About GF + Me

About Me

Hi! I’m Liesl de Klerk, hailing from Pretoria in sunny South Africa. Wife to wonderful and loving husband Jaco and mom to two amazing adult sons.

I post only gluten free recipes that have been tried and tested by both the gluten-sensitive and gluten-permitted!

I hope that through my blog you will be able to see how much we love travel, baking, reading and photography.

About Gluten Free Baking

When I started baking gluten free in 2010, I thought “it’s easy, you just substitute gluten free flour for wheat flour”, but oh wow, was I wrong. My cakes, breads and cookies would all turn out dry and crumbly. Luckily these days we know a lot more about gluten free baking and there are lots of recipes that have been tried and tested by others.

Air and moisture are very important in GF baking so follow the recipe—and if they say sift the flour, sift it! Please also measure, measure, measure. Don’t go by feel, make sure of all measurements. Usually GF recipes also contain more baking powder, eggs, sugar and spices than their gluten-containing counterparts.

All gluten-free flour blends are different, so read through the ingredients on the packet and make sure it contains xanthan gum. If not, add it to the flour blend because in gluten-free baking, we rely on xanthan gum to provide elasticity to our doughs and batters. Since we don’t have gluten present, we need something that acts as the binding agent for the flour. I don’t like the smell and taste of soy so I try to stay away from flours that contain soy. The blend I prefer is an all-purpose flour that contains corn flour, rice flour and potato flour.

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