The Not-Quite-Best-Ever....

This morning I made zucchini quick bread from The Best-Ever Wheat-And-Gluten-Free Baking Book, by Mary Ann Wenniger with Mace Wenniger. It was a pretty simple recipe; a grated zucchini, rice flour, oil, honey, eggs, zanthan gum, cinnamon, etc. The bread turned out OK...it tastes great but did not rise that much so it's a little dense.
I am not sure how this cookbook got the "Best-Ever" in the title. I am never entirely happy with how the recipes turn out-that is when I have enough ingredients for a recipe, since throughout the book, at least 20 different flours are used, and most are difficult to find and/or expensive.
Until I develop my own recipes and find better baking books though, I am dependent on this book for its wide variety of recipes-there an entire chapter on pancakes and waffles, and while some of them are tedious and some of them don't turn out at all, I appreciate that there are so many recipes to try out, and I learn something from each one.

Watch out for Elvis

Like Clarissa who explained it all, I enjoy listing my likes and dislikes...

Here are the cookbooks with which I find the most success:

Gluten-Free 101: Easy, Basic Dishes Without Wheat, by Carol Fenster, Ph, D

Seem like a short list? I own seven gluten-free baking books and have checked out several more from the library, and while each has a few great recipes, Carol Fenster's book is consistently reliable because it only uses four, easy to find types of flour; it doesn't overuse butter and sugar to make the pastries tasty; and no fancy gadgets are required.

The first third of this book goes into details on special ingredients used in gluten-free baking. Fenster bothers to share facts on shelf life of flours, the best way to store them, and she even includes a list of substitutes for hard to find items. This essential chapter mysteriously anticipates that most other cookbooks that call for millet flour won't tell you that millet flour must be stored in the refrigerator and goes rancid after a year. Fenster's recipes don't ever call for millet flour, presumably because of its inconvenience (and difficulty to locate), but the fact that she presents crucial information on so many obscure ingredients earns this cookbook a very special place in my kitchen.