I’ve been gluten-free since I was nine. That’s a long time to watch the gluten-free aisle of the supermarket get bigger, more expensive, and somehow worse. The packaged stuff is mostly cornstarch, xanthan gum, and rice flour by the kilo — designed to mimic gluten breads with results that range from “fine, I guess” to “this brick has actively wronged me”. After two decades of cooking for myself I have strong views about which gluten-free recipes are worth the effort and which ones are a waste of an afternoon.
This is what I actually cook — and serve to non-coeliac mates — without anyone making the face. All Aussie-supermarket-sourced, no eight-flour blends, no shopping at three different health food stores. If you’re new to gluten-free cooking, this is the playlist. If you’ve been at it a while, you’ll find some specific Aussie tweaks in here that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
The mindset shift
Don’t try to replace wheat. Try to find dishes that were never going to have wheat in the first place. Crepes from rice flour are not a “gluten-free version” of crepes — they’re crepes from a different tradition (the Vietnamese, the Korean, the South Indian). Buckwheat is naturally gluten-free and has been used for centuries in Brittany and Russia to make pancakes and bread that don’t need wheat at all. Once you reframe the cooking that way, the “missing” feeling disappears.
The other shift: stop buying packaged gluten-free bread. It’s $9 for a loaf the size of an apple and it tastes like a sponge with self-esteem issues. Make crepes. Make buckwheat pancakes. Eat rice. Eat polenta. Be free.
The starting line-up — five gluten-free recipes that hold their own at dinner
1. Basic rice flour crepes
These are the foundation. Rice flour from McKenzie’s (the Aussie brand, available at every Coles, $3.50 for 500 g), water, salt, an egg, a bit of melted butter or oil. That’s the whole batter. The trick is to make it the night before — the rice flour needs to hydrate for at least four hours or the crepes turn out gritty. Cook them in a non-stick pan, no fancy crepe pan needed, and they’ll come out paper-thin and pliable. You can roll them with savoury filling (mushrooms, spinach, ricotta if you eat dairy), or fold them with lemon and sugar. The same batter makes Vietnamese bánh xèo-style crepes if you swap the water for coconut milk and add turmeric.
2. Fluffy buckwheat flour bread
The only gluten-free bread I bother making at home. Buckwheat is a seed (despite the name), not a wheat at all, and it has a nutty, slightly grassy flavour that doesn’t try to be wheat — it just is what it is. The loaf I make uses buckwheat flour, a couple of eggs (which carry the structure), psyllium husk (the magic ingredient that gives gluten-free bread its chew), and yoghurt. Bakes in 50 minutes, slices clean the next day, makes excellent toast. McKenzie’s buckwheat flour is at most Coles for $4.50 a bag.
3. Bread made from corn flour & tapioca
If buckwheat is too earthy for you, this is the lighter alternative. Brazilian-style pão de queijo traditions taught me this one — corn flour (the Brazilian polvilho doce, or its closest Aussie cousin, McKenzie’s corn flour from Coles), tapioca starch (from any Asian grocer, $3 a bag), eggs, oil. The dough is sticky and weird in the bowl but it bakes into chewy, soft rolls that put any packaged GF bread to shame. They freeze well — make a triple batch, freeze in zip bags, defrost in the toaster.
4. Gluten-free matcha pancakes
Weekend breakfast that doesn’t compromise. Almond meal (Macro from Woolworths is fine — $9 a bag — or pre-blanched from Coles), a teaspoon of matcha for both the colour and the slight grassiness, eggs, a splash of milk (any), a teaspoon of baking powder. Mix, ladle, flip. The almond meal makes them denser than a wheat pancake but in a good way — they hold up to maple syrup without going to mush. Serve with thick yoghurt and stewed Aussie stone fruit when it’s in season.
5. Red lentil pasta
San Remo make a red lentil pasta now and it’s available at every Coles for about $4.50 a packet. It’s actually good — slightly higher protein than wheat pasta, holds sauce like proper bronze-die, and the colour is striking on the plate. Treat it exactly like normal pasta (don’t overcook it — three minutes less than the packet says) and toss with a simple tomato sauce, garlic, chilli, olive oil. The pantry guide covers the supporting cast.
The cross-contamination question (sorry, I have to)
If you’re coeliac (the autoimmune condition, not “gluten-sensitive”) then cross-contamination is the actual problem, not the recipe. The numbers from Coeliac Australia are stark — even a few hundred milligrams of wheat can trigger an intestinal response that lasts days. So separate chopping boards, dedicated toaster, dedicated wooden spoon (the grain holds gluten), and obsessively-clean pans. None of this is paranoia — it’s just the maths.
The exception: oats. Standard oats are not gluten-containing themselves, but they’re grown next to wheat and processed on the same machines, so they’re almost always contaminated. Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free oats at Harris Farm or larger Coles are the only ones I trust for porridge. They’re $11 a bag and they last me three weeks.
What I keep in the pantry
- Rice flour — McKenzie’s, white. The everyday.
- Buckwheat flour — for bread and pancakes.
- Tapioca starch — for the structure in GF bread. Asian grocer, $3.
- Almond meal — for pancakes, biscuits, baking. Macro at Woolies.
- Polenta — coarse, not instant. Cooks down into the most underrated GF dinner there is, with a swirl of butter and a fistful of grated parmesan.
- Psyllium husk — non-negotiable for any GF bread. $9 from any health food aisle.
- Tamari (gluten-free soy sauce) — Pearl River Bridge tamari from Asian grocers. Don’t use Kikkoman; standard soy sauce is brewed with wheat.
- GF tinned tomatoes, pulses, herbs, oils — see the same recommendations in the Italian pantry guide.
- Risoni-substitute — actually just rice. If a recipe calls for risoni, cook the same volume of basmati. Nobody cares.
What I don’t bother with anymore
- Pre-mixed gluten-free flour blends. They’re cornstarch and rice flour with a price markup. Mix your own to match the dish.
- Xanthan gum. Psyllium husk does the same job, cheaper, and doesn’t give people the stomach issues that xanthan does for some.
- Cauliflower pizza bases. They’re wet and they collapse. Make a buckwheat base or get a real one — there’s no shame.
- “Gluten-free pasta” that isn’t bronze-die. Texture matters more in GF pasta than wheat — the cheap, smooth stuff goes claggy. San Remo red lentil and Barilla Gluten-Free are the only ones I’d serve.
- Imported GF anything that’s $14. Almost always there’s an Aussie equivalent at half the price.
One trick to make any savoury dish feel gluten-free-celebratory
Crispy fried polenta. Slow-cook polenta with stock and a splash of milk until it’s thick. Pour it into a tray, smooth it out, fridge it overnight. Cut into fingers, dredge lightly in rice flour, shallow-fry in olive oil. They go shatteringly crisp on the outside and stay soft inside, and they sit under any sauce — a fast ragù, a mushroom reduction, a Mediterranean tomato base with capers. This is the dish I make when I want to feel like I’m eating “proper” food and not “gluten-free food”, and it costs about $3 to make for four people.
If you’ve spent any time being intimidated by gluten-free cooking, that’s the way out. Stop trying to recreate a baguette. Start cooking what was already meant to be eaten without wheat. There are entire culinary traditions — Indian, South-East Asian, Latin American, large parts of Mediterranean home cooking — that have been doing this forever, and they make better food than anyone’s “wheat-free white bread” attempt ever will.
— Jess
