My Baking Bible

Everyone I know has something that they can't do without in the kitchen. Some of us would be lost without their favorite cookbook (handed down through the generations), others couldn't do what they do without this gadget or that, but my number one tool in the kitchen now, is a piece of paper.
 
It isn't a very fancy piece of paper to look at, but I would not be able to bake anything without it. This piece of paper is my Baking Bible, aka Common Ingredient Weight Equivalencies. When I was first working on becoming gluten-free I needed to learn how to replace many of the common ingredients found in gluten-free baking with other ones, due to my extremely long list of foods that I should avoid. I somehow, during this time, found my way to Shauna James Ahern at glutenfreegirl.com. I loved the way she shared her 'secrets' to success and I found a lot of inspiration. She led me to exploring the chemistry of baking and so I borrowed as many books as I could find from the library about these topics. Many of these books had listings of ingredients, but none of them had all of the ones that I needed. So I started compiling my own lists.

I now have this list printed in a plastic sleeve, taped to the inside of my kitchen cabinet door, near where I do all of my mixing. Whenever I am trying a new recipe, I flip open the door and use the measurements to convert and replace the ingredients. The true bonus to this type of baking is that the results are 100% repeatable and if there is something just a bit off (moisture, oil, etc), it is easier to play with just those ingredients while ensuring that the rest of the recipe is consistent.
 
It comes in incredibly handy, when I am trying to convert a traditional recipe to a gluten free recipe, because I now know that I need to make 125 g of gluten-free ingredients to replace every 1 cup of traditional flour. This measurement leaves me a lot of room to play with mixing starches and alternative flours together to achieve the right mix of flavors and textures. If you click on the picture above you will be able to download a PDF of this page to help you become a master of gluten-free cooking.