Pan Cake

     Pancake, or literally a small cake you make in a pan. Sweet or savory these rank high on my list of near perfect foods. I love pancakes for dinner and have always been a fan of those little hole in the wall dinners that will make them at all hours of the day and night. Warm, fluffy, filled with fruit or other treasures, drowning in syrup and butter. Oh Yeah, loving the pancake.
     But I never actually make them myself. Well once, from one of those shake and pour mixes, (this is an accident I urge you all to learn from and not repeat.) The thought of making gluten free pancakes, with all of the different flours involved not to mention the normal ingredients that go into a regular pancake, well it just wasn't happening. Pancakes are a spur of the moment craving, if I'm made to wait longer than five minutes chances are I will have found something else to eat in the meantime. If I'm going to go through all the effort of measuring and mixing, I might as well fire up the oven and bake, that way there's no need to find the stove top equilibrium necessary in cooking the perfect pancake. Cakey innards cooked, chips melted, fruit cooked, outside just golden...
     Now there are GF pancake mixes, but I've shied away from them, finding them heavy on the starches and using mainly rice flour. Good for taste, OK for texture, not so great for blood sugar and those watching carbs. And then my Cousin's lovely girlfriend, (who I am keeping as part of the family regardless), gifted me with a bag of Bob's Red Mill GF Pancake mix. Basically if I were going to mix all of the flours together myself, Bob does it the way I would. If we were in a restaurant and you served these to me, I would make you promise me they were gluten free and then I would tell you how much I loved you.
     My first attempt, while not pretty, (I'll have to work on my technique), was most certainly edible.I have a feeling that this mix will become a regular part of my kitchen's pantry.

    

Ingredients: potato starch, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, corn flour,
evaporated cane juice, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate,
sodium bicarbonate, corn starch, monocalcium phosphate),
baking soda, sea salt, xanthan gum.

Nom Nom Nom

     Just call me Cookie Monster!

     So I have this friend who makes cookies. They aren't just any old cookies either. Scott makes the most freakin' fantastic gluten free cookies I have ever ingested. And I have tried just about every one that didn't have some other ingredient besides the absent gluten to which my body might object. In the beginning his just tasted like they were made with high end ingredients, (although after a certain amount of butter goes in, I think any recipe looses the ability to claim the healthy label). They were tasty, decidedly un-cardboard like, and not noticeably gluten free. But then he perfected his recipe... voodoo, the people equivalent of catnip, perhaps more butter than physics normally lets reside in a cookie? Whatever he's done, the result is now a cookie so perfectly desirable that even my cat would hamstring you for one.

     Even the most snooty, expensive bakery cookies no longer tempt me into gluten laden doom. I see their warm, chip studded tops and I point my stubby nose up thinking, "hump, you are sooo not Scott's Cookies!"

     So I know you're thinking, seriously what makes these so good? And honestly, being that a cookie is one of the things that has always defeated me in the kitchen, I cannot tell you. Scott claims that it's a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe made with gluten free flour and a 50/50 butter blend, (slightly less than the recipe calls for).  I think using a wand to stir the batter must make some difference, but again, I've never successfully baked a cookie. There are still GF foods on my list of things to try in my kitchen. But not this cookie, I'll be leaving that to the Master!
     Some accidents can be avoided... 

Gluten Free Flour Blend 
(3 cup batch, can be used 1 to 1 as a flour replacement in baking)
1/2 cup Garbanzo Flour
1/2 cup Sorghum Flour
1 cup Tapioca Starch
1 cup Corn or Potato Starch

2 Tbsp xanthan gum 

*Gluten free Gourmet Bakes Bread

Best. Bread. Ever!

     I have a few comfort food standbys that I turn to when my tummy is unhappy, cereal in warm weather, toast and tea in cool. I came home from work the other night, in a fog of migraine pained haze only to find that I had no bread for toast. No amount of sad face, or cat cajoling was likely to make more appear. My options were to get back into my car and go to the too bright store to spend obscene amounts of money for some frozen cardboard masquerading as gluten free bread... or I could pull out my Wall-E wanna be bread machine and make my own. 

     Who ever imagined that baking would be the most rewarding use I would find for my Bio/Chem degree?  I used to bake my own bread years and years ago when I worked for a place that was in the process of opening a bakery and I thought it would be a cool skill to have. But it was messy, and I got bored... enter my first bread machine. Add ingredients in order, (I like order, and measuring cups), let machine do all the work, enjoy fresh bread. I like fresh bread, (really, who doesn't?), that first piece that's really too hot to eat, that the butter just disappears into while the smell fills the house. Yeah, that's the stuff.

     Baking is chemistry, and my kitchen it is an experiment, not always successful. But sometimes...

This is the recipe for the best loaf of gluten free bread I have made to date. Cobbled together from several other recipes and repeated 3 times so far it is flavorful with a dense, moist crumb and keeps for at least 2 weeks in the fridge. I will be the first to admit that there are a lot of ingredients in this bread, but once you have everything in your kitchen you can probably get ~6 loaves out, and most of this stuff is pretty standard in GF baking. So here goes.

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Xan's (Gluten Free) Multigrain Bread

3/4 cup garbanzo bean flour

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1/4 cup sorghum flour

1/4 cup teff flour

1/2 cup potato starch

1/4 cup tapioca starch

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup oats

3 Tbsp millet or quinoa

2 Tbsp almond flour

1 Tbsp xanthan gum

1 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

1 1/4 tsp salt

1 3/4 cup warm water

1/4 cup olive oil

2 Tbsp honey

2 eggs lightly beaten

1 tsp cider vinegar

     Add all all of the ingredients into your bread machine in the order that it recommends. (Wet then dry in my case with the yeast in a well in the middle, the underlined things are optional.) The dough should have a thick cake batter like consistency, if too wet add more garbanzo flour, if too dry add water. (It should just pull away from the sides when the paddle turns it). This makes a 1.5 lb loaf, and I use the medium crust setting.

     There will be pictures when I find a loaf that hasn't disappeared.

     Some accidents should be enjoyed...from my kitchen to yours.