Bread Success!

Some of you who follow my facebook page may have seen me cheering and sharing a dodgy phone photo of some bread I made the other day. In the real world making a successful loaf of bread is no big deal unless you are seriously challenged in the kitchen, but making an edible loaf of failsafe, gluten, dairy, soy, nut, egg *and* gum free bread is a different story. When I cut open that little roll and had a bite I honestly did a dance of joy.

After a few early attempts at my own gluten free bread I had given up in favour of packet mixes and more recently had been using Kersten's recipe with reasonable success. Our latest restrictions (no gums) meant that I had to ditch that recipe too, and start getting creative.

As a gluten eater I am highly critical of gluten free bread, but I devoured the whole roll with nothing on it and then waited very impatiently for the loaf to cool so that I could slice it and see how it turned out. The crust was soft, the bread bent, and it didn't have that gelatinous texture that I've come to expect from gluten free bread.

How do you think it looks?

I made some (flat) rolls a day later and took them along to a failsafe picnic. There was loads of food, so I didn't bother to get them out until the end when some of the other mums wanted to try. They passed that taste test too (or those lovely ladies were being very polite). The other big test was my daughter who has never willingly eaten gluten free bread. She ate an entire roll with her dinner last night and that is all I really need. There is nothing worse than slaving in the kitchen and no one wanting to eat it.

So after trawling through the internet for inspiration I decided to use a 'Gluten-Free Girl' recipe as my starting point, but that's where the help ended. Now I'm incredibly chuffed to present to you my very own bread recipe.

Bread!
Ingredients

• 2 cups warm water
• 2 Tbsp psyllium husks
• 5 Tbsp boiling water
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 3tsp yeast
• 1 Tbsp failsafe oil
• 100g brown rice flour
• 100g sorghum flour
• 170g white rice flour
• 170g tapioca starch
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Put the psyllium in a small bowl or cup and pour the boiling water over them. Give it a quick stir and set aside.
2. Pour the water, sugar and yeast into a big bowl (preferably in a mixer, but this should be fine by hand) and leave while you measure out the rest of your ingredients.
3. Add the oil, the psyllium sludge and the dry ingredients and mix for a few minutes until it is all very well combined and smooth, like a thick cake batter.
4. Tip into an oiled bowl and cover with glad wrap and leave stand somewhere warm for about an hour. It will rise in that time and become a lot more like dough and less like batter.
5. While it is resting preheat your oven to 190°C
6. Tip into a greased loaf tin (my tin is 20cm x 11cm) or using wet hands roll balls for rolls use pie tins for large rolls, muffin trays for dinner rolls or place them in a slice tin for flatter hamburger style rolls.
7. Bake the loaf for about 50 mins and rolls for about 25mins.
8. Cool on racks.

As this is a very new recipe I haven't had a chance to try different things with it or check how long it lasts. The rolls I made yesterday were slightly dry today, but still edible. The loaf I made the other night was sliced and went straight into the freezer and toasted beautifully for dinner tonight.

The next steps for me are to play with different flour (as I realise sorghum isn't the easiest to find) and to experiment with other styles of bread. But I couldn't make you wait any longer for this recipe. If you try anything that works leave a comment, it would be great to hear what things you can come up with. My next thought is brown sugar scrolls or white baguettes.

Breakfast Biscuits

Breakfast can be tricky when you are gluten free and dairy free, especially if you don't really like milk substitutes and have trouble reconciling the "white brick" with being bread.

I saw a new product in the supermarket the other day - Breakfast Biscuits. Really? Biscuits for breakfast? I knew they would never be an option here, but checked the ingredients out of curiosity. Except for the sugar content they looked reasonably healthy. Surely I could make something like this that my son could eat. I made a batch and he was really happy to eat them. I thought them to be less than stellar. Batch two was tweaked a bit and now I'd be happy to eat them too. The boy likes them as they are easy to get himself and since he has recently come around to drinking rice milk he likes to have a glass for dunking them in.

Healthy Breakfast Biscuits
Ingredients

• 125g Nuttelex
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/2 cup of brown rice flour
• 1/2 cup white rice flour
• 1/3 cup millet flour
• 1/4 cup puffed amaranth
• 1/4 cup buckwheat flakes
• 2 Tbsp quinoa flakes
• 1 Tbsp psyllium husks
• Small handful of freeze dried pears, broken up (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160˚C
2. Beat nuttelex and maple syrup together in a large bowl until well combined.
3. Beat in the flours and psyllium.
4. Stir in the remaining ingredients
5. Take about a tablespoon and roughly shape into a short log. Place on a lined baking tray and flatten with fingers.
6. Repeat for the remaining mixture (mine made about 24)
7. Bake for 10-12 mins. They are ready when you can see them starting to brown on the bottom edge.
8. Cool on the trays for 5 minutes before moving to wire racks.

Variations

• These would work well with any tolerated flour. It does affect the taste.
• Rice malt syrup would also work instead of maple syrup.
• I'm also sure that other things could be substituted for the buckwheat, amaranth and quinoa. Just keep the quantities similar. You'll know when you try to shape them if they are too dry and need more syrup or are too sticky and need a little more dry stuff.

Sunday, Sunday

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. I'm not talking about rice bubbles, but something filling. Not something shoveled in as you are rushing out the door, but something a bit later, something that takes a little longer to make and is far more satisfying.

I like eggs and am incredibly grateful that we can eat them and all my favourite breakfasts have them and every now and then I can convince the less civilised people in the house to wait a little and have a decent breakfast. On Sunday that breakfast was Eggs Benedict. Well, almost. Since ham is on the "no go" list our eggs were a little on the naked side, but equally delicious. This is something you could make for guests. I've found since having children, that brunch is a really great time to get together with people. The kids are mostly happy and not tired, you have enough time to get it together in the morning and the kids haven't had a chance to trash any pre-visitor cleaning you've done. There is also the fact that failsafe breakfast food is not so different to non-failsafe breakfast food.

Eggs Benedict (naked)
Ingredients

• eggs - allow two per adult
• toast - whatever bread you tolerate
• Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce  
Serves 6
Ingredients

• 4 egg yolks
• 1 Tbsp citric lemon
• 180g nuttelex in smallish globs at room temperature

Method

1. Part fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat to barely a simmer and fit a bowl on the top so that the water doesn't touch the base of it.
2. Put egg yolks and citric lemon into the bowl and whisk (by hand or with electric beaters) until it is thick and pale.
3. Add the nuttelex a little at a time whisking continuously. Only add more when the previous piece is fully incorporated
4. When all the nuttelex is incorporated and the sauce is thick remove the bowl from the pan and set aside.

Poached Eggs
I found some brilliant instructions for perfect poached eggs on another blog, and since they were so beautifully done with fabulous photos I will just give you the link. Not Quite Nigella's Poached Eggs 101

To serve, place an egg on each slice of toast and top with sauce. Garnish with a little parsley.

Yes, I know. The day I plan to take photos my sauce flops. Still tastes fab, but lacks body. I added the nuttelex too quickly.

You could also serve with slices of deli chicken.

Variations:
Dairy - Use unsalted butter in the sauce.
Amines - Use salt cured ham or smoked salmon.

If you are serving this up for guests that don't have restrictions use slices of toasted baguette and ham or salmon for under the eggs. They probably wont notice the sauce isn't the real thing. I don't really like the taste of nuttelex and was worried it would taste terrible, but I happily devoured this sauce.

Pear Season!

Pears. What would we do without them?

March is the peak season (in Australia) for William pears and a bunch of other varieties, which makes it the perfect time to make your preserves. Pears are cheap, plentiful, high quality, and in theory you could make your whole year's worth of preserves right now.

Quite some time ago my best friend sent me a link to recipe and asked if it could be done failsafe. A really quick look at the ingredients told me that it practically was. It was a recipe for Pear and Vanilla Bean Honey and quite frankly, it looked divine. I made it and, lo and behold, it was divine. My son ate it at every opportunity, on toast, on sandwiches, on (homemade) crumpets, on scones, on ice cream and straight from the jar.

Here is my adaptation (it makes way more than the original, because really, why bother to make one jar when you can make five).

Pear and Vanilla Bean Honey

Ingredients

• 12 ripe pears, peeled, cored and quartered 
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 3 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 tsp citric acid

Method

1. Pop your pears into a large saucepan with the water, bring to the boil and simmer until the pears are very soft and squishy.
2. Push the pears and the liquid through a sieve - and no you can't just put them in the food processor, because with the sieve you get rid of all the thick fibres which would get stuck in your teeth and ruin the texture.
3. Put back into cleaned pot. Split the vanilla bean and add the seeds and the pod. Add the sugar and the citric acid.
4. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for about 45 minutes.
5. Pour into hot, sterile jars and once it is cool store in the fridge. This is not preserved as well as jam, it is far too liquid and I can't say that it would keep safely out of the fridge.
   
   

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Never!

My son like crêpes. He really likes crêpes. I'm could probably fill one with brussel sprouts and he'd gobble it up. Well, maybe that's going a bit too far. He likes them for breakfast the most. His favourite thing to have on them are 'lemon' juice and sugar. I find this a little boring and have made a really lovely filling that would work for breakfast or dessert and there are a few more things you could do for non-failsafe family members or guests who join you for brunch.

We had these crêpes on the weekend just gone. It was the long weekend, so theoretically we had unlimited time to spend making breakfast. Batter was made, batter was resting, filling was gently simmering on the stove, I started to cook the crêpes and suddenly everything stopped. We had run out of gas! That has never happened before. We are not connected to town gas, but have two enormous cylinders that are solely for the cook top. They do nothing else and last forever. We have been here nearly six years and have only needed one replaced in all that time. But alas, we were out of gas.

Out comes the trusty old electric frypan that I haven't used in years and almost threw away recently. Thank goodness I didn't because we won't have gas until Wednesday. It took ages to cook the crêpes one at a time on that thing and the filling was finished off in the microwave.

This is the same basic crêpe recipe that I have posted previously.

Basic Crêpe Recipe

Ingredients

• 250g plain gluten free flour
• pinch of salt
• 1tsp sugar
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 410ml (1 2/3cup) milk of choice - I used rice milk
• 125ml (1/2cup) water
• 1tbsp melted nuttelex
• Failsafe oil for frying.

Method

1. Sift flour, sugar and salt into a bowl and make a well in the centre.
2. Mix the eggs, milk and water together and pour slowly into the well.
3. Whisk until everything is incorporated and you have a reasonably smooth batter.
4. Stir in melted nuttelex. Cover and stand for at least 20mins.
5. Heat a crêpe pan or medium sized non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Wipe or spray with a little oil. 
6. Pour in enough batter to thinly coat the base of the pan (a soup ladle was pretty spot on for my pan), tipping it around to get it to the edges.When the crêpe starts to lift away at the edges give it a gentle shake so it comes loose and turn and cook on the other side for a minute of two. They should be slightly golden.

Stack on a plate (you could put baking paper between them to make sure they don't stick, although mine didn't stick together) and cover with foil until they are all done. They can be frozen with paper between them.


I had previously made this filling on Fathers Day, just so there was something else that my boy could eat, and it was just so good. The smell alone is drool worthy.


Vanilla Pears


Ingredients

• 3 ripe pears, peeled, cored and chopped into smallish pieces (roughly 1cm cubes) or use tinned pears in syrup.
• 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup of water (or if you use tinned pears you could substitute part of this for some syrup)
• 3cm piece of vanilla bean, split lengthwise.

Method

1. Put sugar, water and vanilla into a saucepan over medium heat
2. Stir until the sugar dissolves and mixture comes to the boil
3. Simmer until the syrup reduces by about a quarter.
4. Add pears and simmer until they are soft.
5. Spoon into crêpes and fold over.

 

Sweet and caramely and fragrant with vanilla

Variations
Have 'lemon' juice and sugar or just pure maple syrup or golden syrup.
Salicylates - Add a small piece of cinnamon stick to the pot. Or fill with fresh strawberries and maple syrup.
Dairy - Serve with big dollops of whipped cream or ice cream
Amines - Place some broken up good quality dark chocolate on half of the crêpe while it is still in the pan. When the chocolate starts to melt fold crêpe into quarters and serve. I have incredibly fond memories of eating crêpes au chocolat noir while wandering around Paris at midnight.

If you are having visitors you could put all the different fillings into bowls on the table and let everyone help themselves.

crêpe au chocolat noir

Strawberries, maple syrup and whipped cream