Gluten free egg free Challah!

Better Batter is great, and Orgran is another great mix-though it is based on corn. But if we are going to be eating starch, I cannot afford to be eating nutrient deficient, white flour/starch based bread, sort of a GF version of Wonderbread but without the added vitamins! I have been making challah with the Orgran mix and adding flaxseed, and it makes a pretty good substitiute for challah. But both Mis M and myself need to cut back on the corn, if not get rid of it completely ( that thought scares me right now, so just think about cutting back) .

A while back, I heard of a vegan gluten free bread recipe, and so many people tried it and raved, I thought it might be the answer to GF, corn free vegan challah. So, I tried it. For the cornstarch I subbed 1/2 potato and 1/2 oat flour, so we could say "hamotzei", a special blessing on bread made from wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt. the only one of those grains that I can eat is the oats! I added 2 TB of agave to give it more of a honey flavor. I then spooned it ito my special braided pan for challah, and let it rise. I then followed all the instrtucions, including covering the challah with foil after 10 minutes and let bake for another 30-40 minutes. My challah pan is bigger, so I baked for 40 minutes and the top is lighter than the bottom, but it looks fantastic!

I had enough for a couple of mini loaves. We cut one open. The crumb, the moistness, was all you could ask in a bread. The flavor . . outstanding! Thank you to Mark for creating the recipe and the flour blend, and Sally for trying it first and giving me the courage to try another flour mix!

Here is the link to Sally's blog where the recipe is: http://aprovechar.danandsally.com/?p=228#more-228

Let me know if you try it and if it works for you!

comfort food and smoked paprika.

The weather has turned cold and wet, and we are wondering what happened to the summer, even though now that Sukkot is over, we are praying for rain!



I have been craving popcorn with Earth balance, garlic, nutritional yeast and smoked paprika. My husband makes popcorn every day-almost, but he is a purist; he wants only butter and salt. When we got married, he lived on popcorn, and he popped it himself in a designated sauce pan. I was not to use it for anything but popcorn! He popped it in a cheap margarine and then melted more margarine for topping and salt. His popcorn was wonderful, but so high in saturated fats. After we were married he gradually shifted to popping in oil, then going to a non hydrogenated margarine, and now he pops his popcorn in an air popper, and puts Earth balance and salt on it.



I miss the full fat popcorn sometimes, so I have been looking for some way to bring more flavor. I discovered that nutritional yeast sprinkled on anything gives it a cheesy flavor, but for me, the popcorn still needed something more. I added a sprinkle of garlic powder, and that helped but was not enough. I started looking through the spice drawer and came upon the smoked paprika. I had bought it for a great recipe from fatfreevegan.com, and had forgotten about it. It was perfect. The kids said it was the best popcorn. I agreed. Now when I make popcorn, I always add those seasonings.



Now it is cold, and I was trying to think of something warm and comforting and healthy for lunch. I cut up some potatoes and sweet potatoes and boiled them. My mother used to make steamed butter and parsley potatoes when I was a kid and as an adult I discovered colcannon. I decided to mix the two recipes and see what happened. I replaced the ham with the smoked paprika and used choped spinach instead of parsley. After the potatoes were done, I added olive oil and EB, shredded cabbage and my popcorn seasonings. Wow! Not only did it hit the spot for me, my children ate it and asked for seconds . . . and thirds. JB remarked as he licked the last bit out of his bowl with a blissful look on his face, "Potatoes make me happy."



Smoked parika is now my favorite seasoning. I wonder what else would taste good with that smoky sweet spice? More experimenting is required, I think. :)

Thank you, Better Batter Flour

This week we started rehearsal for a play called Peter Pan Returns. The whole family is in it. Miss M and JB are lost children, and DH is Smee and I am Mrs. Smee? And get this--Mrs. Smee is a Jewish Yiddishe wife. Not sure how to do it yet, though my husband said to listen to NY accents and get some tapes of the Yiddeshe Mama! Well, with rehearsals around dinner time, I need some picnic like meals, easy and portable snacks so kids can eat and get to bed soon after rehearsal. I have done lettuce wraps and sushi during the summer. So I started with that. But it is October! It is starting to get very cold! I need to think something more substantial. Maybe sandwiches, pasties, knishes? Those are usually out for gluten free diets.

Anyway, I have had no luck making my own GF flour, so I have been trying out different mixes and flours. Some of the mixes I looked into had gelatin and that for us is out. I needed a gluten free, corn free, dairy free, gelatin free mix that I could use WITHOUT eggs. I think I found one. It is all of that AND KOSHER! Yeah! I read about it on Vegan and Gluten free yahoo group a while ago, but never ordered it until now. It came on Monday. It is called Better Batter.Made with rice flour, tapioca starch, xanthan gum and pectin, It ia a basic white flour. It stated that you could substitiute cup for cup in any recipe calling for regular flour. I felt challenged to put it to the test. Okay, how about knish?

I used a recipe for knish from vegweb, using Better Batter instead of the wheat flour in the recipe.

The dough rolled out like regular dough. It didn't fall apart, and was not too fragile.

In the oven, the knish held together pretty well, and best of all, they were good! We were going to rehearsal and I wanted them for the family to eat during break, so I rushed them out of the oven a little early. My husband had one and said," These are wheat, right? So, I don't have to share? Pretty good!" I have to say, that made my day! :) Here is the link to the recipe for knish and the pics of what I did and the results. Better Batter, thank you!

http://www.vegcooking.com/recipeshow.asp?RequestID=39

A new year, and I can begin anew! I am trying to recreate some of the comfort foods I and my husband had as children for our children, and this last year has not turned up many successes. The teacakes worked and still do, I made Challah that my son thought was better than anything I had made before, but I made it with eggs, and my darling daughter, the divine Miss M, is right now on an egg free diet. I have been trying to make egg free bread and cake without much success. I totally killed 3 different batches of honeycake-none of those recipes worked. No wheat no dairy with egg-I got that down. No wheat, no dairy no egg? hard, dense, deflated hockey puck. There must be a way to make good comfort food like bread and cakes and knishes and dumplings, and pies that are vegan and gluten free! Oh, and did I mention, I would like it to be pseudo healthy? :)

My husband has challenged me to keep a record of what worked (and what didn't), so here I am!



So, it is a work in progress. I am going to document my experiments and if something is great I will share the recipe.

Thanks to Mr. Rogers and Grandma!

My children were so excited this morning. We had watched Mr. Rogers make bread shaped sandwiches with cookie cutters, peanut butter, raisins and walnuts. My daughter asked, "We can't do that, can we?" We are gluten intolerant-which means that any kind of bread with wheat, rye, or barley will make me and my children sick. Emma knows that the bread we have now is very dry and hard and could not be cut like the wheat based bread. I heard the wistfulness in her voice and this morning came up with an idea which I hoped would work.





We made pancakes! I have a great mix made by the Cravings Place. when we first had to go gluten free, the first thing my family missed was pancakes. My husband used to make them every Sunday morning. He wanted to continue but asked that I find a mix that you just add water and it would taste good. I bought all kinds to try, but only one was just add water, and in the taste test, it won forks down over all the others. You guessed it, it was All Purpose Pancake and Waffle Mix from the Cravings Place! No egg, no dairy, no beans, no nuts.


So today I made pancakes. My mother gave the kids some metal cookie cutters, so I at first used those to shape the pancakes while they were cooking. I sprayed the cutters first with oil, put them in the pan just like crumpet rings, and poured in the batter. When the pancake batter looked dry, I lifted the cutter shapes and then turned over the pancakes. The shapes turned out great! Then Emma and Jules reminded me that Mr. Rogers cut out the shapes, so I made some big pancakes so they could cut them out and decorate. they decorated with jam, peanut butter and raisins. The pancake sandwiches turned out so cute I felt the need to write and post pictures about how much fun the kids were having!

Of course, we haven't mentioned all the questions that come from cooking together. All that science and math that comes from measuring the mix,measuring the water--oops added too much water, what can we do? (hypothesis, experiment) and all the questions. How does heat change the batter? How do we know it it time to turn the pancake? How do we know when to take off the cutters?(observations) Why did they get so hot?(heat transfer) If heat changes the batter, can heat change the pancake back? (irreversible change)

After the pancakes were made, the kids compared the shaped pancakes to the round pancakes. they did geometry- working with the shapes to see if the pancakes had enough area to fit the cutters and came up with a diameter estimate that the pancakes should be to fit the star cutter. Shh, don't tell anyone, but I am learning myself! :)fabulous!