Nancy Cain

How Did We Get Here?

I remember very clearly my first baking experience. I was nine years old, and I came home from school and announced that I needed to bring a cherry pie to school for a bake sale. My dad, who was the baker in the house, said "sure," but I would have to make it myself; he would direct me. I still remember standing over the butcher block table struggling with that pie crust. If you had asked me back then what I wanted to be when I grow up, it certainly wouldn't have been a baker. In fact, I decided at an early age that I wanted to be an inventor.

Many years intervened between that cherry pie experience and now. I came up with many absurd ideas, but they never got off the drawing board. Instead I became an academic, a writer, and I went to work on Wall Street. But all the while the entrepreneurial spirit was gnawing at me. And then Tom and our younger son were diagnosed with celiac disease, setting off a course of events that has led us to begin many days by asking ourselves, "How did we get here, anyway?"

With two teenagers in the house, and one requiring a gluten free diet, I felt I had no option other than to make tasty, naturally gluten free food that everyone would eat. Desperation awakened the nascent inventor in me. It didn't take me long to realize that I absolutely loved taking simple ingredients and turning them into unique gluten free products. I also quickly discovered that I'm totally entertained by sourcing, designing, and modifying baking equipment to bring those products to the market. Someone should have told that nine-year-old girl that Against The Grain Gourmet was my destiny!

In my cookbook, Against The Grain: extraordinary gluten-free recipes made from real, all-natural ingredients, I am thrilled to share with you my non-traditional methods for creating all-natural gluten free baked goods with no compromises.