Cross contamination and the home kitchen...

We insist that our store-bought foods be prepared in a gluten-free facility, but what about our own kitchens?

You've made the switch to gluten-free cooking, and suddenly your muffin tins and loaf pans don't look as sparkling clean as you thought they were. What to do? The safest bet would be to go out and buy all new stuff, and donate your old pans to a worthy cause. If you want to try to get them clean instead, here's what might work: for about the first 5 times that you bake gluten-free with your old pans, line them with foil so that the dough/batter never touches the actual pans. (Even for muffins, if there's any chance of the batter coming up past the top of muffin papers, use foil to get better coverage.) When you're done baking, scrub the pans as if they were filthy. If you do that several times, you'll probably get things pretty clean. If the pan has a lot of seams, though, it might be worth investing in a replacement.

A few other things in your kitchen to worry about:

The oven rack. We used to bake gluten-full pizza directly on the rack, which made for a nice crispy crust, but I'm pretty sure those racks will never be gluten-free. If you want to put a loaf of bread directly on the rack, think about what has been there before, and add a layer of foil to be safe.

The electric beater. This one took me by surprise, when I looked at the bottom of the beater we've been using for years. Unless you are a far better person than I am, there's a little trace of every cake you ever baked on the bottom of your electric beater, and probably a bit on the inside where the attachments get inserted. This becomes a bigger problem with gluten-free baking, especially if you have a touch too much xanthan gum, because the dough sometimes gets a bit too gummy and starts climbing up the beaters, and if you aren't careful, it could come into contact with the remains of that 2004 brownie mix. The ultra-cautious might consider replacing the beater. Then again, the ultra-cautious were probably doing a better job of cleaning their kitchen appliances after each use for all those years. The rest of us should make up for lost time and get that bottom surface sparkling. And, keep an eye on that dough: if it's climbing up the beater, stop, scrape, and slow down!

The toaster. Sadly, there's just no way I can think of to get a regular toaster gluten-free. A toaster oven gives you a few more options. You can scrub the heck out of the rack, you can order a replacement rack, or you can put your food on a piece of foil. This might be a good time to clean up those crumbs that collect on the bottom and ignite every now and then...

The pasta strainer. Even if you are super-clean, it's pretty hard to get into every little hole of a pasta strainer. A few trips through the dishwasher should do the trick, but if it's a plastic strainer with a lot of rough surfaces, it's going to be harder to get clean, and it's probably fairly inexpensive to replace.