Easy Dutch Baby

 There seems to be two schools of thought on gluten free baking. The first school is to make everything from scratch, no processed or premixed anything, even if it's safe. The second school is to take advantage of the bandwagon affect that had hit the food industry and use short cuts and premade mixes for bake goods. I'm kind of in between both of these schools. I've said before that processed foods are just another element of the unknown and uncertainty as far as allergy safety goes, but at the same time I like the advantages of a good mix. As you all know I love Pamela's and use it for most things. I like most baking mixes in the gluten free market and will use them instead of making my own.

I'll be honest. When I see a recipe on another blog that has a long list of flours I kind of turns me away from that recipe. I do carry in my pantry at all times some stock flours like brown rice, millet, sorghum, and tapioca starch, which most of the time is all I need. Now I uunderstand there is reason for each flour type (just check out my Favorites tab), and I understand that sometimes from scratch works well and maybe be better then a mix. However, when I'm in a mood to make something and I look up a recipe and I see just recipe after recipe of complicated or long list of ingredients that I may not have on hand it just blows my creative mood.

Another thing that really bugs me is when recipes call of ingredients that can't be substituted. In my Baking Tips tab I explain what can be used for what, which is very hand for the new gluten free baker, but some ingredients just can't be replaced like coconut oil. I have an allergy to coconut and it's a very popular dairy replacement that is used in many gluten free and dairy free baking. There isn't anything else in the world (at least that I know of) that can replace coconut oil. I can find a substitute for just about anything or a recipe list these days, but not coconut oil.

I don't think it's far to many people in the food allergy community to be so stagnate on ingredients. I try to warn when somethings can't be made corn free or soy free. I try to list how to make something egg free or at least explain why it can't be made egg free. I am not prefect about it and I think from here on I will try to be better about listing substitutions for those who may have allergies different from mine.

So to get to my point and recipe; I was wanting to make a dutch baby for my family for breakfast that other day. I found a few recipes and I didn't have all the ingredients for some or I thought they were way to complicated for something as simple as a giant pancake. Two of my favorite shows to watch are Cook's Country and America's Test Kitchen, the same show really, but both are great to watch. I love how they take a recipe and test it to death to find the best way to bake that recipe. Sometimes the "best way" is more complicated and has more steps then the way most of us would make the same recipes, sometimes it's simpler; for example, the dutch baby. It's just a simple recipe, and I looked at it after looking at gluten free ones and thought why not make a few changes and make it gluten and dairy free and with about the same number of ingredients. I posted the like below for the original recipe, and then you can see my version.

Cooks Country's Dutch Baby

Gluten/Dairy Free Dutch Baby
2 Tbs oil (for pan)
1 cup all purpose gluten free flour mix ( I used King Arthur, but any would work)
1/4 cup tapioca starch
2 teaspoons grated orange or lemon zest (optional)*
2 Tbs orange or lemon juice (optional)*
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chia seeds ground or xanthun gum 
1 Tbs oil or melted butter or butter subsitute
3 eggs
1 cup water or 1 1/4 cup milk (this what Cook's Country uses)
1 tsp vanilla extract
confectioner's sugar


Heat oven to 450 degrees. Coat an oven safe frying pan with the 2 Tbs oil and place in the oven on the middle rack. Mix together the flour, starch, zest, salt. Then add oil or butter, eggs, vanilla, and water or milk. I used water instead of milk, and the key thing to look for when making this recipe is the thickness of the batter, no matter what you use. The batter needs to be runny smooth mixture (Cook's Country has a great picture of what this should look like). 

Using a kitchen towel or oven mitts and take out the pan. Pour the batter into the pan and return to the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the edges or golden brown. Once done, take out and sprinkle with the juice and powdered sugar. Cut into wedges and serve. Serves 4.

*The zest and juice is optional but they add some great flavor and sweetness to the Dutch Baby. However, you can do a number of things to this to make it sweet if you don't have any lemons or oranges. We liked this with jelly or fruit spread, you can melt it down and drizzle it on top. Also frozen fruit, thawed with some orange juice to make a syrup would be good, and fresh fruit is always good.  You could even make this a dessert baby and put chocolate or Nutella on top. Have fun!