Cheats Bread... Round 2

A few weeks back, I blogged my fantastic experience with Cheats bread by Me and My Thermie blogger, recipe here. I liked it so much I made it again... This time a double batch MyCook/Kogan cook off. I had plans for one to be another sandwich loaf and the other to be a cob... Hoping that my friend who I call the "cob-loaf" queen could fill it with delish cob filling and we could pretend we were not Gluten-Free for a few minutes. I aimed to get it round by cooking it in the 3L slow cooker. 

It was a shockingly hot day; the beginning for many for CQ and the bread rose very fast. In future I will use less yeast on days like today. The loaf dough melted all over the edges in the slow cooker. This possibly would have been ok if I had popped it in the oven as it would have cooked faster.

The second loaf looked like an extinct volcano. Very disappointing. Possibly the problem here was that I had lifted the lid too early to check how it was going. Not to worry, breadcrumbs I hoped... Then the ants found both loaves as they were cooling... at least the chooks were happy. So fresh bread loaves go pretty-much straight in the fridge. 

If I try for a cob shape again I will cook for the first hour without the kitchen towel between the ceramic bowl and lid, so that I can see how it is all going.  

Results

MyCook got the job done faster, the kneading was done in 1.5 minutes. Kogan took about 3 minutes. But the doughs were pretty-much identical by the time they were done.

Kogan had the option to heat to 30c or 40c I chose 40c as that is the one the MyCook recipes use for bread. I was not sure that 30c would be warm enough.

Cooking with MyCook and Kids

Pie News

First some bad news my estimates completely out as I measured out the mince sauce with a 1/3 cup but the recommended size is 1/2 cup. This resulted in a rather disappointing set of pies with overcooked bases and undercooked lids.

My neice was visiting over-night and I was keen to divert her from the devices today... the easiest way I have found to do this is to offer cooking... so we made more pastry and made some more pies today and added peas (not mushy) and stirred them through the mince before cooking.Everyone was happy except mr Fussy (who does not like peas in his pies).

Gluten Free Bread (Egg and Dairy free too)

We decided to make pies and Gluten Free bread... a new recipe I found here. You do not need a thermo-machine for this recipe. A mix master should work or even mix by hand. I love it, if I didn't prefer whole meal for health, this would be my go-to bread. Basically I needed fresh bread crumbs and thought that if it didn't taste nice it would be an easy way to get some... fyi if wondering, yoghurt bread works out more expensive and goes funny in the freezer. 

Me being well me... I made a few changes...

Orgran for Freefrom gluten flour (I measured 500g)
Oven for slow cookers
Thermomix for MyCook

TBH I was concerned that the lowest setting for MyCook was 40c and I wondered if it was too high. However when browsing actual MC yeast recipes I found that 40c was recommended so I proceeded.

I was surprised that there was no sugar included in the recipe but the yeast did its thing quite well.  Miss J commented that the mixture looked like chocolate chip ice-cream... She was not so impressed with the taste raw, but enjoyed it warm with butter and mighty-mite.

After a quick safety lesson, Miss J was also proficient in using the MyCook lid and found no difficulty getting it on or off.

The bread was lovely and moist with a soft crust. It did not brown as the artisan bread does, but straight out of the oven it was delish. This bread was as easy to make as the "easy bakers" bread from a packet but is nowhere near as salty.

Judie

Pritikin Survivor

As a child of the 80s who grew up in a conservative protestant home I was scared of many things… ACDC, Dungeons and Dragons, Madonna (and more)… I laugh now, but nearly as frightening as the devil and “his music” was the cholesterol injected food that tasted so good such as white flour, rice and bread (not a fan of the taste and empty calories these days) and the Ohhhh so evil butter, egg yolk and cheese (unless it was the revolting stuff like fat-free cottage). It was maybe 2ish years that we lived on that food, but it felt like forever. To this day; I hate diets and all the fat I lose tends to find me again and bring its friends that is why I am a huge fan of lifestyle changes and making healthier eating and exercise choices fun. Yes we had the Pritikin diet shoved down our throats and lived to tell the story, but in my 20s I had a lot of “unlearning” to do.

I’m not really angry at my parents, they were worried about the junk we ate and Dad needed support when he had to lower his cholesterol so the whole family had to partake of the diet restrictions. Some of the food was not that bad, but we were certainly the weird family in our circles- and that was not a good feeling when all you want to do was blend, in my 30s I don’t mind being outstanding and I look at music a lot differently to the way I did when I was a child.

GF Focaccia

Herbs

I tried the herbs and cheese focaccia bread this week which I took to a party. It was very well received. I made a quarter of my artisan dough into small dough balls and sprinkled herbs and cheese on top. For next time, I will knead some herbs into the bread first, to give it a little more flavour.

Bacon and Cheese

I wizzed some frozen chunks of shortcut bacon in the TB1, 2x Turbo for 2-3 seconds. Scraped some tomato paste onto the dough (1/4 divided into 6 ball shapes)  then dipped each dough ball into the bacon pieces carefully placing them into the slow cooker and sprinkled parmesan cheese on top.

Dairy free custard

I made some DF custard this week and tried it out on some friends who agreed to be guinea pigs, it was a hit, though I added a little too much GF corn flour so it was a bit thick. As you can see by my picture; I still think Passata jars are excellent for storage, but I don’t have much luck getting rid of the macro label.

Recipe 1

500mL coconut milk, 25g Corn flour, 2 egg yolks (I can hear Nathan Pritikin tsking), 20g sugar (or to taste), cocoa pdr or vanilla essence (I made vanilla). 100c, 10 mins, sp 4 or 3 for GSM machine… this was a little too long I noticed it was cooked with about 2-3 mins to go. So you can back off the time a bit. I had very +ive feedback, and my friends were surprised that it was DF… requesting a bounty flavour next time using chocolate flavour.

JuiceBlendz ThermoBlend style

I am not sure how long it takes to blend a juice in the TM31, what I do know is that you can fill the jug with orange halves, wizz it and add coconut milk by drizzling through the space in the lid around the MC… then wizz some cinnamon in and you are done… a crowd pleaser. I can now tell you that it works pretty much the same with the TB1 as with a GSM machine.

Dairy Free(Cheese-less) Pizza… before it was cool 

As you may know, I have been experimenting with some DF along with my GF foods, mostly so I know if I have a DF guest what I could serve that tastes nice. I was thinking about alternatives to dairy this week, my sister went through a vegan phase and bought soy cheese which was very nice (but expensive) and some people are uncomfortable with soy these days. Then I remembered…

I will never to this day forget the look on the youth leader’s daughter’s face when I mentioned at youth group that actually pizza without cheese tastes ok… she looked at me like I was a martian. For some reason the topic came up that pizza without cheese is ‘without’ I am not sure of the context or what we were supposed to learn that day… I learnt that I was weird and not in a good way.

But Mr Pritikin did get something right decades ago that could help people today. I remember Mum telling us that she read that he made a pizza for his kids filled it with heaps of toping held together with egg white (keep the yolk for authenticity in appearance, it’s really not evil food) and they didn’t notice that the cheese is missing (and nor did we).

This would be a problem for your child if they cannot do dairy or egg, but if you are out of nut cheese and lack time to make it, this could work for you.

Judie

Brown Basmati and Amaranth grain

For people who have followed my blogging bread adventures for a while; you may remember that I  liked Amaranth flour as a substitute for sorghum and dreamed of adding brown basmati rice to my bread. A few months ago I purchased a bag of brown basmati rice and was very excited. My dreams were dashed for a while as I cooked some for dinner that night with an Indian curry which was ruined by little woody bits through the rice.

This is not a ratio representation of rice to woody bits, a 2kg (- what I cooked that night) package had about 3x that number of woody bits. The rice has now been milled, is safely in my freezer and in the next few weeks will be turned to bread. There may be different brands of brown Basmati rice available without the woody bits, I think that availability comes and goes. I would love to have had access to BB when I was living back at home for a bit… My parents being diabetic would only eat basmati, I (for health reasons) preferred whole-grains. I had looked everywhere in Rocky Health food stores and Asian store, back then I could have gotten brown Jasmine (which is not available now though how good would that have been in bread?)… I will keep up my search. 

Amaranth flour is available from local health food stores, for around $5-6/500g or the same price for 1kg of grain. I will be testing how well each machine mills the grain in the near future. For some people rice is the more affordable grain, but amaranth being an ancient grain has many health benefits that it can bring to the table.

Thanks Honey for my new ThermoScience banner that links to my Facebook page…

Varomas and Teeny Slow Cookers

You may know that Sand Cake is pretty much my favourite go to recipe. Once I tasted it I decided I was never going back to a packet mix. I always make it Gluten free and have turned it into golden syrup pudding, caramel flavour, cupcakes, lamingtons and strawberry short cake. It is so versatile and this week I turned it Dairy Free chocolate flavour, which I think would also be ok for diabetics too. Served with GF custard, this was a lovely treat.

I had told Honey a while back how delish my mums orange meringue used to be and was delighted when she made some one evening for our relatives that were visiting. Yeek she used fake sugar, it totally did not do the dessert justice. So I wanted a dessert up my sleave for “next time” that also was handy for people who cannot do dairy.

My green grocer ages ago told me about a trick for replacing eggs and fat with apple sauce in cakes and how nice they turn out. I needed to use up egg whites so I just replaced the butter this time, making a 1/2 batch in case it did not work out, so I also wanted to steam them in the varoma so I didn’t have to turn the oven on… To my delight it worked, very well. The batter divided evenly between 2 ramekins and I used the TB1 on 120c for 15 mins. It probably could have gone for a shorter time. If you decide to make this for yourself, please keep an eye on them.




Mini Slow-cooker bread

At last I was able to test my smallest slow cooker (1.5L) with bread baking. It worked rather well, though it did get rather humid on the lid, so the crust was a little moist. This may improve with a tea-towel under the lid which I plan to try in the near future. when the bread cooled however the crust was normal and the slices a lovely shape. If I had not had access to my new GF toaster or the sandwich loaf pan this would have been more of a fantastic thing for me, as the slices were quite well-suited to sandwiches… for GF bread that is. Finding that the yeast bread can be made in the slow cooker without a 2nd rise has taken a lot of the headache out of bread-making for me.  I like that the dough can be left in the fridge until needed for up to a week and popped into the slow cooker. I have also frozen some slices in pairs for the forthcoming crazy weeks ahead with TAFE. Once again recipe here

Larger Slow-Cooker Artisan Bread

Artisan bread is simply a miracle I think and the Healthy Bread in 5 minutes recipe writers are geniuses. I thought I was the first person to cook their bread in my slow cooker… Obviously not after reading this today. Which was very timely as I had already put my bread on for a second rise 60 minutes before finding out that it can go straight into the crock pot. This is beyond handy to know, as the 4x with yeast mix can be made up to a week in advance (it’s better tasting the first few days). Depending on your Slow Cooker  you would then just take out a ball pop it in the machine and have fresh bread 90ish minutes later. You could also have the dough ready for pizza, calzones and focaccia.

I have been asked “Will the artisan bread work in a larger slow cooker?” the answer is yes. I took advantage of the Big W 5.5L for $20.00 deal this week. Honey thinks it was because he wanted Pea and Ham soup cooked with a ham bone… we know it was really bought to check out if it was good for cooking bread. While I was at it, I grabbed a cute little slow cooker to test from Woolworths, also $20. As we speak I have 2 yeast cobs in the slow cooker and earlier this week I did a yeast free loaf, which took closer to 2 hours than the 1.5 in the 5.5L slow cooker, but it got there and the results were just as delish.

I also have cooking away in my camping oven a small tin loaf using yeast this time. I think last time I over-did the water and didn’t put in quite enough this time, the crust is looking a little dry. Worried for nothing, it was perfect.

My multi-cooker also arrived this week. I have only cooked brown rice in it so far (high pressure, ready in 14 mins), my toddler nephew was here this weekend he saw the cooker and asked for rice, so we gave it a go. The “keep warm” function kept the rice at the perfect temperature till dinner time when we made sushi with it. I also saved some rice for the next evening when we had tuna mornay (warming it in the varoma as the sauce cooked).

Good news, our Conversion Chart for making smaller Artisan loaves has been uploaded.

Alternative bread baking part 2

Everything I have made in my Thermomix or any of the clones and blogged about, has now been added to a new category which I created recently called “ThermoMachines”… I had not remembered that I enjoyed the Quirky loaf, but having a bread tin (as opposed to a rectangle cake tin… small one for GF bread) has made a huge difference to my enjoyment of the bread as it fits better in my GF toaster ($8 from wollies and I can keep it as hot as I like without Honey burning his toast or contaminating mine). It has a huge purple nail-polish Gf on each side… So far I have made artisan bread into a loaf 2x, Tania Hubbard’s nut bread (expensive but nice) recipe here, we changed 2 eggs for apple sauce in one lot and 1/2 a mashed banana in another lot… I liked both, Honey preferred apple sauce recipe… and date muffins as a loaf recipe here also switching some ingredients to make a savoury loaf too.

Would you like to know more about our thermo-experiments? Join my ThermoScience and MixinFun group on Facebook for up-to-date information on all the tests we do, you can even make requests… here

I had not realised I made my first ever yeast free dough rise for 40 mins… who has time for that, 10 is pushing the limit these days… time is of the essence and it appears to be a much better loaf. I found another gluten free bogger, here; very interesting information yet I cannot understand the fascination with cutting the top of the loaf before cooking… they all do it; it’s a pain to remember and I think it makes the shape of finished product a bit annoying and have noticed no great benefit to the cuts. The absolute best way I have found to cook an artesian loaf is in the slow cooker (I have a round base which is perfect for the small loaf), does not heat up the kitchen in Summer and saves electricity…

Todays experiment is in response to a query I had regarding school lunches. I can little imagine the frustration as a child with even more limited options for a yummy lunch than it can be for an adult. At least at TAFE, we had sandwich toasters and microwaves available. Pizza is awesome for lunch but finding a good base that is nice cold is a challenge. On holidays there is little to complain about with polenta bases and yoghurt dough fresh from the oven, but the next day when they are cold… can be rather chewy. I grin and bear it, but if I was a school kid missing out I think I would be pretty ticked off (and they wonder why there is a high incidence of depression among the GF population)…

Usually when I make pizza it is with the 5mins/Quirky dough, 1/4 rolled out between 2 sheets of baking paper with oil between, transfer it to the cast-iron skillet which is on a heated element, begin adding topping and cover for about 10 mins then transfer to hot oven… this is delicious, wood-fired would slightly top the experience. But not every one has a cast-iron skillet and I don’t think I have ever attempted pizza with the yeast free bread dough. So tonight 2x quarters are cooking in a loaf tin in the toaster oven, 1x quarter is in the slow cooker and the other quarter is busy in the oven on a normal pizza tray with leftovers from our ridge/freezer… chorizo, chicken, avocado, tomatoes a few herbs and cheese. I will try not to eat it all so I can try a piece tomorrow for lunch.

Straight out of the oven, it was good… we were hungry so I didn’t get a shot first… but it looked like pizza should. Snuffy our fury 5yo took my last piece of pizza when I got up to check on the bread… fortunately I had a small sliver in the fridge for tomorrow.

Bread smells like honey, and is slightly darker than usual but the crust is quite soft to touch and I am looking forward to breakfast in the morning.

Day 2

Once again the bread was perfect the next day, however there is the slight taste of bicarb soda in the bread, so next time I will back it off a bit. For each cup of flour I added to the mixing bowl; 1 tsp of Bicarb soda was added, perhaps that ratio was a little too high;, or perhaps the bread dough needed more time to relax before being popped into the oven.

Oven Alternatives for cooking Bread

Blech in CQ it is ridiculously hot... Honey and I have been seeking refuge in our air-coned room this week and today when I went to cook, I realised why we hide away so much... I had to have a shower after 20 mins prep... I was not going out there doing calculations in my head with this heat so I made a full batch of bread dough. Recipe Here. This is my go to GF bread recipe, it’s yummy and cheaper than the nut bread. But lately I have not bothered making it much due to not wanting the oven to contribute to any more heat in our house. I started to think of alternatives…

As soon as I heard of this, I have been wanting to try out the slow cooker method for making bread and as this is the yummiest cheap recipe I have found I decided to see if it would work, I had my doubts due to the differences in cooking styles, but the end result was quite nice. Very handy for days when I need to run a few errands, come home to delicious bread. I also thought of my toaster oven, both appliances use less energy/hour than the oven too which is a bonus.

I am out of yeast so am doing this bunch with baking powder, I actually prefer this method as it saves a lot of time having to juggle rises but it is slightly nicer with yeast, but not 5 hours nicer. Today instead of sorghum I am using maise corn, grown by our L2L member, Robert. I have tried in the past popping corn and rice as well which we love, while chia, quinoa and besan- not so much... well not at all really (you will see my thoughts on that adventure in the cooking section of this site).

 

For the milling, I grabbed from the freezer rice and corn flour that I had milled in experiments using the TB1, TM31, Mistral and Bellini. Mistral and Bellini mill slightly courser than the TB1 and TM31, but the flour is very usable and gives a crustier crust. If you are on a low gluten diet, this rice flour found in the Asian section at Coles, may help you to achieve a smoother result (should you require it) if you are worried about the “glutinous” check this out. You could use it instead of the brown rice flour or sorghum flour. I will be testing this flour in another blog. Right beside it, similarly packaged was the tapioca flour, I usually buy the pictured arrowroot flour, but decided to give this a try today. It was fantastic, and cheap.

So can this recipe be used to make a sandwich loaf? I was keen to test that theory too, I woke up hungry; no leftovers as we ate out last night, the kitchen was stinking hot, so today was the day to test all cooking methods. One quirky dough makes 4 small loaves as I was not going to be bothered to do maths in the summer heat of our kitchen the division of bread dough went as follows: 2 lots in the bread tin in the oven, 1 lot in the toaster oven, 1 lot in the slow cooker. All were delicious. The drawback with the toaster oven was that it needed to be reset after an hour, and t took about 1hr 40mins to be cooked with a nice crust (200c with a water bath when adding the dough to the oven). I popped the bread dough (which was a little sticky so I kneaded in some more flour- all purpose GF Woolworths select brand, and lowered it down into the SC with the baking paper). I am very impressed with the loaf of bread in the tin. It worked very well and I look forward to yummy sandwiches with it tomorrow. I will try cooking it next time in the toaster oven to save energy. Perhaps there will be a larger SC batch in my future too.

Day 2

All bread was still moist this morning, my thoughts of toast for breakfast were supplanted when I had a nibble of the yummy moist bread… so nice I ate it plain (though I had been drooling over thoughts of butter and OzEmite). I cut each loaf into slices and placed some in the freezer and kept some on the counter. The Loaf from the tin had an air pocket in the top, I will need to research ways to get rid of that for the future; however it does not effect the flavour.

Day 3 and 4

Bread had been refrigerated and was a bit hard due to it being colder. It was very nice toasted.

I also made a chart for easy reference, as sometimes it is tricky to do the conversions in, I have been unable to upload it but if you would like a copy please check out our Facebook page in the files section or click this link otherwise, pop me an email and I will get it to you.

Judie

Working with Sourdough... My Not-so-Gluten-Free sourdough experience

I found to my amazement this week that there are a whole heap of recipes on the internet for Gluten-Free sourdough. MMMMmmmm.

Why sourdough? Initially I would have said that it was yummy... which it is. However I found that you don't need to keep buying yeast so that ticks another box self-sufficiency and lastly its a more healthy option for bread, it's cultured so more easily digested by your body. I'm excited.

I went with the starter from this website. Its funny somewhere in my initial reading, it said... never use brown rice flour to make your starter, and the bread recipe I ended up using this recipe called for a brown rice starter, it caught my eye as it is an artisan style bread and I wanted to compare it to my “Quirky cooking” recipe.
 

Too late I had already started the sorghum starter (actually I was a little lazy that day I didn't want to grind up all my rice just for a bread that might not work), so I made a few alterations. I swapped the sorghum flour in the bread dough with brown rice flour. Found a HUGE bag of brown rice at Coles so next time I have no excuse not to try the rice flour starter. I also read that you need to keep feeding your starter the same kind of flour. With rice being this available, a more sustainable starter is (possibly) with the rice flour.

Pancakes and pikelets

So does it make good bread? My loaf is proving as we speak. With this recipe I found it made a whole lot of starter. Don't worry said another website use your spare starter to make pancakes. Add some flour (any flour) and water and let it sit in the fridge overnight. I used my least favourite flour that I have heaps of which is a GF bread flour that you add water to. It also does pizza bases, pancakes and more. The flour is a little salty and I prefer my quirky bread now, so it was just sitting in the pantry taking up space. I used one bag, added some water to keep the consistency of the starter and popped it in the fridge.

Due to my crazy work schedule it was in there over a day before I was able to test the pancakes. They were quite sour plain, however were quite nice when I added butter and honey. Next day I tested them on Honey and took them as “pikelets” with jam and cream to my staff meeting. I had positive feedback from my “guinea-pigs”, and found that the sour flavour of the cold ones was slightly more pronounced than the hot ones. Also they were a little more dry, I had popped them on a plate with a tea-towel covering, perhaps next time, I would use an airtight container. But they were quite nice with a cup of tea.

Pizza base

I made my pizza in the “usual way”... roll out an orange sized blob between 2 sheets of lightly oiled baking paper. When its about plate-size I pop it in our cast-iron frying pan and pop the lid on for a few minutes on high. I then pop on the topping and put it into an oven at about 200 degrees Celsius. Cook for about ½ hour and slice and eat. If I am making some for Honey's lunch I stack about 3 slices together and wrap in the baking paper it cooked in. Pop it in the fridge and he enjoys it later.

Honey like it, I thought the base was slightly thinner than the usual and not quite as crispy. This could be due to other factors such as less oily toppings, slightly different “standing” times or cooking times.

If the bread is a flop I know that the dough will not be wasted. We will just have more pizza. Ok all this talk of pizza has made me hungry... see you in a bit.

Verdict

The result was slightly disappointing; as toast in the morning, it did not brown (what's new with GF bread) but the quirky recipe had spoiled me though I tried 4 toppings I really could not find one that I “loved”. I would have made it into breadcrumbs and frozen them for the next time Honey decides to make his Mum's famous rissoles. There was one slight problem... my body reacted to oats the way it reacts to gluten. Apparently one in five gluten-frees cannot tolerate oats... and I am one of them.

So I am looking for a whole new recipe... Hmmm a few years later - still looking

Judie

Enter the Kogan (looking to buy a Thermoblender?)

Honey bought a Kogan thermoblend for us to test-drive. Initially I was excited that I could get it in 2 days and it had 5 yrs warranty. However 2 days after ordering the TB Kogan emailed me saying it was on the way. It turned up 4 working days after the email.

We had mentioned to a relative that we were getting a Kogan she laughed and said it sounded like Bogan… she also wondered why I would want a TB when I have a TM, I said it would be handy and I could blog about it.  So we christened our bogan “Davo” honey insisted we christen Thermie a good German name like Klaus, to reflect his country of origin. Being a fan of the Vampire Diaries I agreed to name my TM after the evil half-breed. So Klaus Von Thermister it is.

It was a tough decision as to which knock-off to try first. I had downloaded the Choice Magazine comparison of the Chef, Bellini and Mix. I had also wasted hours of my life reading an opinions page between the Chef and the Mix. I recommend taking a look at it if you are trying to decide but there is this sarcastic little man that I think you should just skip over. But your choice…. A writer called Stacelee was very helpful, she owns a chef, mix and a more expensive multi-purpose machine and has outlined the pros and cons of each machine and does a lot of cooking.

From reading the opinions people have mentioned that knock-offs tend to “smell” and I was expecting something akin to running out of the room choking. In-fact honey and I had to get very close to Davo to smell anything which was like (according to Honey) a lubricant-grease on the gears of new equipment. It was not over-powering at all.

Yoghurt

So first thing we made with Davo was Yogurt. I nearly had a heart-attack when the degrees mode skipped from 30 to 40 in one go. Considering I had used 37 in my recipes. A quick scan of the internet and I found that you can put the stage 2 mixing on 30c. Being slightly less warm on a freezing night made it more difficult to set. I ended up adding a heat-pack to the esky the next morning and the probiotics did their work.

2 more things you need to bring with you when making yogurt in the Blend is a thermometer and a set of kitchen scales. The Blend did seem to have trouble getting the milk to the 80c mark. I had to put it on for extra time. Next time I shall try it at 90c. The Mix tells you what temp range you are in the Blend merely tells you what temp you are aiming for. It is possible I am doing something wrong though.

Custard

Last night I made custard. I was out of corn-flour and had to substitute in plain GF flour but should have used more as it was still quite runny. It may also have benefited from going higher in degrees or even a little longer as the flour had not quite dissolved properly. But Honey liked it… he is always very appreciative of my cooking.

Dough

Today I tried to make bread-dough for a pizza. I made a ¼ loaf and was very impressed. The Blend milled like a pro and I used the dough button. It came out pretty much the same as my dough from the Mix does when making a ¼ loaf.

Davo is slightly quieter as he goes about his business than Klaus though I was not looking forward to having to clean the lid. It had waves on it. I found them however to be invaluable in keeping the machine from “spitting” so much. It was quite fun to watch the tornado in my kitchen appliance. Recipe here

The Nasty

Davo has “bitten me” a few times but Klaus seems easier to clean “injury free”. The bottom of the jug is slightly wider on the Mix. There is the saying that good mums let you lick the beaters, great mum’s turn them off first”. I had to trouble giving my TM jug and a spatula to Honey’s nephew (yr 8) to clean the cake dough we made out (with a warning to watch the blades). I could never do this with Davo; the blades are just too sharp.

Custard

After making the custard there was the problem that most Chef/Blend etc owners complain of… bits of milk burnt to the jug. I must admit when I first had Klaus cleaning the jug after a cappuccino, custard and yogurt making session was not particularly fun either but the milk sticking to the bottom of the jug thing rarely is a problem these days. I hope Davo will grow out of this problem too.

Cleaning

Too tired to clean the jug last night, I soaked it overnight, gave it a light scrub this morning and popped it in the dishwasher; assuming they meant dishwasher rather than washing machine in the Kogan manual for thermoblends. It turns out I assumed correctly, the jug came out sparkling clean aside from a bit of muck about the size of a finger print which wiped off with a clean chux. I must admit that the Bellini and the blend were more impressive to me than the chef (to try first) as they are dishwasher safe.

We mainly chose the Kogan as it was on special and we thought it too good to pass up.

I give the Kogan an Exceeds Expectations+/Outstanding- overall, it has value for money, does a pretty good job on most of the recipes I have tried. You do need a scale and some recipes require a thermometer too, but it is a very handy appliance to have. Obviously the risotto is one I am putting off due to the blade-covers… but I would love to hear from other Kogan owners how they go with the covers. I didn’t get to meet any alternate mixer owners in person until I was one.

One day I would love to meet a Belini in person and have a play. I like the look of the machine and the fact that you can steam and cook at the same time is a huge time-saving bonus, for larger families. It did not effect me much that I could not use my steamer as I rarely use my TMX varoma for steaming purposes.

Judie

Yeast Free Bread

I have a friend who is allergic to many things and I wanted to make her some bread to try. I found she not only could not have gluten but yeast and honey too. I wanted to try making the bread but was a little concerned at how it would turn out. The yummiest Gluten Free bread recipe is here

On checking the Quirky Cooking website, Jo said that you could try baking powder but she had never tried it with this recipe. I decided to give it a go, telling my friend that I would try it first and find some chooks if I didn’t like it.

I used a ¼ recipe- which was nice as I could use Thermie to knead it. I then halved the dough to make two even balls and popped them out to rise. I gave it about 40 minutes to rise and then 40 minutes in the oven. I was making spaghetti bolognaise for Honey and his work-mate (just in case they hated the bread).

When they were cooked you will see from the picture that one loaf of bread is much more cracked than the other. The boys got the cracked loaf, which was perfect as a pull-apart damper type bread (they did not have any knives in the office). The other loaf was better for making slices, which delighted my friend.

I wanted to put the yeast free bread to a few more tests so made some again, 1 big loaf and some small rolls. I also tried some whey instead of water, but forgot to add the xanthum gum.

Compared to the yeast bread that I was used to, I found the bread crumbled more easily, this may have been because the xanthum gum was left out. I froze a bun and microwaved it the next day, it was perfect and did not need to be toasted.

Imagine my surprise this week when I was making a snack and popped out one of the rice bread buns defrosted ready to toast and found it to be perfect without needing the toaster. I was keen to see if the yeast free bread could cut it too.

Oh just so you know… how did I get the whey to the right temperature- warmish? I popped it in the Thermomix for a few minutes on 37c. When the 37 light stopped flashing I began to add the other liquid ingredients such as eggs, honey and oil. Even though it was a very wet day not at all conducive to proving dough, it still felt warm when I popped the dough into the fridge.

Judie 

Honey bought me some Sorghum

I am very excited to tell you that we have sorghum. So I can finally taste the bread as it was originally intended... Recipe here. It was a dilemma as to which sorghum to buy as there is white and red available at Lola’s wheat free world. So we ordered some of each. It was very exciting to see it on the door-step. In fact, Lola’s package arrived before our brown-basmati rice which we ordered a few days earlier… maybe today it will come.

 

Kitchen malfunctions:

You will notice I have a different bowl today; yes I took cake in my “Bread bowl” to work and forgot to bring it back. Honey’s Mum makes fantastic pottery bowls though- but this one is slightly on the small size, for what I need it to do. Shoulda woulda coulda made a smaller batch but chose not to.

I have half the amount of xamtham gum that is required, with my success of going without it in the last recipe; I decided to try my luck...

So I have not blogged in a few days, but this is to catch you up.

Thursday I missed toasted focaccia rolls, so I attempted to make one with the focaccia I made earlier in the week. I put left-over things from the fridge such as ricotta, salami, prosciutto, bacon and olives with a bit of salad. Toasted in the sandwich press- result delicious. 

Friday GF “KFC” was calling me, I milled some Tuscan seasoning, paprika, Italian herbs and casian pepper in the Thermomix. Then I added about a teaspoon to a few table spoons of bread crumbs.

Rolled the chicken pieces (I used wings cut into 3 parts and tossed the tips to the cats) in corn flour, then dipped in egg and rolled in the crumbs. I was hungry so was not waiting for the oven to cook them. I fried them up in a frying pan on the stove.

The white bread-crumbs were easy bakers GF bread, frozen and crumbed. The brown bread crumbs used were from the first batch of bread I made with chia to replace the sorghum.  

 

The brown crumbs “behaved” more the way I wanted them to, but it’s been a while since I have fried chicken and I am more than a little out of practise. They tasted “healthier” and I did not add spice to that one piece. The white crumbs fell off but were slightly sweeter in flavour. I think they would have fared better in the oven. There are other recipes out there for GF “KFC” which use flour I intend trying them “one day”, but it was nice to have a chicken “fix”. I chose wings as they are cheap and if I messed it up well it would not hurt my wallet as much.

So on the weekend it was Honey’s birthday. We had a party and we had another GF party member coming. I made burger buns for us. As the buckwheat recipe had a softer crust I decided to try it out.

I bought little cake tins but found I probably did not need them as the dough has the ability to be shaped as the cob loaf does. But I had bought the tins so I was testing them…

I used baking paper on 2 lots and just some oil on the other 2 lots. I found the baking paper to be superfluous. The bread once again came right away from the sides of the baking dish.

The buns did not break as I was eating. I think they could have been a little thinner as they were perhaps a little chewy. Also the bread was the same colour as the cooked steak which made them appear a tiny bit boring to look at but the taste was great. 

I also had one the next day and it was also fine and did not need to be toasted.

Party day I was never more thankful to be a  Thermomix owner. I cooked regular spaghetti bolognaise sauce (chopped everything in Thermie) and dumped it in the slow cooker. I like to make about double the sauce at t a time and it does not all fit in the Thermomix at once… no worries I had plenty more work for “him” to do … I also prefer the texture that the slow cooker gives the bolognaise sauce.

I found a fantastic recipe for lentil bolognaise here but did not have time to be standing by a stove for 20 minutes. I added a few essential bolognaise veggies such as mushrooms and capsicum, extra canned tomatoes set the timer and let Thermie do the rest while I fixed up some other pre-party jobs.

I also used Italian herbs and Tuscan seasoning in leiu of oregano.

Let me tell you I was surprised at how good they tasted, Honey liked them too. I was also pleasantly surprised at how much cheaper they are to make than beef bolognaise sauce and how much easier to clean the TM bowl was. Definitely will be using it again and is very well suited to being a recipe for “a meal in a hurry”.

I cleaned the TM bowl and made French onion dip, garlic and herb dip, then looked for the sweet chilli sauce to top the last cream cheese with (I was sure I had some in the fridge). Turns out I didn’t. What I did have was a red capsicum, coriander, parsley and some dried herbs. I zapped the capsicum in the thermomix, then zapped the fresh herbs, added some Italian herbs mix and Tuscan seasoning, whipped in the cream cheese… and I had people asking for the recipe.

Judie

Breadcrumbs

If you like me, have found that you just cannot face eating store-bought bread now that you have made the real thing, experimented with recipes and found the one you love… then you spy in the freezer the bread you first made and a stash of store-bought GF bread and you gag at the thought of eating it…

Do not despair, breadcrumb it. Honey makes delicious rissoles, breadcrumbs are a key ingredient. I wanted to feel like I had done something in the kitchen today between shifts so; breadcrumbs it was. As I was tossing the frozen bread slices into Thermie (an Australian nickname for Thermomix) and pulsing the turbo button, I was reminded of other things I miss since removing gluten from my diet.

Sure Cedar Park makes delicious GF fish and chips. But what I very much miss is KFC… mmm hot and spicy. Ok I can feel the pillows you are tossing at me and hear the groans and the “SHUT-UPS”… but I have a point to this. Mum used to make chicken in the oven with breadcrumbs… if I mill up some Tuscan seasoning or Portuguese chicken seasoning with some eggs and GF crumbs, I might have a little healthier slice of heaven.  When chicken is on special… it would be cheaper too.

Don’t have a Thermomix?

You don’t need a Thermomix (type machine) to make the gluten free bread I have been making. In fact the original recipe inventors don't use one. I can say it does sure help, as being able to mill some of your own grain such as popcorn, rice and even tapioca pearls/seeds will save you money, nutrients, shelf-life etc. Breadcrumbs were a breeze, however, visiting the health food store and the health food section of your supermarket will get you rice flour, tapioca flour, (Rice, corn and potato flour can also be found with the wheat flour section- cheaper) and arrowroot flour can be found in the cake decorating section. Coles sells a generic brand GF cornflour too. I have not seen cornmeal, however and found I needed to mill my own you should know, I have not tried to look for besan either.  

Friends with Thermomixes (and other machines that can mill) may even let you use their machine to grind a few grains. You can get an idea if this is the thing for you… Even the cheapest knock-off is a lot of money to spend on something that you decide you don’t want to use.

Here is the website that Jo (the blogger/chef I got my recipe from) adapted her bread recipe from specifically with Thermomix users in mind. This could be helpful if you prefer not to weigh your ingredients as you cook.If you are time poor, or lack energy, the knead function is certainly helpful for making the GF egg free bread I made yesterday. Btw Honey liked it too; the texture reminded him of cake and he thought it might be nice to add some bananas to make banana bread. I think banana on top would also be delicious.

Sandwich loaf bread

I found this other fantastic recipe for bread that I am very keen to try today… but I am out of quinoa (we are looking online for Australian quinoa) and wonder if something else might work instead. I am very excited to make a sandwich loaf from scratch. Recipe here. It has no eggs, and I have just bought plenty of eggs, so I might do some experimenting later.

I’m not sure how many readers I have, and how many have a Thermomix or similar machine. I am very interested to hear how the Vitamix, Thermochef, Bellini, Kogan, Maxi and other similar products work out too.  I don’t sell Thermomixes, but if you want one, I can put you in contact with my other sister friend - who I call the Thermomix Queen. For all the options available I have only seen the Thermomix “In person” the Bellini in a box (at Target), and a friend has a Vitamix, but I have not seen it either.

I have found this page essential for flour conversions here

Quinoa is a bodifier; I see that I can swap with cornmeal, besan or rice flour. I am very keen for another cooking adventure. I have also seen sites that divide the flours by other ways, but this way works… so I use it. 
 

Kitchen malfunctions: I think I am making up for yesterday. I had just one (a burn from the oven, which I covered with a wet Anion wrapped in a tea-towel. Five minutes later, the pain was gone, I removed the stuff and my hand was great. It’s kind of nice to not waste 20 mins of cool water running over my hand, and not being stuck to the sink while things are cooking around me.

My dough was in the TM and the kneading function was “Not working”, I had it on stir, I needed it in the “closed lid position”. I hit reverse a few times to “facilitate the knead process.” 

There was a glob of dough under the blades, which I noticed after I had skimmed the top of the dough with a wet spoon (a process that would have been easier if the tin was the correct size for the amount of dough. I removed the dough using by putting the speed on 10. I added it to the loaf by working it in with wet fingers to the top of the dough.

Thanks to Simone at

Thermomix essentials

I realised I didn’t need to call my TM Queen and ask how to get it fixed… So I will know for next time I try.

The chickpeas- I looked for them but they were “hiding” somewhere in the pantry, so I made the dough with cornmeal instead.

“Someone” used a knife in my loaf tin; it now has rusty stripes on it. I covered them with some alfoil.

My TM looked “Funny” when I was weighing… I had not “seated” the TM bowl correctly, so more chia seeds were added than was needed. I had been able to rescue the “extra” buckwheat though. Not that I am that concerned about the few additional chia seeds as I forgot to add the xanthan gum.

I think this one will be a “re-submit”. But it is happily resting ready to be baked in about an hour.

This dough does not rise very much at all. Next time I think I will use a smaller tin.

The bread was cooked in 50 minutes. Probably as the tin was a little on the large side for the loaf, I will let it cool and tell you what I think of the taste. So far I have noticed it is quite springy straight out of the oven. The cob loaf was like a rock. It also shrunk away from the sides of the pan so was very easy to remove to check the bottom was brown.

As if to mock me, on kitchen malfunctions day… the dishwasher is also refusing to turn on, so I will wash the dishes and allow the bread to cool.

Ok this bread is brilliant. It’s my favourite yet… now I just need an appropriate tin. I would go for probably one half the size lengthways so you make a shorter loaf but the bread slices are right.

It may be possible to make a 1.5 size dough ball or double batch to fill the loaf tin, assuming you had enough people who would eat the bread in the required time. I am not sure if extra dough would fit in the Thermomix.

Cornmeal bread

Sounds so American… I was surprised to read I could mill my own cornmeal with pop-corn. This could be handy for Latin American Australians to know, as real corn flour is needed to make tortilla from the Northern Latin countries (which, is very delicious).  Apparently you can also make polenta from popcorn too. I’m actually not looking forward to the next one… milling chickpeas as a substitute for sorghum. Perhaps it’s because the first brand of GF flour I had (Before I was introduced to the wonderful white wings GF flour range) featured soy and lentils or something… I have tried hard to forget because I cannot forget the flavour. Not so bad in fritters, béchamel sauce and other savoury dishes but definitely not suitable for sweet dishes such as cake. 

But the angel Judie on my shoulder tells the devil angel that chickpeas are very healthful and she might be surprised. And she further argues that I don’t eat that much cake any more (Unless my sister friend makes it for me- her GF brownie cakes rock, as does her GF Sand Cake, Monte Carlos and gingerbread people).

So this morning I had a brainwave, make the cornmeal and chickpea dough at the same time, and only make a ¼ batch of the chickpea, in case its yucky.

Sounds brilliant! I’m no mathematician and prefer someone just to check my numbers even when I am halving a half. Not-so Honey decided he was too tired to check… but it does look like dough and it is rising nicely. I have found that making the dough while I am cooking the bread from the last batch is not only time-wise but placing the new dough near the oven is helping it to rise quite nicely.

First surprise of the morning, the cornmeal aka popcorn milled in the thermomix on speed 9 for 1 minute, looks like polenta at the 30 second mark, and yellow course flour at the minute mark. Chickpea flour is quite yellow too.

Kitchen malfunctions… there were many.

Ok so making a ¼ mix is possible but having a set of kitchen scales handy would be beneficial as the thermomix can only deal in 5g increments. So I had slightly more water and less oil than I needed. The honey was just a guess- a teaspoon and a bit. Tablespoons of yeast and xanthan gum were changed to 1 desert spoon and salt was one heaped teaspoon… no worries.

I decided to see if I could do 2 loaves at a time, Honey asked if we could make one for his Mum. I said no worries. I also decided to make the last ball into more burger buns.

The frying pan could easily fit 2 loaves on at once, but it was tricky. I thought I was so clever resting the bread-board on the oven door as I popped the dough-balls in without a hitch. Then looked down to see the plastic wrap I had peel off stuck to the inside of the oven door at least a minute of hot air was lost with me using the egg flip to scrape the plastic from the door.

I have found a good way to keep the toast upright in the toaster is to pop 3 in at a time on one side, just don’t get distracted when you are getting them out, as I did this morning and had to “go fishing” once again for the toast slices.

2 buns cooking at once took longer than one bun by itself, but not twice as long. I got caught up blogging and forgot to check the time. I waited for the sweet smell of cooking bread to tell me today. I popped out the baking paper from under the loaves and gave them another 15 minutes.

I think I will pop a small roll of chickpea and cornmeal bread win with my jasmine rolls to compare them.

Just FYI we use a local supplier for our macadamia nut oil and honey, which I use in the bread I bake. There has been some talk of Olive oil making the bread lighter and fluffier. I will try it next with the rice breads, as they are our favourites. I have two types of olive oil, EVOO and very mild.

I did not do the “Shape the bread dough with wet fingers/spoon thing” this morning, I would like to say I wanted to see the difference, but it was time to eat and I had forgotten to put the dough out for the 2^nd rising. I was lazy. But I do like the cracked top effect.   

We had the jasmine and basmati bread toasted (Though it was still nice as bread today) with mushrooms, ricotta, salami, aioli and capsicums fresh from the local markets this morning. Delicious. The semi-circle shape of the toast gave the meal a café feel.

Chickpea bread vs Cornbread

Ok somehow I lost track of which small loaf was what on the first day of cooking them. I know that I liked one more than the other and Honey could not tell the difference. He said to me that the bread just keeps getting better. Thanks for the compliments; perhaps I need a 2^nd opinion.

Both small loaves were much softer than the Jasmine rolls. Though similar sizes one cooked faster than the other and went a lovely brown on top. It was the softest, and I think it would make the best dinner rolls.

Taste-wise, one was sweeter than the other, I was so sure it was the corn one, (I may have confused them when I put them into the oven, as they were pretty much alike) but to be certain I have cooked a loaf (it is cooling) and have some dinner rolls proving, along with another focaccia base and pizza base.

In case of a prejudicial error on my part, I have made a Maltese soup called brodu to go with the bread rolls for tonight’s dinner. It should be perfect with the lovely rainy weather we are having today. Not great for trying to prove bread, so I have been trying to warm the kitchen with a bolognaise sauce in the slow cooker and am about to make Pizza and focaccia too.

I finally remembered to cut the top of the loaf before I baked it. I cannot say that it had made that much difference to the end result. I think I will continue to make it the way I was making it. The cornbread loaf did not go very brown… could it be that it was the chickpea one all along that was better? The taste of the cornbread loaf is not as I remember it. To be sure I am putting the chickpea loaf on to cook/ it is proving as we speak. Perhaps it is the difference between being in the fridge for a few days and being made up fresh on the day. Though to be honest the jasmine bread did not taste different the next day.

Ok I have cooked and taste tested both again. The corn flour has a slightly more intense flavour when cooked on day 3 (Which initially tricked me), as does the chickpea flour bread. The chickpea or besan flour bread leaves a slight aftertaste in my mouth, which I find slightly objectionable , however I think that vegemite or a savoury topping/stew etc would mask it nicely. 

I believe that it would be one of the more healthy options as a pizza base, and preferable to quinoa if you are watching your pennies. Jasmine rice is still my favourite, with basmati a close 2nd and cornmeal 3rd. Recipe here