The Pie is in the Crust

     A good Pie starts with a good crust. Those of you traveling the GF road know that a good crust can be hard to find. It sometimes leaves us with pies sitting naked in pans, crust-less and defenseless, making sad face as we use faux crumble to hide them. It is truly a dismal state of affairs.
     Really the only thing sadder is how long it's been since I last wrote anything on this blog! It's been so long I was forgetting what it looked like. And it's not entirely for lack of inclination, more lack of literal food for thought. Who wants to cook when it's 80 degrees out? Well not I, and so I avoided the oven, and then even the stove top, forgoing even the boiling of water for tea, (let the bloody sun do the work!). Ahhh, but then... veggies from heaven, (ie, the overflow of squash and tomatoes from home gardens), began to appear, and I was once again inspired. With the unexpected gift of a dozen happy chicken eggs my cooking muse was  awoke. I needed to create something to pay tribute to this abundance of beautiful food. Those eggs whispered to me, with their yolks so rich they were nearly orange. They said... quiche.
     The problem with quiche is that it requires a crust, and I had never made a crust, of any sort, be it wheaty or GF, and had only the vaguest idea of where to start... like with some kind of flour. Yikes! 
     So I did what any cluless person does these days... I asked Google for the answer, lol. I ended up with nearly as many different GF pie crust recipes as there are people who might like to eat them, (perhaps a slight exaggeration), but what most of them seemed to have in common was the use of rice flour. Yuck. In the early days of commercial GF baking rice flour was a staple, safe and cheap, it produced results that were adequate when the alternative was to go without. I think rice flour definitely has its place in GF baking, in small quantities, but as the main flour I find it to yield a product that is heavy, gritty, crumbly, and often faintly ricey tasting. I eat enough rice. I don't need to bake with it. I was on the hunt for something else, something with real grains that just happen to be GF, something with good reviews, some recipe that would make my spidy sense tingle with its potential.
     It took some searching but I did indeed find a crust. And more importantly I actually made it! Here's the recipe I found from Gluten Free Girl and the Chef. This will make enough dough for 2 - 9 inch pie crusts.
 

 Gluten Free Pie Crust
1 1/4 cup (5 oz) almond flour
2/3 cup (2 oz) oat flour
2/3 cup (2oz) tapioca flour
1/2 cup (2oz) teff flour
1/2 cup (3 oz) potato starch
1/4 cup (2 oz) sweet rice flour
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
5 tablespoons butter (cold)
4 tablespoons leaf lard (cold)
1 large egg
6-8 Tablespoons ice cold water

    
 Cool Kitchen Chemistry things about this recipe... 
     You'll see that in addition to cups and such, there are also weight measurements listed for all the flours involved. If you don't have a kitchen scale the scoop method will do you fine, but if you do have one I suggest using it whenever a recipe gives weights, you'll get a better product. However you measure your flours, make certain they're mixed really well before you add the wet ingredients. Take a look at this recipe, compare the amounts in cups to the weights. Almond flour is light and fluffy, takes up no space while the teff and rice are heavy and dense. Neat, eh? 
     After my whole rant about not liking to bake with rice flour, here I am using it, but all rice flours are not created equally. The Sweet Rice Flour called for here is not the kind you normally see on the shelf in stores, it comes from sweet sticky rice and is great for thickening soups and gravies. Here it helps act as a binding agent. While you can use regular rice flour in its place if you have no other option, you'll end up with a heavier, less flexible crust.
     One of the worst things, and best things about Gluten Free Baking is the very lack of gluten. I've been lead to believe that making a traditional pie crust is a bit of an art. Good ingredients, but also knowing when to stop kneading the dough so the gluten doesn't get overworked and the crust doesn't become tough. GF baking doesn't have this problem. We add stuff like xanthan gum, (and sweet rice flour), to hold it all together. This recipe originally called for guar gum as well, but since it is an ingredient I don't use ever, I wasn't about to spring for it just for pie crust. I don't see that the lack hurt my crust any.
     Then there's the question of the added fat. Which is better, a crust made with butter or lard,  and this recipe calls for some of both. The leaf lard it calls for is the creme de la creme of lards, but sadly was not acquirable in my neck of the woods, and I found the hormone laden alternatives unsuitable so I substituted butter. When I bake I always use pure salt free butter, in this case adding the frozen stick in with a cheese grater, (a hint suggested by Gluten Free Girl, that worked like a charm). I found the flavor and texture to be wonderfully pie crust like, slightly nutty from the almonds. But I do wonder if the lard might have improved the flake.
     Because of the teff and almond flours the crust has a dark, whole grain appearance. It should be chilled for at least an hour before rolling to allow the moisture to distribute evenly, (though I would suggest overnight). It can be rolled out thick or thin between sheets of parchment paper, and held up to both a quiche and pumpkin filling. I don't do any of that pre-baking nonsense, (lazy remember). What I did do was bake whatever at 50 degrees higher for about 10 minutes and then turn the oven down to the approved baking temp for the remainder of the time. No soggy crusts here. I would recommend a pie shield or strip of tin foil to protect the edges. 
     I'll definitely be using this recipe again. It may seem a bit labor and ingredient intensive, but like many of Gluten Free Girl's recipes the end result is worth the effort. And this dough can be made and saved in the fridge or freezer just like its gluten filled counterpart. So make a few on a rainy day and pull one out when you need to get your crust on.
     
     And yes, the left over dough makes those yummy cinnamon sugar pinwheels just fine!

My New Favorite Colour is Green

     I've only turned on the stove once in the last week to do anything more than boil tea water, and I blame/thank one of my favorite Library Patrons for the new culinary inspiration. My Clark Kent job is at the front desk of a public library, (can't remember if I've ever mentioned that), and part of my duties include procuring books from other libraries for people when our small Lib doesn't have them in stock. I consider it a point of pride, (and a super power), that I can usually get my hands on most of what people ask for. But I digress. Back to my favorite colour which is blue, wait, no green...

     So this particular patron was looking for books about Green Smoothies and Eating Raw, and since the Lib was quiet we were able to converse on the subject and I found myself intrigued. Imagine being able to get all of your daily recommended dose of fruits and veggies in a cup, without the fuss of pots and pans, complicated recipes,or time spent? Plus there is the added benefit of eating food in its original raw state when it is supposedly most nutritious. And being that these Smoothies are from scratch, and that scratch is raw fruits and veggies, they are by their very nature gluten free. You control the ingredients. (There are literally dozens of books and even more websites dedicated to Green Smoothies alone as well as Eating Raw. I haven't looked at them all of course, but of the ones I have seen I would recommend: the Green Smoothie Revolution and Ani's Raw Food Kitchen.)

     I will be the first to admit that I fast bored of salads, finding myself quickly sliding out of that healthy habit as I ran out of things to top lettuce with. Smoothies on the other hand are fun! Okay, so I'm a bit of a sucker for the wanton destruction of the blender. Now I feel like one of the old master painters blending pigments... what colour will today's gastronomic concoction become? At the end of the blend not all green smoothies are green! I'm mixing things I might not have normally eaten before, and some certainly not raw, avocado (I'm going to try growing a plant from the seed), beet greens, fresh mint and basil (I now have it growing in my windowsill), papaya, plum tomatoes... Plus I have to say I'm a serious fan of the fact that "cooking" a healthy meal requires nothing more than a blender, a knife, and a vessel to drink from. My friendly Patron feeds these to her young daughter, and I think I would have been the sort of child to have enjoyed drinking gloppy green stuff for breakfast if for nothing other than the gross out factor alone. (Okay yeah, I would have been beggin' to throw random defenseless fruit into the blender, it's just the way I'm wired). But it helps that even the worst Smoothie I've made so far was pretty tasty, and the best ones made me wish I'd made twice as much! And because they were so good, I've finally come out from under my rock to write about them.

     So go throw some unsuspecting leafy greens into your blender, add some fruit, add some veggies, add some fresh herbs. Be creative, make pretty colours. Make it thick, make it thin, make freezer pops! Have fun, be green.

     Here are a few of my favorites things...

It's Purple!

1/2 black berries (I use frozen cuz I'm cheap and lazy)

1 Orange (peel, section then throw it all in the blender)

1 1/2 bananas ( this makes it thick and smooth)

2 big handfuls baby spinach (I've also made this with beet greens)

1/2 water or less if your blender doesn't need much water to work

The Chill

1 inch cucumber (use skin if not waxed)

5-6 fresh mint leaves

1 big handful leafy lettuce

lemon juice to taste

1 cup water

this isn't really a Smoothie so much as a slurrie, let sit for about an hour so the flavors blend, very refreshing

Tropical Green

1 banana

1/2 cup frozen tropical fruit blend

1/2 apple

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 big handfuls baby spinach

1/2 water or less if your blender doesn't need much water to work

And Sometimes I Follow...

 

 "Oh what grief these loaves have caused, but pray I that their sweetness be greater than the weight of their cost."

       That was the Facebook status I posted right before I attempted my latest GF bread experiment. A friend saw several GF recipes in the local paper, and thinking of me, sent the clippings my way. It turned out that the bread recipe she forwarded was from one of my favorite GF cookbooks, "The Gluten Free Girl and the Chef," by Shauna James Ahern and Daniel Ahern. This was one I had copied for my own collection, but to see it turn up in the local small town paper seemed a sign. I thought I'd give it a go, reminding myself that even the worst of my bread endeavors had been edible, (toasted and drowned with enough butter or jam). 

     The ensuing difficulty stemmed not in the complexity of the recipe I had set myself to follow, but the fact that I had in deed decided to follow the recipe, to the letter. That meant no substitutions as I am often wontonly want to do. It meant measuring carefully, as I am frequently lax about. No pinch, dither, and dash, but neatly measured cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons. It meant a trip to several different stores, (gods forbid any one stock all of these things despite frequent begging, read whining), after realizing that while yes I did posses all of the necessary ingredients, I did not have them in the required amounts. By the time the running around was done, (made it to one store with 5 min. to spare before they closed), I had just about lost the steam to bake. But I'd come this far, and knowing myself it was highly unlikely to happen any other night of the week. (I'm lazy as well as reluctant).

       So I gathered my supplies, pulled my instructions close, clipped on my iPod and set to the task of building bread. Now normally I approach baking as a sort of chemistry experiment. Which flours do what, how much liquid is necessary, what fat, sugar, salt, rising agents, binding agents. It can get complicated, but so far even the worst of my failures have been fit for human consumption, and I've seen some of the accidents of others turn into what we now jokingly call food for the gods. But my goal with this particular venture was to follow a recipe exactly and create the "Crusty Bread That Even Those Who Eat Gluten Might Like".

       I'm not going to recount the whole recipe here as I encourage you to find a copy of the book and experience its wonderfulness for yourself. I will tell you that the bread uses potato starch, almond, oat, and millet flours, and has a earthy nutty taste and smell that is a delight to the senses. The honey acts as a natural preservative and if they last the loaves will keep for at least a week in the fridge. My one caution, (that I wish had been in someones instructions), do not try to handle the dough, it's like trying to knead cake batter. I suggest pouring the dough onto your cookie sheet and shaping with a spatula. Otherwise I followed the instructions to the letter. And the result...

       I would follow this recipe anywhere. I've made probably a dozen different types of GF bread at this point. Some fairly close to their original recipes, some so far removed that they have become my own. But at the end of the day all those loaves are pretty standard if not exactly created equal. They make great toast and awesome grilled cheese. They look like bread and cut like bread, and I am happy. But Gluten-Free Girl's loaves kick their little GF buns! This is the bread that I would make fresh to take to a dinner party or potluck. Sliced thin and toasted it makes the most exquisite bruschetta, top with olive tapenade, or slivers of fresh mozzarella and pepperoni... you get the idea. For once there was no accident here.

A Hole In Dough

     The Bagel. I think it's something most people who suddenly find themselves on a gluten free diet despair of ever finding a palatable equivalent for. I know it's one of the few things that I've found simply has no substitute. I've even discovered GF english muffins, but not a decent bagel!
     I used to have a weekly ritual. Every Friday on my day off I would go down to the local bagel place and order a whole wheat bagel heaped with olive cream cheese, assorted veggies and melted cheese. If I was feeling particularly piggy, I'd have them add bacon to what was supposed to be a veggie special. Every week was the same. They knew me there, knew what I wanted even though I'd make a show of looking over the menu and watching what other people ordered, in the end I always caved and got the same thing. It was a ritual. One I liked. And of course one that left me feeling like absolute shite the next day.
     So now I'm back to the place where I can have dairy again, but I've got nothing to put my olive cream cheese on! So I decided, what the hell, how hard can it be? I haven't managed to blow up the kitchen yet with any of my other experiments. Lets give bagels a go.
     The first part was finding a recipe. Did I go with a traditional bagel recipe and simply throw in my all purpose GF flour or did I go with a tried and tested GF recipe meant for that purpose? In the end I went with a recipe I found in the Oct/Nov'09 issue of Living Without magazine, (to which I subscribe), seduced by the picture perfect cover bagels and the assurance that they were easy, and good.

     Ease: well I would say yes, this recipe appears easier than many of the regular wheat bagel recipes I studied which called for a sponge and a dough, and a rest period overnight before baking. The most complicated part of this recipe was the multi-grain flour blend it called for, and had I been intending to make multiple batches this wouldn't have been such an issue, but since I was just testing and didn't want that particular flour blend lying around, it required a bit more math than I like.

Ingredients (makes 8):
3 cups GF Multi-grain flour blend
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons flax meal
1 1/2 teaspoons egg replacer
1 Tablespoon xanthan gum
1Tablespoon yeast
2 Tablespoons honey
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups warm water

1 teaspoon sugar
brown rice flour for rolling bagels
cornmeal for dusting pan

     I substituted and actual egg for the replacer, (as I couldn't find any that was GF, and don't particularly like using it), and decreased the water by 1/4 cup.
     So everything dry gets put into one bowl and mixed together, and everything wet gets put into another bowl and mixed together, then the wet is incorporated into the dry. The dough is thick! A hand mixer will not work, (I found that out the hard way), You'll need a tabletop mixer, a strong arm, or as I intend to do next time, use my bread machine on the dough setting. Beat for 3 minutes.
     To shape the bagels I coated my hands in rice flour, and scooping out a ball a bit larger than a golf ball rolled it in my coated hands, I flattened it slightly then poked a hole through with my thumb large enough so that it wouldn't swell shut. These pre-bagels get to rest on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet wrapped in plastic wrap and put in a warm place for about 30 min.
     Then comes the fun part. We boil them in oil! Err, no that's doughnuts, (maybe next week)... sugar water, you boil bagels in sugar water, or honey water, or malt, but that's how they get their shiny weird rubbery outside while still being chewy bready on the inside. I used a deep skillet with about 3 in of water and the teaspoon of sugar. Once it came to a boil I gently dropped my little dough girls in and boiled them for about a minute each, turning once. Draining with a slotted spoon I transferred them to a cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal and then into a 375 oven for about 25 min. They should be golden brown and kind of hollowy sounding when tapped on. Cool on a rack. You have bagels.

Or in my case, round shaped bread with a hole in the middle. I took a few liberties with the flour blend, (basically using the same mix as I do for my bread), and not too surprisingly, that's what I ended up with. They don't look too bad. They are a touch bland, admittedly, but then they will of course be eaten with cream cheese so no harm there, but the texture it definitely more bread than bagel. So back to the drawing board, or rather the kitchen counter. The only question is, repeat and perfect, or try something entirely different? If nothing else the pursuit of the perfect GF bagel should be entertaining!

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.

Add caption

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.