Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bars Recipe

Frosted gluten-free pumpkin bars with a secret ingredient.

Tuning in to the particular (and fleeting) pleasures of each changing season as we ride the wheel of the year may be my favorite spiritual practice. A practice that requires one simple thing. Attention. Which turns out to be not so simple, inevitably. Because life is anything but simple, with its whitewater rush of mind numbing distractions that demand less and less of our soul and more and more of our mental focus on exterior minutia. Micro decisions. Cleaning out our email in-box. Catching up with Facebook feeds and Twitter streams and Google+. Texting about grocery lists. Scanning streaming video options- thousands of choices may glitter and ooze their high definition glow but I find I am not feeling the abundance.

I am less and less enamored with more.

I know. It's showing. My age. My childhood brain was wired for mud and bird calls, blackberry thickets and butterscotch pine. Hours spent reading in a grove of birch trees dug their neural groove. The wild luxuries of inner connection, rather than social networking. And TIME. That plastic, misunderstood, precious commodity that shape-shifts experience from an endless afternoon of liquid daylight into a heart clutching warp speed tumble of confusion. Decades become tiny sandwiches of memory you can barely taste anymore.

Weeks blink by with alarming velocity.

And here we are again.

In pumpkin season.

And so. I stop.

And notice the way the late day sun drops low and shimmers golden in the treeline. The crows are gathering earlier. Glossy black and strutting with authority. The smell of burnished leaves scuttling across a wet Portland sidewalk is the same smell I inhaled on a road trip in Vermont fifteen years ago, standing on a wooden bridge above a clear shallow creek while our sons balanced on the slick rocks below us, fishing for smooth round stones.

Do they remember this? Do they remember the same hours I do, in the sand on Skaket Beach? Do they ever have a sudden itch to feed their senses with the scents and sounds of a freshwater riverbed, a sun warmed tide pool? Do they crave a winding path through apple trees? Were their brains hardwired for this connection, too?

I ponder this as I stir a new pumpkin batter.

And breathe in the scents of ginger and cinnamon, listening to the leafy rustle of an almond flour bag as I fold up the cellophane and pinch it closed with a clothespin.