Yesterday I baked shortbreads for my gluten-free friends and made four tins. In my five baking days before this I had baked 29½ tins using Robin Hood all-purpose flour. I have about ten more tins to make, but always end up making more to give away.
When I started to mix the batter I noticed that the flour was running out. What? Every time in the past when I used Red Mill all-purpose gluten-free flour I had enough to make four tins with a bit left over. I measured it out into 4½ cups which emptied the entire contents of the 624 g bag, and combined it with the butter and fruit sugar. After a lengthy mix the batter was so sticky. I could tell just by looking at the beaters on the mixer as the batter was clinging to them in globs. It was obvious that I needed more flour. My mother’s shortbread recipe is for wheat-based flour so I have to tweak it to make it compatible with gluten-free flour. I always have to add more than the 4½ cups that the recipe states because the cookies will lose their shape in the oven and collapse into one formless mass on the cookie sheet if I use 4½ cups of gluten-free flour. That is indeed what happened the first time I tried to bake using GF flour.
Then it struck me: the scourge of shrinkflation had wrapped its grubby claws around this company too, and what I naturally felt was a suitable bag of flour for this year wouldn’t end up being enough to do the job. I had no choice but to get more flour. I covered the batter with a towel and headed to the store to buy a second bag. What a pain and a waste of time. It never occurred to me that the bag I bought two weeks ago was smaller; I just picked it up from the same spot in the same store as I do every year. There weren’t any other sizes available, just the one 624 g bag.
I added more GF flour to get the thickness that I use with wheat-based flour, and then started to knead the batter. It worked out fine. Baking gluten-free cookies takes longer than when I use regular flour because I have to wait till the cookies cool off before I can remove them and start another batch. GF cookies will crumble if I attempt to remove them from the sheet while they are still warm. I ruined one cookie last night because of my haste. With regular flour I can take them from the sheets to the cookie tins while they are still warm. I work like an assembly line with three cookie sheets on the go but when I bake gluten-free I have frequent pauses while I wait for two sheets to cool as another one bakes.
I mailed six tins last Thursday and the picture below shows the packages just before I went to the post office:
Gluten-free shortbread baking day below:
Cookie towers seven tins high:
2 Responses
Another remarkable baking effort Craig and this confirms that a lot of packages are holding less.
Well Craig. I hope your gluten free friends appreciate the work you have gone to. It is such a labor of love with sometimes frustration which you can’t anticipate. At least you have this year’s gluten free flour bag weight in this blog. Make note. It is so frustrating how large corporations are ripping us off. Just look at the depth of cereal boxes and the size of cracker boxes. Ridiculous. The worst thing is we are paying more for less to make them richer and us poorer!
Equally frustrated sister on the east coast!
P 🙂