Bread & Butter: Gluten-Free Vegan Recipes to Fill Your Bread Basket

A gluten-free diet is not easy; neither is being vegan. The two combined is challenge for the cook. Erin McKenna did an admirable job presenting a happy solution with her cookbook Bread & Butter, listing a large number of gluten-free vegan recipes, and, as the title suggests, mostly of the savory, bready varieties. McKenna is a professional baker yet she managed well to downsize her bakery recipes into home kitchens. The cookbook is beautiful, with glossy pages, excellent professional photo illustrations and just as good recipes. She introduces the basics of gluten-free in her first chapter. She tackles standard fare like bagels, muffins, English muffins, croissants, and so on. But don’t be concerned—for the more difficult creations she uses shortcuts that will result in good products, though don’t expect the same as the real ones. No time-consuming puff pastry to deal with or elaborate bagel kitchen work is involved, plus she even provides a recipe for vegan butter. Her recipe writing and instructions are very good, layout is cook-friendly for your convenience, and in many recipes she gives variations, such as four ways to make French toast. Recipe head notes are worth reading, and each chapter heading lists the recipes in that chapter.