Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cinnamon Roll Recipe

One of the more challenging aspects of baking gluten free is working with dough for breads and rolls. Many gluten free recipes call for mixing the ingredients for the dough, then sort of plopping it all into a loaf pan and letting it rise, or scooping blobs of it onto a baking sheet.

Gluten is what gives dough its lift, its cohesion, its springiness. Without gluten, dough is sticky and glue-like, and kneading it is next to impossible. It's a delicate balancing act to get just the right combination of gluten free flour, leavening, and liquid to achieve a roll-able dough.

Gluten Free Bisquick, though, does seem to produce less gummy doughs and batters. I use it for my gluten free chocolate donuts and my TwoMinute Mini Cakes. But I've never used it as a flour blend for any kind of yeast based recipe.

Betty Crocker's recipe for gluten free cinnamon rolls didn't call for yeast, depending instead on the leavening agents already in the Bisquick mix. I thought the dough would be too sticky to roll out, and the rolls would be too dense due to the lack of yeast. Neither of those predictions came true.

At the end of the video, I mention the cost of the Gluten Free Bisquick Mix – in supermarkets a box can cost $5.99. With the additional ingredients, the cost of eight rolls is just over a dollar a roll. That's cheaper than paying $6 to $8 for four pre-packaged frozen rolls, but you can still get that cost down.

I have a subscription with Amazon for this product, and I get three boxes for about $11.00, which makes using the blended flour more cost effective than having to buy it in a store. There's only three cups of flour in a box, so it's still more expensive than wheat flour, but anyone on a gluten free diet already knows the gluten free flours and pre-packaged goods are far more costly.  And Obamacare doesn't cover the cost of treatment for celiac disease or gluten intolerance.

Overall, this recipe is a good, gluten free recipe for cinnamon rolls. They taste great, and the dough is not only manageable, but holds the moisture through the cooking process, another issue common to gluten free baked goods. Betty Crocker and General Mills may consistently charge more for their gluten free products, but they are quality products, and this recipe produces a quality cinnamon roll.