Gluten-Free Thanksgiving

Here is the family Thanksgiving. We traveled to my parents home in Northfield. It was small group of very funny people, my parents, my brothers, my dad's parents, my mother-in-law, and my brother's roommate who happens to have the same name as my husband, it got to be confusing. My grandfather decided to call them Brendan 1 and Brendan 2, which obviously cleared up all confusion.  

In the intrest of full disclosure I don't really care for the Thanksgiving meal. Mostly because I don't like turkey straight and the texture of food is really important to me. So, I don't like bananas and mashed potatoes. As you can see my plate is fairly bare but at the end of the meal I didn't need to unbutton my pants unlike others. I have a salad with cranberries, walnuts and vinaigrette. A rice dish with celery. Turkey. My mom makes this dish with Knox gelatin, apples and celery - it's kind of strange but a big hit with the family. Of course of my gluten-free dinner rolls!

I was really nervous this year because it was my first gluten-free Thanksgiving and there isn't much gluten-free food for this meal. Let's see, the bread, the gravy, the stuffing, those are the big ones that come to mind. Since I don't like a lot of Thanksgiving foods I relied heavily on filling up on bread. That was not looking like it was going to be an option. Luckily, I found a gluten-free roll recipe from The Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. I made them on Thursday morning - it was a little stressful. I really liked them and so did everyone else. The secret is all the butter. They reminded me of biscuits. It has the crumbly texture to them and the same density as biscuits. They were easy to make. I had never made rolls or bread of any kind and I thought this was a piece of cake. I modified the recipe a little bit because I didn't have all the flour that was listed. However if you can convert a recipe from volume to weight such as grams or ounces you can easily mix and match the flours that you use. Below is a picture of the rolls I made. 

 

Has anyone else noticed that gluten-free breads don't seem to have a dramatic rise to them? I kept waiting for dough to look twice the size but it never happened. I kept waiting but after 90 minutes I had to give up and put them in the oven because I was going to be late for dinner. 

 

 

Best part of all the dessert! I have to say that my grandma rocks because she made me Betty Crocker's Gluten-Free Brownies! Yea! She also made the pies but they weren't gluten-free but I was told they were delicious as usual. I never met another family that has to have banana cream pie for Thanksgiving. 

Even though I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving I had day with my family and the food was good. Now I can start getting worried about Christmas.