A few reads and finds from this past month! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

~ Cabin porn: who knew it was a thing?

~ Five useful lessons Cambria Bold has learned from five years of meal planning. Here are my own menu planning tips and tricks!

~ I am beyond honored that my French Market Cookbook features in the Blue Hill gift selection.

~ How do you get people to eat more seaweed? Easy: you make it taste like bacon.

~ The gorgeous rue Crémieux in Paris’ 12th arrondissement, photographed by the ever inspiring Audrey F.

~ Loved these two episodes of the Food Blogger Pro podcast featuring Dianne Jacob on finding your voice, and my friend Elise Bauer on building a food blog empire.

~ Have you ever come across those little books from Short Stack Editions ? They’re hand-stitched and bound with baker’s twine, and I can’t think of a better trio to start a collection with.

~ A lovely interview with my talented friend Marie C. on her web series My Life in Sourdough.

~ The Challenges of Updating a Vintage Recipe, in light of my recent work on Ginette Mathiot’s Preserving book, now published in the English language by Phaidon.

~ Interesting insight from Alton Brown about choosing a passion-driven career: Love is the gasoline, not the car.

~ A treat of a video for bread lovers: an artisan boulanger in the wee hours of the morning.

~ Are you a fan of tarte au citron? Here are Paris’ 10 best lemon tarts according to L’Express magazine.

For more links and articles throughout the month, follow me on Twitter or follow me on Facebook!

In idle moments, I love to graze through my Instagram feed and discover what everyone is seeing, cooking, and eating. This visually-oriented social network has become very popular among the Paris crowd, and it strikes me as the perfect way to experience the city vicariously, get ideas for your next meal out, or daydream about a future trip.

So if you’re looking to infuse your follow list with more beauty and flavors from the City of Light, here’s a selection of inspiring Instagrammers to get you started!

1. Paris Promenades

Audrey Felix is a Paris apartment hunter and the author of Et si on se promenait… à Paris!, an armchair traveler’s dream come true. Her Instagram is full of shots from the quaint courtyards and dashing apartment buildings she gets to visit daily.

Follow Paris Promenades on Instagram

2. Lindsey Tramuta

Lindsey Tramuta is an American expat and the author of the blog Lost in Cheeseland, and her Instagram shows she has a keen eye for what makes life delicious and beautiful in her adopted city.

Follow Lindsey Tramuta on Instagram

3. Cédric Grolet

Cédric Grolet is the young and talented pastry chef at five-star hotel Le Meurice, and his Instagram gives you a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into his pastry lab.

Follow Cédric Grolet on Instagram

4. Paris je t’aime

Run with brio by the Paris tourist board, this Instagram is full of gorgeous skies, breathtaking architecture, and charming daily life scenes. If you weren’t already in love with Paris, this would seal the deal.

Follow Paris je t’aime on Instagram

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The story of these waffles begins with a photo that Sarah Britton, author of My New Roots, posted a few weeks ago, revealing that her revolutionary pancakes worked as waffles, too. Revolutionary pancakes? My ears perked up.

What’s revolutionary about Sarah’s pancakes is that she makes them from buckwheat and other whole, gluten-free grains that she soaks and blends with water to form a smooth batter. This is the best possible use of grains, foregoing pre-milled flours and essentially making your own. The soaked buckwheat becomes a little slimy — in the best of ways! — and this helps bind the batter.

These flour-free waffles are crisp and tender, high in nutty buckwheat flavor, and not very sweet, which leaves ample room for your favorite toppings.

Not five minutes after reading her post, I had a batch of grains soaking on my counter. Unfortunately, I did not have much success with the pancakes. I found them too difficult to cook properly on the stove top: despite several attempts using different heat settings, I mostly ended up with pancakes that darkened too much on the outside while remaining undercooked on the inside.

I did love Sarah’s idea, though, and I adore buckwheat, so I decided to try again in waffle form.

While I was at it, I took the extra step to sprout the soaked grains for a day, for even more waffle nutrition. My original pancakes were also woefully undersweetened, so two ripe bananas went into that fresh batch, and I added a bit of salt as well, to delineate the flavors.

And after a few tries, I nailed the process that works for me: this includes allowing the batter to rest overnight in the refrigerator — the waffles hold up much better in the waffle iron then — and adding a bit of baking soda just before cooking, for a lighter texture.

It’s a very easy formula, too, which for once I recommend you follow by volume: for each measure of raw buckwheat groats, you’ll add another measure of gluten-free grains (I’ve tried rice and quinoa; teff, millet, amaranth would work as well), and use two measures of water to process into a batter.

For all you buckwheat lovers, this is definitely a recipe to try: these flour-free waffles are crisp and tender, high in nutty buckwheat flavor, and not very sweet. We’ve had them plain and they’re excellent, but that moderate sweetness leaves ample room for your favorite toppings: I’ve tried a crêpe-style butter and sugar, I’ve tried raw honey, but my favorite combo is a drizzle of almond butter and a shower of grated chocolate (made using a Microplane).

They make for a lovely breakfast item — one that won’t give you a sugar crash two hours later — and they are toddler-approved at my house. You can make them ahead, too, and crisp them back up in the toaster for a quick afternoon snack.

I want to know!

Do you love buckwheat as much as I do? What’s your favorite use for this wonderful pseudo-grain? Will you give these unconventional waffles a try?

Want more fabulous waffle recipes?

Follow my waffle board on Pinterest!

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Gluten-free baking can be discouraging for those who only want to dabble at it: you often dive into a tempting recipe only to discover it calls for three different types of flour and various thickening gums. It sounds daunting, and you don’t necessarily want to invest in ingredients that will just go rancid in your kitchen cabinet.

“Naturally” gluten-free chocolate cookies

I am more attracted to naturally gluten-free baked goods that use “regular” ingredients — though I recognize the notion is highly personal. But in the case of these gluten-free chocolate cookies, they can be put together by hand in no time at all, from just four easy-to-find ingredients: almond flour, cocoa powder, sugar, and butter.

You’ll be wowed by these divine little sablés — crisp as you bite in, then meltingly tender on the tongue, not too sweet but strongly chocolate-y, with roasted notes and the touch of salt that changes everything.

These gluten-free chocolate cookies are a recipe idea I’ve had on the mind for a long time, and I recently came around to developing it, to great success. Knowing that they are based on such a simple formula, you may be just as wowed as I was tasting these divine little sablés — crisp as you bite in, then meltingly tender on the tongue, not too sweet but strongly chocolate-y, with roasted notes and the touch of salt that changes everything.

Though I generally use a silicone baking mat for cookies, I find it more convenient to use a good parchment paper here. I use it to roll up the dough into slice-and-bake logs, wrap them up for setting in the freezer, and slide the cookies onto a rack super gently at the end of baking — gluten-free cookies are typically fragile when still warm, so they need to cool completely undisturbed before they’re all crisped up and ready for action.

Tell me everything!

Do you also feel put off by recipes that call for two kinds of gums and various specialty flours? Did a particular recipe or circumstance convince you to give in and build a gluten-free pantry?

PS: Here’s an index of my gluten-free recipes. And if you decide to invest in a bag of almond flour (I buy it by the kilo at G. Detou in Paris), I can offer many more recipes to make good use of it.

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