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.

Nanna's Cake

My mum is really great about cooking for us when we go there and always making sure she has snacks or something for the kids. This is a cake she has made on several occasions. It is nice for afternoon tea and lovely for dessert. Last night she made a rice milk custard to pour over it too. Everyone likes it except for my daughter who is quite the fuss pot.

She adapted it from some recipe she had cut out of a magazine ages ago. The original recipe was for a Pineapple Streusel Cake, but it now contains pears.

One thing I like to try to do with this blog is have recipes that are good for Failsafe beginners or for people wanting to cook something for failsafe guests. So I try to have some things that don't require a large quantity of strange ingredients and things that will only be used once and the go bad in the pantry. This cake fits that bill very well.

Photos were taken on my phone, so please excuse the quality

Pear Streusel Cake
Ingredients

• 2/3 cup gluten free flour blend (like Orgran)
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder (or use self raising flour)
• 100g nuttelex
• 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 5 tinned pear halves, chopped small and lightly crushed with a fork.

Struesel Topping

• 30g nuttelex
• 1/3 cup gluten free flour
• 1/4 cup caster sugar

Method 

1.  Preheat oven to 170˚C
2.  Lightly grease a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper
3. Beat flour, baking powder, nuttelex, sugar and eggs in a bowl with electric mixer until well combined.
4. Stir in pears
5. Spoon into tin
6. Make the streusel topping by rubbing the nuttelex into the flour until it resembles bread crumbs, then mix in the sugar.
7. Sprinkle the topping over the cake.
8. Bake for about 50 mins or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Serve warm with custard or cold on it's own.

Leftovers also make a nice lunch box treat

Rice Crispies

This is a recipe straight from the Fed Up Cookbook, but with a little difference.

I had tried the recipe quite some time ago when we first started gluten and dairy free as I thought it was going to be an easy treat. The result was very disappointing. More squishy than crispy. I asked my foodie friend Vibey how it could have possibly gone wrong. "Homemade marshmallow" she said. Followed by "What? Rice bubbles have gluten in them! Maybe it was the ones you used". Since there is about three ingredients in this recipe and two of them were possible culprits, I didn't bother to make them again.

Until recently. I was at a different health food shop to usual and spotted these.

Soland Puffed Rice. Ingredients: rice.

Anyone who is gluten free and failsafe will know that you just can't get crunchy puffed rice cereal that doesn't have other things in it. These are different. They looked different in the packet and the packet didn't feel soft and squishy, but they were pricey. It was worth it though. They are crunchy and sweet and really good.

Rice Crispy Bars
Ingredients.

• 4 cups crunchy puffed rice
• 200g white marshmallows
• 80g nuttelex

 Method

1.  Line a slice tin with baking paper.
2. Place rice puffs into a large mixing bowl.
3. Slowly melt marshmallow and nuttelex in a saucepan over low heat. Stir continuously to stop it sticking and burning.
4. When it is relatively smooth pour over rice puffs and stir until well combined.
5. Tip into lined tin and press down firmly. I find that a piece of baking paper over my hand makes it easier.
6. When completely cool cut into bars.

Variations
 - Add about a tablespoon of carob powder to the marshmallow mixture for a change of flavour.
 - For special occasions sprinkle with some natural sprinkles when you are pressing into the tin.

A very mild carob version.

These would be a great and very easy addition to a party table too.

Try not to eat them all before the kids get some!

Balls!

Hectic is how I would describe life at the moment. I have this idea that at some point life will slow down a little, I'll have a little more time and I'll get things done that I've been wanted to get around to doing. It never seems to happen though, something is always going on.

There are some things that can be done to save a little bit of time here and there. One of those things is leftovers. Not something that should be happening to much in the world of amine sensitivities, but it can be done. No one in this house would normally want to eat the same thing for dinner twice in a week, but if you reinvent it and use it for lunch boxes, well, that's a different story.

Risotto is something I can never make the right amount of. I don't think I've ever really tried to be honest. But risotto is also pretty uninspiring reheated. So what do you do with it? You turn it into balls!

This is not so much a precise recipe as a general guide. There are those that would argue that arancini should have a centre and they would be right, but there really isn't much for us failsafers to put in the centre. So they remain centreless.

Arancini - Risotto Balls
Ingredients

• 1 quantity leftover risotto.
• Egg - probably one unless you have a tonne of leftovers
• salt
• crumbs

Method

1. Heat oven to 180℃
2. Once leftovers are reasonably cool add some extra salt to taste and mix in beaten egg. All of the mixture needs to be moist, but not sloppy.
3. Roll into balls of desired size and roll into crumbs.
4. Place on baking tray and bake for approximately 20 mins (depending on size) or until hot through. (Alternatively, you could shallow fry them in a frying pan)

 These make for a great lunch box filler. Make sure you freeze them once they are cool enough with paper in between layers. We put them into lunchboxes straight from the freezer and they are thawed by lunchtime. It puts a bit of variety into lunches that could otherwise consist of rice cakes every day.

Variations
Dairy/amines - Do it properly and place a cube of mozzarella in the centre of each ball.