So in pursuit of gluten free baking (while I wait for my assortment of weird flours to get here from Amazon), I picked up a box of Gluten Free Bisquick from Walmart (I also saw it in Kroger). This thing was about a third of the size of a regular box of Bisquick and twice the price. But hey, it was worth a try to see if we can ease the transition.
The first thing we tried was the pancakes. This is a pretty straight forward recipe involving eggs, oil, milk, and the mix itself. Much like regular Bisquick. Naturally I can’t NOT fiddle, so I replaced the oil with applesauce and added Greek yogurt (1/4 cup), then cooked them using some oil on my griddle. I am thrilled to report that these tasted like real pancakes. The recipe said it would make 8 4″ pancakes. I got 10. We had real maple syrup and applewood smoked bacon with them for a DELICIOUS Sunday morning breakfast.
The next thing we tried with this mix was the recipe for pizza crust. Now I am a pizza crust snob. I make mine from scratch and it’s damned good, so I have, shall we say, discerning taste when it comes to pizza crust. But, as I said earlier, I’m still waiting on my assortment of alternative flours to get in so that I can try the gluten free pizza crust recipe in Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes A Day, and we wanted pizza tonight, so Bisquick it was.
When I mixed things up as directed (using oil, eggs, water, and the mix), the dough itself was a really STRANGE texture IMO. Very gloppy, not at all stiff in any way. You could never use this on a pizza stone, so I hauled out a shallow pyrex casserole dish and pressed it along the greased bottom of that. You do a prebake of this crust for 15 minutes, then add all your toppings, and bake another 15.
The verdict: Um…no. The crust itself was very crumbly. You could never pick this up as a slice. It absorbed all the sauce so that even I–who am not a big sauce fan to begin with–found it too dry. It was, all in all, like eating pizza on very thin cornbread. I had a quarter of the pizza. Hubby had a quarter and another half quarter. The dogs ate the rest. What we did eat is now sitting in our stomach like lead. I do NOT recommend this for pizza crust.
So overall impressions of the product…I think it’s probably perfectly fine for breakfast items–which is what Bisquick is best at, after all.
Will I buy it again? Mmm, maybe. I find it prohibitively expensive. The two meals we had today used all but 1/4 cup of the mix. I’m much more interested in trying out some homemade versions like this one from Ginger Lemon Girl: Gluten Free Master Baking Mix
5 thoughts on “Product Review: Gluten Free Bisquick”
I wouldn’t even use regular Bisquick for pizza dough. Too much like eating pizza on biscuits. LOL
Maybe when your other flours come, you will be able to make an awesome pizza crust.
I hope you figure out if gluten is the real problem. If so, I guess adjustments will have to be made. You’re such a good, imaginative cook, though, that the transition will be easier for you than for most.
Yeah it’s absolutely NOT something I would consider under ordinary circumstances.
I’ve always known that baking is essentially chemistry and it seems like there’s a lot more of it involved when baking gluten free. I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the subject.
We’re not 100% positive yet, but it’s looking increasingly likely that gluten is the culprit. Once I figure out the bread thing, I don’t think it will be too awful, and it’ll be great impetus to avoid stuff that’s bad for us anyway–aka fast food and processed junk.
Do y’all have Bob’s Red Mill products out there? They are based here in Oregon, but have an online shop, and a wide variety of gluten free products. I might just have more access to gluten free products, Dunno…..let me know. Maybe I can send you a care package for hippies or something? LOL
Care packages for hippies. LOVE IT! Ha! Yeah we have some Bob’s products, and the more unusual ones are what I ordered in bulk from Amazon (yay Prime!).
Hi…..Please visit my blog an award is waiting for you ….. 🙂