Zazu and Violet and all purpose gluten free flour mix

"Look a hattery!"

This was just one if the comments I heard when I first opened my little hat shop in Berkeley in 1991 named after my two daughters, Zazu and Violet.  They were 9 and 6 years old at the time.  Their brothers, Alfie and Huey were 14 and 3 years old.

As a soon to be single parent I had to balance a 6 day work week required by a new small business and feeding and caring for my 4 children.  I picked the location for my shop because it was a block away from their school and 4 blocks from our home.  They did their homework after school at the shop and at the end of the work day we would walk home and I would cook dinner.  They would help as much as they could.

Fortunately I love to cook.  The challenge was preparing a good meal in 30-40 minutes.  They had to be simple and I was committed to using the freshest ingredients.  We would have more elaborate offerings on Sunday.  Any baking could be done on Sunday as well.

It has been 20 years, they are all living on their own and are all good cooks thanks to the helping in the kitchen while they were growing up.  I decided to adopt a gluten free diet a year and a half ago because of some health issues, inflamed joints and skin allergies.  I think these were aggravated by changing all my recipes to whole wheat flours, pastas, etc.  I thought it would be a better diet, but it created these health problems.  With my gluten free diet everything has cleared up.

The challenge with a gluten free diet is baking and getting the taste and texture we so love from wheat.  The gluten free flour mix I have been mixing myself and using seems to be working very well as an all purpose flour.  It has sweetness from millet, 'sweet sorghum' and rice flour and good texture from potato flour and tapioca.  I added ground flax seed because it is so good for you.  The only thing I don't bake is bread, but there are biscuit, scone, English muffin, waffle and crepe recipes, so who needs bread!

Zazu & Violets' all purpose gluten free flour mix

Please contact us at zazuandviolets@gmail.com for flour mix.
 
Always store your flour in the freezer, let it come to room temp after you measure out what you need, especially if yeast is involved.

Happy Baking!

To see the latest collection of Zazu & Violets' hats, visit our on-line Etsy shop.