Good Gluten-Free Baking? NOT!!!

After many months I’m still perplexed at what I should do. You see, I bought a gluten-free baking book that looked like it would be wonderful. It wasn’t. It was far from wonderful. Everything I made was horrible – it tasted yucky, it didn’t rise, measurements were off. I was utterly disappointed.

While in Chapters browsing through the cookbooks (I always end up there – first the discounts, then the language books, then the cookbooks) and one caught my eye: Gluten-Free Baking with the Culinary Institute of America. I thought ‘Now that’s nice to see; a big culinary institution looking at food intolerances’. Then I thought ‘That’ll be good’ and how wrong I was. I find I’m a pretty good judge of cookbooks for my kitchen and this one had me fooled. Had I checked Amazon.com beforehand I would have seen all the negative reviews and warnings. But I hadn’t and ended up wasting some money. On one hand I was mad at myself, but on the other hand, I was relieved. It wasn’t me that was turning out bad baking, it was the book.

My question now is: What do I do with it? Normally I’d put it in a donation box, but I think that would be a little cruel. Some poor unsuspecting celiac would pick it up and be happier than a pig in poop at their lucky find only to discover one kitchen failure after another. I couldn’t do that to someone. So what do I do with it? It seems like a waste to throw it in the garbage – money and the environment. And I’ve never thrown out a cookbook before?

It’s been months and it’s still sitting on a chair. It doesn’t taunt me anymore. I verbally abused it for a while, but then the ‘You suck’ no longer felt satisfying. Now it just sits there, waiting until I figure out what to do with it.

Any ideas?