Guides to making food the gluten-free way

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a review of wheat- and gluten-free cookbooks in yesterday's Food section incorrectly stated one author's name. It is Mary Ann Wenniger.)

The Best-Ever Wheat- and Gluten-Free Baking Book, By Ann Wenniger with Mace Wenniger, Fair Winds Press, 287 pp., $14.95

The Gluten-Free Bible, By Jax Peters Lowell, Henry Holt and Co., 530 pp., $17

It is an overwhelming task for a newly diagnosed sufferer of wheat allergy or celiac disease to start cooking without gluten. An even greater challenge is to start baking and produce a result that has both flavor and texture. It is pointless to yearn for a crispy French baguette accompanying semolina pasta, and huge popovers served with Sunday dinners should be sweet memories.

In order to make baked products that taste good, it's important to incorporate more than rice and corn flours. There is a whole new vocabulary to learn: quinoa, millet, amaranth, and sorghum. Add to that list xanthan, guar, and carrageenan -- all gums that help hold together and thicken baked goods.

Alternative flours are never going to match wheat in flavor and texture. However, fine-tasting goods can be produced with a little knowledge about ingredients.

Cookbook authors have risen to the no-wheat, no-gluten challenge with varying degrees of success. In the ''Gluten-Free Gourmet" series, Bette Hagman has done a great job of putting out useful books with lots of information -- and recipes that work.

A couple of newer books have appeared. One on baking is written by a North Shore couple. Ann and Mace Wenniger's ''Best-Ever Wheat- and Gluten-Free Baking Book" began when Mace was diagnosed with celiac disease. The other is a revision, with recipes, of a resource book. Jax Peters Lowell's ''The Gluten-Free Bible," first published in 1995 as ''Against the Grain," offers advice, ethnic food choices, kids' recipes, and products.

The Wennigers must be applauded for using a large variety of flours and starches. They do a good job addressing the characteristics and flavors of a range of alternative flours and starches (more than 25 of them). Almond and chestnut flours are mixed with grain flours for added nutrition; basic baking terms are explained, and the authors offer warnings about hidden wheat and gluten in processed foods.

With the words ''Best-Ever" in the title, there's a promise of greatness. In that sense, the book doesn't deliver.

Potato and rice pancakes, for instance, do not work. The ingredients don't become a batter, but rather turn solid and useless. A second try produced the same result. Most flours and starches in wheat- and gluten-free baking are expensive, so added to the frustration of a recipe not working is the cost of having to discard the ingredients.

Instructions for putting together these recipes are often vague. A recipe for Passover nut cake instructs the cook to grease pans, but there is no mention of how many pans and what size. One success was the popover recipe, which turned out tasty treats. The Wennigers also offer nutritional analyses and a comprehensive array of baked treats, including Indonesian rice crackers, oatmeal cookies, and yeasted corn cakes.

At a meeting last year of the Healthy Villi, a Greater Boston celiac support group, Jax Peters Lowell was asked about research on medication that would enable people with celiac disease to eat wheat and gluten products. Her reply was blunt. She would not contribute money to such an effort since celiac disease is a chronic illness that can be managed by 100 percent compliance with a gluten-free diet. ''The Gluten-Free Bible" reads exactly the way Peters Lowell talks. She is opinionated, irreverent, informative, funny, and knowledgeable.

Peters Lowell has lived with celiac disease for many years. She wrote ''Against the Grain" when little written information was available to celiac sufferers. A section on attitude gives specific suggestions on how to handle certain situations. If, for example, someone is rude or ill informed enough to say ''You know, you really should feel lucky it's just an allergy and not something worse," some of her suggestions include ''Maybe I will at some point, but right now this is really tough for me" or ''Why don't you try my diet for a week, then tell me how lucky you feel?"

She also tells you how to handle wait staff and restaurant menus; where church goers can get gluten-free hosts (altarbreads@benedictinesisters.org); what to do with a dog who loves to lick you (dog food contains gluten, but there's gluten-free available); and how to deal with romance and gluten.

Who would have guessed that a stolen kiss over a plate of pasta could spell disaster for someone on a gluten-free diet? As Peters Lowell writes, ''When you're a celiac, the concept of being lovesick takes on a whole new meaning."