Gluten free bread making

I have been gluten free for about one year. Bread is probably one of the most frustrating things for a gluten-friendly lifestyle. To be honest there is only one brand of bread that I have been able to eat un-toasted, but once it’s been frozen, it will crumble if you try to eat it un-toasted.

My family told me about Easy Bakers GF bread. My world was changed… not only was I able to have yummy fresh bread from the oven… cheaper…. I also made it into pizza bases which pleased even my non-GF flatties and tortilla which were not stinky and gross.

Challenge: I prefer wholemeal bread to white and grain, but Easy Bakers does not offer it. It was possible to make smaller loaves in muffin tins to have “Bread rolls” but the mixture was to the consistency of cake mix and they looked a little funny. In the end I took thickly sliced bread (Cut length ways) to the BBQ I was attending, toasted one side and shared my bread with another GF person at the party

I have a Thermomix and was keen to see what I could do with “From scratch ingredients”. Up till now I was really only using it as an expensive mixer.

Challenge 2: Finding the right recipe. I must admit seeing this slice of bread fold without breaking sold me… I had to try it... find the recipe here

Problem: where can I get sorghum flour/grain other than “stealing” lunch from a neighbouring cow? It did strike me as slightly funny. I have scrolled through and found there to be some grains I could swap the sorghum with- Chia which apparently can be used instead of any other GF grain, quinoa and rice. We are checking the Asian stores in Rockhampton as the health food store had not heard of sorghum flour.

Take one:

First attempt- CHIA

I broke the Pyrex “Bath” when I added the water. We had a huge mess to clean up… Disappointed me… the rest of the dough went into the fridge and I went shopping for a new, metal bath the next day. The lady in the kitchenware store was slightly appalled when she found out what I did. Upon her advice I filled the bath up and popped it into a cold oven. Seriously water boils at 100c I realised I would not be lacking for steam. I was very excited that this dough made balls that held their shape, so burger buns were now a possibility for “One-day”.

Using Chia flour (Made by milling chia seeds for 1 minute) the bread came out very brown (I had dark seeds), topped with fresh tomato, aioli and avocado was delicious, we also tried Ricotta, tomato and Spanish onion. It was quite a strong-tasting bread and reminded me of eating pumpernickel once as a child. Not much good as a slice of toast with butter and honey, the “fold” effect was disappointing.

Regarding the tapioca flour- mill tapioca seeds/pearls (also called sago) for one minute in the Thermomix. The box has over what you need though it says it has less and the bag should have exactly what you need though it also says it has less.

As the eggs were ex-large, I backed off the water slightly. With the dough being drier, I was able to pop the ball into the oven (Onto a cast iron frying-pan) with an egg-flipper.

I have since found that the best place to get tapioca flour is from the Asian isle at Coles. However milling sago for 2 minutes in the TM does produce a powder. 
 

Second Attempt- QUINOA

I was using up my stash of quinoa, I had not wanted to become too addicted to the flavour of quinoa porridge as I recently read of the heath-concerns that poor people in Peru and Brazil are facing at present as vegetarians and GFs have discovered the wonderful properties of this seed, the price of quinoa(a staple) has sky-rocked… I could not in all conscience be a party to taking food from their babies mouths. Let me say I am very excited to say that quinoa is available from Australian farms via the internet and we look forward to experimenting with this fascinating seed.

I have since found that the information above, is an urban legend... and have started buying quinoa again
 

Result:

Test one: Butter and honey. The bread smelled very nice as it was baking, it had a beautiful brown top, but the taste was somewhat disappointing. The dough was a little stickier as I added the correct amount of water,(I was still using ex-large eggs)  but it still made fantastic blobs that held their shape.

Test two: I added Tuscan herbs to the next ball hoping to be able to eat it with just butter- perhaps Italian herbs would have been better, as it was a little salty. But toasted with ricotta, tomato and aoli was delicious. I don’t think I gave it quite as long as it needed in the oven. This ball was too sticky to pop into the oven with the egg-flip so I used the baking paper method. When it was time to remove the paper, I was amazed that it just slipped out without any effort.

Test three: Pizza base- by far this is the one that we liked the best. I used the “cast iron frying-pan method” which starts on a stove top and ends in the oven. I put the pizza base out to rise between 2 pieces of cling wrap. Getting it onto the heated frying-pan was tricky, but “forgiving”. I “Puttied” up my holes and mistakes with the dough that folded over. Getting the temperature of the stove-top was also tricky. If it went too hot- the base burned but it needed to be hot enough to “steam” the lid. When the base looked cooked and was able to be lifted away from the pan, I popped it into the oven. I would have preferred to have had it hot, but I forgot a step in turning it on.

The end result was delicious. There was plenty of topping, and the base was fairly thick so I was only able to eat 2 slices. The pizza was about the size of a dinner plate and was cut into 6 slices. I used kransky, chicken, bacon, bbq/tomato sauce and grated Mozzarella, fresh Parmesan and Cheddar cheese on top.

The topping was able to tone down the intense nutty flavour of the quinoa.

This evening I intend to make the last ball into pizza again, but I want to see if it can work as well from being placed onto a cold frying pan first.

The next grain I intend to replace sorghum with is basmati rice then jasmine and maybe purple rice. I also intend to try milling pop-corn to make corn meal and milling chick-peas to make besan to substitute the sorghum.

Judie