bread

My boyfriend is the baker in our house; he has the patience to try different flour combinations and also more creativity with the whole process of gluten-free baking than what I have.

This recipe is the result of one of his experiments and thus far my favourite gluten-free bread; the pros with this particular recipe is that it uses “whole flours” as in no starches like for example potato starch, it is easy to make, the taste is “earthy” and “dark” which I love - the darker the bread the more I like it- but it does mean that people whom like white breads will probably not be infatuated with the taste of it, the texture is nice and a bit fluffy even. The cons are that like many breads it collapses somewhat in the middle and it does not rise the way wheat raises.

The recipe and bread are not perfect, but I think good enough to be shared.

Gluten-free bread recipe, this is egg-free and dairy-free

Dry ingredients

-2,5 dl, 1 cup, buckwheat flour

-1,5 dl, 0,6 cup, almond flour (ground almonds)

-1 dl, 0,4 cup, quinoa flour

-1 tbls coconut flour

Mix all of these ingredients together.

Wet ingredients

-4 dl, 1,6 cups, warm water (the warmth is determined by the kind of yeast used)

-1 heaping tablespoon of psyllium husk powder

-50 grams of fresh yeast

- 2 tsp salt (use salt according to taste, 2 teaspoons will make a very salty bread)

- one small pinch of sugar (optional, this is used because I believe that the yeast needs a bit of sugar)

Mix all of the ingredients together.

Then take both of the wet mix and the dry mix and combine them. Add two tablespoons of olive oil after you have combined the ingredients; this is also optional.

Take a bread pan and oil it, place the dough in it. Let the bread dough sit for half an hour covered in a warm place.

Bake the bread for 45-60 minutes at 175 C or 350 F.

I usually cut the bread horizontally because it works better that way since it does not rise very high.

Baked Portobello mushrooms are something of a classic with vegetarians at least; they are so extremely meaty that they would pass for meat when placed between slices of bread.

Still, as an omnivore, I would prefer this over a beef sandwich - it is probably the extra earthiness that comes with the mushrooms combined with the flavourful satisfying butter that melts through the mushroom.

There are many options with these, but my personal pick would be the ones baked with chillies and garlic. Other options include Dijon mustard, herbs, just garlic and parmesan, the list goes on and with the variety of choices everyone will probably find their personal favourite, except for the mushroom haters, I know that such people do in fact exist, even though I find it strange.

I am sorry for not posting a picture of the actual sandwich, but when I had made the sandwich - I placed three mushrooms between two bread slices - I ate it all without having the patience to photograph it. That is why I had to use a picture of peeling the mushroom instead of the photo I had planned to use, but I can say that eating the hot, spicy and flavoursome sandwich straight away was worth it.

Baked Portobello mushrooms

Serves 4 and takes approximately half an hour to make

-8 slices of bread

-4 portobello mushrooms

-8 tablespoons of soft butter or dairy-free margarine

-1 red long chilli, you can leave the seeds if you want this to be hot

-2-3 garlic cloves

-salt according to taste

Preheat an oven to 200 C or 400 F.

Peel the mushrooms like in the first photo and remove the stems. I never wash any kind of mushrooms; it ruins the flavour and turns them into a slimy mess.

Put the butter, the washed and chopped chilli, and the garlic cloves into a blender with the salt and blend everything together.

Take a baking dish and place the mushrooms on it upside down and divide the butter between them.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until they are done.

Remove the mushrooms and take the bread slices placing them onto the baking dish so that they soak up all of the butter, then place a mushroom between two bread slices and enjoy.

Popularity: 16% [?]

I decided to make some flatbread for this months Go Ahead Honey its Gluten Free event hosted by Naomi at Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried. The theme is breakfast food this month and since I eat this bread almost every morning I decided to make a post about it.

Eating flatbread is actually more familiar to me than eating some regular bread; all of my mothers family is from Lapland and there people traditionally eat flatbread made from different kind of flours. Some of my most vivid and earliest memories are from Saturday mornings back at my grandparent’s house in Lapland. My grandmother started warming a large stone oven very early in the morning and then she baked bread there for hours; in Lapland they used to bake once a week and the bread made on that one day would last for a week. I woke up to the smell of fresh flatbread on those mornings and got to eat it all warm and straight from the oven with fresh butter. I never have forgotten the taste of that bread and it is still what I think of when someone mentions the word bread.

I still associate warm flatbread with my grandmother, happiness, Lapland and of course great food; so it’s no wonder that I like to eat my gluten-free flatbread as often as possible. When living and spending time in Lapland I got to eat the best food; it was fresh and mostly consisted of reindeer meat, fresh fish, cloudberries, vegetables which were home grown and self-made cheeses. I never appreciated it back then, it was a norm to have the access to real food, but now days living in a big city I understand what a privilege it all was.

The flatbread I make these days is far from the one my grandmother made; mine is made with quinoa flour, not with barley and wheat flour and not baked in a stone oven. I make this bread almost every morning because I think it’s fast to make, it doesn’t contain anything unhealthy and it’s made with quinoa flour so it’s not starchy.

You can adjust this recipe in many ways, if you want a more protein rich bread add some nut meal to it, I use the almond meal which is left over from making nut milk quite often in this. Rice flour works here too and some buckwheat flour adds a darker taste to this. I don’t like using xanthan gum since I think it’s disgusting, but it would hold this bread together just as well as the psyllium husk I use, eggs work a as a binder too, grated cheese is also an option for a binder (and it tastes good when added to bread).

Psyllium husk is also great for people who are starting out a gluten-free diet since it promotes the healing of the stomach. I eat it mixed with water and also some glutamine if I accidentally happen to eat some gluten and it helps with the pain at least for me.

Gluten free flatbread

- 1 cup (2,4 dl) quinoa flour

-1/2 -1 tsp salt

-1 tbls psyllium husk

-3/4 cup (2 dl) water

Preheat oven to 200 Celsius (400 F).

Mix the salt, psyllium husk and flour together, add the water gradually so that it resembles a thick porridge, wait for a couple of minutes and then spread the batter on to a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes, the time depends on the flour you used and also on how thick you have spread it. The thinner it gets, the faster it bakes. When I’m in a hurry I usually spread the batter very thinly and it bakes in 10 minutes.

Measure the flour in to a bowl.

Add the salt and psyllium husk.

Add the water gradually if you want to be on the sure side. It should look somewhat like porridge.

Let it sit for a couple of minutes and then spread it on to a baking tray lined with baking paper. I like to make mine small and round.

Sprinkle some seeds, herbs, salt or olive oil on top if you want to. I sprinkled some poppy seeds this morning.

Bake for about 20 minutes.

Popularity: 47% [?]