Classic Sandwich Bread

This bread is just the best, no doubt about it.  Before I talk more about it, let's take a second and appreciate how our bread looks like the picture in the book (America's Test Kitchen, the How Can It Be Gluten Free Cookbook). 

Impressive!

This morning for school, this is the bread I ate.  No embellishments, like you need with Udi bread; just butter.    

My mom says, "It's the first bread that has reminded me of the bread we used to have.  It's not as starchy as a lot of the other breads".  My sister, a girl of few words, says, "Yummy."  My dad, the baker, says, "One of the easiest GF recipes I've tried."

As you can see, this bread is a winner!

Ingredients:

2 cups of warm water (110° F) 

2 large eggs 

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted         

   and cooled 

1 1/2 cup rice flour

1/2 cup millet flour 

1/4 cup quinoa flour

1/3 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup potato starch

1 1/3 cups gluten-free oat flour 

1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder 

3 tablespoons powdered psyllium husk* 

2 tablespoons sugar 

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

2 teaspoons baking powder 

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

1.  Spray 5 x 9" (about) loaf pan with vegetable oil spray.  Whisk water, eggs, and melted butter together in bowl.  Using a mixer, mix all the flours, potato starch, milk powder, psyllium, sugar, yeast, baking powder, and salt together on low speed until combined.  Slowly add water mixture and let dough come together for about one minute.  Increase speed to medium and beat until sticky and uniform, about six minutes.  (Dough looks like cookie dough, but does not taste like it.)

2.  Cover and let rise at room temperature until dough has risen by about a third in volume.  This takes about an hour.

3.  Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat oven to 350°.  Spray loaf with water.  Bake until top is golden brown, crust is firm, and loaf sounds hollow when tapped, about 1 1/2 hours, rotating pan halfway through baking.

4.  Move pan to wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes.  Remove from pan and let cool completely on rack, about two hours.  Eat with butter, honey, or jam.   

*Psyllium husks are tricky to find.  We found ours in a Natural Grocers type store in the bulk section.

How to Cook Quinoa

Quinoa is world-renowned for being a healthy superfood.  In fact, it contains all nine amino acids (amino acids are essential in most bodily functions).  My family cooks quinoa (keen-WAH) pretty often, and every time we go to cook it, we forget how to make it.  It's a nice, healthy break from rice, which is at practically every meal.  Here is the basic how to for making regular old quinoa.

Directions:

For every one cup of quinoa, use two cups water. (1-2, 2-4, 3-6, etc.)

One cup of dry quinoa makes about three cups when cooked. 

1.  Combine quinoa with double the amount of water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. 

2.  Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer until quinoa is tender, about 15 minutes.  

Note: you can rinse the quinoa first, it makes it less bitter. 

Sushi-o-rama: Sushi Rice

This recipe is essential in sushi making.  Sticky rice is not only yummy but also, sticky!  This will keep the sushi together.

Ingredients:

2 cups uncooked white rice (short grain rice is best, but we used jasmine, which wasn't as good)
3 cups water
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 Tb vegetable oil
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp. salt

Directions:

1.  Put rice in a medium sized saucepan.  Fill with water until the water is just over the rice.  Massage rice, stirring it around.  When the water becomes milky, dump it out and refill, making sure the water is just over the rice.  Repeat this process about 3-4 times.
2.  Remove all the water, and fill the saucepan with the rice in it with three cups of water.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to very low, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes.  Rice should be edible-looking.
3.  Meanwhile, mix the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan.  Heat until sugar has dissolved.
4.  Stir vinegar mixture into rice.

Happy Anniversary!

In just a few days, my time being gluten-free will have been one year!  I actually don't know the exact date, but I know it was around my birthday (September first).  It has been an exciting dieting year!

Most importantly, in my opinion, we brought beef, eggs, and..... milk!  I haven't posted for a while to let you know, but we realized that my "bad reactions" to milk happened to be on the days where I slept badly or when I was dehydrated.  To eliminate these "maybes", we waited until summer when I wasn't stressed or busy.  After a few trials, things went well, and over the past month we've brought it back completely, so now I regularly drink glasses of milk.

Also, over the past year I have gained about four pounds, which is pretty incredible considering the fact that I didn't eat a lot of fatty foods like milk or beef.  Plus, I naturally have a body type where it is really hard for me to gain weight, which can be good or bad.  This was really exciting for my mom, because she has always worried about my weight.

Lastly, the whole reason we started the diet, I have grown a grand total of exactly 2 inches since we started the diet!  This may not seem like a lot, but compared to my old growth rate, it is huge.  Now I grow about an eighth of an inch a month, whereas before diet I was growing less than that in two months.

It has been a pretty good year of dieting, and I am glad to see that it worked!  I also feel better.  My only symptoms were headaches, and I would get them about twice a week.  Now, once a month is more like normal.  The gluten-free diet has definitely paid off!

Sushi-o-rama: Cucumber

Before gluten-free dieting, we would have pizza night where the whole family would make pizza.  After we went gluten-free, this obviously didn't work as well.  I really missed this make-it-yourself food, and I also missed going to sushi restaurants (My mom and I would both get sick), so the obvious solution to my problem was to make sushi!  This cucumber salad was a perfect side dish to our Japanese-style meal, and we also cut cucumber sticks for the sushi.  

Ingredients:


2 English seedless cucumbers (Japanese cucumbers preferred, but harder to find in a small town like ours.)
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tb rice vinegar
1 Tb sugar
1/4 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame seeds

Directions:

1.  Slice strips lengthwise down the cucumber.















2.  Thinly slice cucumbers into circles, or chop into sticks for sushi, or both.

3.  Put cucumbers and salt in a large plastic bag and shake vigorously to coat cucumbers in salt.                Place salted slices in colander and put a weight on top of them.

Let drain for five to ten minutes.
     Rinse cucumbers.

4.  In a small bowl, mix rice vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce together until sugar dissolves.
5.  Add vinegar mixture and sesame seeds to cucumbers and mix well.

Aebelskivers

This is a traditional Dutch breakfast that we enjoyed before going gluten-free.  We found a recipe that is GF, and now it is a favorite breakfast.  The only problem is that it takes a long time to cook them.  Also, you need an aebelskiver pan, shown above.  But, in the end, I think all the trouble is worth it.  If you plan to make aebelskivers often, you can make a "dry mix" jar with all the flours, baking soda, etc.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup rice flour
1/4 cup almond flour
1/8 cup potato starch
1/8 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 Tb sugar
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, separated
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup milk, warmed
jam or fruit or apple butter for filling
powdered sugar for garnish (optional)
skewers

Directions:

1.  In small bowl combine dry ingredients. Set aside.
2.  In small saucepan, warm milk and butter until butter just melts.  Add egg yolk, but be sure milk is cool enough that egg won't cook.
3.  Beat egg white until stiff.
4.  Stir the dry mix and the milk mix together.  Fold in egg white.
5.  Heat aebelskiver pan over medium low heat.  Put about 1/2 teaspoon or 1 teaspoon oil in each cup. Place about 1 tablespoon of batter in each well, add 1 teaspoon of filling to the center of each, then cover with about 1 teaspoon more of batter over the top.  Cook until lightly brown on the bottom, and then get the skewer and use them to turn it over.  It takes some practice and is pretty hard to do.  Make it so the uncooked side is underneath.    Cook until light brown all over.  Serve with fresh fruit, powdered sugar, or fruit syrup.

"Meat Lumps"

This unfortunate name comes from my little sister who took one look at the tray coming out of the oven and asked, "What are those meat lumps?"  The real name is something like Mexican Miniature Meatloaves.  Though it has an unappetizing name, it is actually really good!

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. ground turkey or pork
2 eggs
3 big handfuls of gluten-free tortilla chips
1 can of diced green chiles (4 oz.)
1/2 cup onion
1/4 cup canned or 1 small homemade roasted red bell pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Put the chips in a food processor and grind them up until small.  You should wind up with somewhere around one cup of these crumbs.  Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.  Dice the onion and bell pepper.

In a big bowl, mix everything together well.  Shape into four little meatloaves on a greased baking dish.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Make sure they are done (meat thermometer should read 155 degrees.)  Remove from oven and let rest for five minutes before serving.

Jelly Doughnut Muffins

These muffins are really good, but they don't taste like doughnuts!  These are some of our best muffins, but I think the name should be "Sugary Jelly Muffins".  Tell me what you think!  The muffins make great quick breakfasts and easy snacks/desserts.  They are VERY sweet and sugary, almost too much for me, but my sister thinks they're "perfect".  If they are too sugary for your breakfast, use them as a dessert treat instead.

Muffins:

3/4 cup rice flour

1/4 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup potato starch

1/4 cup bean flour (we use white beans for appearance, but any would do.)

1/4 cup millet flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1 large egg

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup milk (we use a mix of hemp and coconut milks)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

about 1/4 cup of your favorite jelly, jam or preserves

Topping:

2 tb sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tb melted butter

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl.  In a separate bowl, beat the egg, not till stiff, but at least get it a little foamy.  Mix the sugar and milk in with the egg.  Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients.  Have some extra milk or water ready; we usually use about 3/4 cup, but it's always best to start with the minimum amount.  The mixture should be a little thicker than pancake batter.

Line a muffin tin (12 muffins total) with paper cups, or grease with shortening.  Put about 1/2 tablespoon of the mixture into each cup.  Using a spoon, spread out the mixture so that it covers the entire bottom.  Put a dollop (about 1/2 teaspoon, or more if you like them really goopy) of jelly on next.  Top with another 1/2 tablespoon of the muffin batter.

Bake for 20 minutes.  Keep them in the pan, but put the pan on a rack to cool for a few minutes.  Meanwhile, melt the butter and mix the sugar & cinnamon on a plate.  Using a brush, coat the top of the muffins with the butter then sprinkle them generously with the cinnamon mixture.  You might have some of the cinnamon left over--save it because it's good for making gluten-free cinnamon toast!  Normally, you would wait for the butter to dry and the muffins to cool, but my little sister ate one right away and said it was delicious!

[This recipe adapted from Camilla Saulsbury's 150 Best Gluten-free Muffin Recipes.]

Milk: Yes or No?

Since it's been about six months, we decided to start introducing dairy again.  We started with hard cheese on top of pasta and stuff like that.  We also tried Kefir, a weird yogurt-milk thing, but I didn't really like it.  At a fundraising event, I also had a gluten free cheese pizza.  After multiple experiments, though, we don't know what to think.  After having dairy-loaded cheese pizza, I was perfectly fine.  But, having some shredded cheese one time had me in bed with a migraine.  Yesterday, we tried cheese again, and today I have no reaction.  Now, I think that whenever I have cheese I should write down what I ate and if I have a reaction.  That might help us figure out what is going on.  It's pretty crazy!

Gluten Numbers Go Down, Down, Down!

When I was first tested for my active antibodies toward wheat in August, my numbers were 122.  This was bad because the normal was between 0 and 20.  I was tested again recently, and my numbers were 15!  The dietitian says this means that we are doing really good about staying gluten free!  This is really exciting because it means that we are on the right track!