Tasting traditional Welsh cuisine is a treat… unless you can’t actually digest it.
Don’t let dietary restrictions hold you back, especially during the holiday season. Making your own gluten free Welsh cakes, or pice bach in Welsh, is surprisingly easy for those not familiar. This simple recipe is useful for anyone with celiac disease or an intolerance of gluten, and it opens the doors to a tasty, traditional Welsh delicacy.
Check out the video and the recipe below to see how it all comes together. The swing music alone might just lift your spirits.
All you’ll need are five ingredients, a mixing bowl and spoon, and a griddle. That’s it! Just don’t forget the not-so-secret secret ingredient of any homemade food: love.
Gluten free flours are not all the same, so be sure that what you select is an all-purpose gluten free flour, which will often contain a combination of naturally gluten free sources such as rice flour, sorghum flour, potato starch, tapioca starch and/or xantham gum (which is used as a ‘binder’). I strongly suggest that you don’t use corn flour. It won’t taste the same nor will it have the same consistency.
Living Gluten Free
Luckily, gluten-free foods and baking supplies are much more abundant now than they were ten years ago. The various conditions that restrict someone’s ability to process gluten are more widely known now than it was before, though not without some misinformation and denial.
Coeliac disease is a serious auto-immune disorder in which the intake of gluten damages the lining of the intestines which affects the body’s ability to absorb nutrients. Coeliac disease is not a food intolerance.
Gluten food intolerance, which is not linked to coeliac disease, ranges from wheat allergies, in which a reaction occurs shortly after ingesting wheat, to gluten sensitivity which has similar symptoms of coeliac without evidence of auto-immune damage to the gut.
There isn’t as much research on gluten sensitivity as there is on coeliac disease because it’s harder to identify the cause of the sensitivity. It is advised by the charity organization, Coeliac UK that people who believe they may have any of the above conditions to continue eating gluten-containing foods and see a doctor in order to ensure the accuracy of medical tests. If you do need to be on a gluten-free diet, they have a resource database to guide you as well.
What Do You Think?
Have you made gluten free Welsh cakes? Are you a master of gluten free Welsh cuisine, or appalled at the idea? Share in the comments.