A few months ago, Chronicle Books released Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free ($24.95) by Karen Morgan, quite possibly my favorite gluten free baking book to date. The 75 recipes range from simple popovers to a show stopping Bananas Foster Savarin, and I’m determined to eventually cook my way through all of them. In addition to the terrific recipes, there are stunning photographs accompanying every dish. One flip through Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free and you’ll want to bake from it, whether or not you’re gluten intolerant.

Author Karen Morgan visited Portland recently and I had the good fortune of chatting with her about the book and her personal baking style.

LbR: What led you to become a gluten-free baker?

KM: At the time of my diagnosis with Celiac disease in 2002, there were literally no gluten-free baked goods that had the same taste, texture, and appearance as the treats I was used to eating. Being raised in an Italian-American family, I was used to pastas, breads, and desserts throughout the week; the doctor’s test results were like a death sentence. The more gluten-free products I brought home, the more dismal my future seemed. I felt completely helpless. I decided to do something about it and went into my kitchen and started obsessively experimenting. For five years, I hammered out two, three, or four recipe trials each day, hoping to strike on the perfect techniques needed to bring my favorite desserts back from the grave.

By the spring of 2006 I had perfected numerous recipes, mostly tested on friends and family. In search of unbiased opinion, I spent the summer baking at a chateau in France. Everything I made was gluten free—though I did not tell the proprietors or the patrons the true nature of the dessert. I figured if the French stood at attention for my gluten free desserts, then hopefully I could garner that same enthusiasm back home. The rest, as they say, is history.

LbR: Tell me about some of the flours you use in your recipes.

KM: I use a combination of flours to get a perfectly moist crumb in my cakes and a flaky crust for my pies and tarts. My favorites for desserts are almond meal, sweet sorghum flour, tapioca starch, sweet rice flour, millet flour, arrowroot, and gluten-free oat flour. I never use xanthan gum, a key to attaining my trademark texture. The more whole-grain flours you use, the more elasticity and flavor in the final product, two very important traits for successful gluten-free baked goods. The ratio of these flours differs from recipe to recipe, making each of my creations special and unique.

LbR: Your book has a photograph of every recipe. Why was this important to you?

KM: The whole point of a cookbook, to me, is to motivate, educate, and inspire home bakers to do for themselves. With no visual reference, who is going to feel those emotions and want to bake that which they cannot see? Most gluten free cookbooks have very few pictures, so you have to ask yourself why is that? With my book, Chronicle and I decided to break the mold and create not only a fabulously beautiful book, but one filled with revolutionary gluten-free dessert recipes as well.

LbR: Blackbird Bakery Gluten Free includes some rarely seen gluten-free recipes, such as pâte à choux, which must have been challenging to develop. What was your process?

KM:  In drafting the book, I wanted to tackle the widest range of desserts possible. I see my book as a foundation meant to inspire bakers to come up with combinations and creations of their own. This means that if you want to bake a pie, but don’t have a good pie crust, I’ve got that covered for you. In baking, it’s the foundation pieces that matter most.

The greatest challenge in mastering the more difficult recipes, like pâte à choux, was patience. I kept failing and the cream puffs kept falling! It was a daunting task that took over 30 trials to perfect; I just kept making minute changes until the recipe finally said yes. Ironically, my chocolate chip cookies took 87 trials before I mastered them, so who’s to say what’s simple? Gluten-free baking is an altogether different animal.

LbR: Can you leave us with one great gluten-free baking tip?

KM: One of the techniques I mastered that really makes a huge difference in my baked goods is called reverse engineering. Instead of creaming your fats with the sugar, always cream them with the dry ingredients. The fat molecules evenly coat each and every granule of flour, starch, and sugar, producing a moister crumb.

LbR:  Thank you, Karen. Looking forward to tasting more of these special desserts.

Note: This interview originally ran in the Oregonian, March 8, 2011.