A Local Gluten-Free Baker's Mix Gets Into the Market

Take scones, which she started tinkering with in 2000. "Every [gluten-free] scone recipe I found contained a high proportion of white rice flour, which resulted in a dry, crumbly scone with a weird aftertaste," she says. "I was determined to get it right."

Shepard's breakthrough was in nailing down a mix of five grains and starches to approximate the properties of wheat flour. To the gritty white rice flour she added mild tapioca starch, then potato starch and cornstarch, and "I finally got the softer consistency I had envisioned," she said. To mimic wheat-like bulk, she ultimately added corn flour.

With those ingredients plus xanthan gum as a binder, Shepard could make not just scones but pizza crust, chocolate chip cookies, graham crackers and sugar cookies, all of them decent approximations of their wheat-flour equivalents.

Now available at Roots Market, a health-minded specialty grocer with stores in Clarksville and Olney ( http://www.rootsmkt.com), Shepard's flour mix joins the ranks of several other gluten-free lines by such companies as Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, Ener-G Foods and Pamela's Products.

Even with the flour's moneymaking potential, perfecting it was a personal mission, not business, Shepard says. "With the flour mix, I was able to reclaim my baking life, the baking part of me."

By late 2003, Shepard was cooking 100 percent gluten-free, baking daily for her two kids (ages 5 1/2 and 2) and her pie-loving husband. Last fall she self-published "Nearly Normal Cooking for Gluten-Free Eating," a cookbook with more than 100 recipes. Her book joins others such as Carol Fenster's just-released "Gluten-Free Quick & Easy" (Avery, 2007), Annalise G. Roberts's "Gluten-Free Baking Classics" (Surrey Books, 2006) and Vanessa L. Maltin's "Beyond Rice Cakes" (iUniverse, 2006).

These days, she is spreading the gluten-free gospel. Since spring, Shepard has been teaching monthly gluten-free cooking classes at Roots Market and most recently has been the resident gluten-free baker at Roots' sister vegetarian restaurant, Great Sage, also in Clarksville. The response, she says, has been amazing: "I know what they [celiacs] are going through, and now finally there's someone -- me -- to help them enjoy eating again."

She even has a possible book deal on the horizon. But she won't be satisfied until she re-creates all of her beloved pre-celiac favorites: "I would love to come up with a recipe for a gluten-free saltine."

For more links and resources, see Kim O'Donnel's blog, A Mighty Appetite, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/food.