A bit about gluten-free flours and making your own mixes

I've only been doing this for less than a year, so I probably still have a lot to learn.
Here are a few things I've learned...

1) I keep most of my flours in the freezer, I have one of each in an ice bin that I carry up when I'm going to bake something or make up a mix. I only keep a few flours in the cupboard, sweet rice flour, bean flours (not sure about this!), corn flours, Expandex and Montina

2) chia gel is indespensible - I buy chia seeds (yep, think chia pet!), grind up 2 Tbsp of chia seeds in my little coffee grinder on the finest grind and slowly stir into 1 cup of water. I store this in the fridge for approx. 2 weeks before it goes sour. I use it in ALL of my baking (including cookies! - ummm, pancakes are not baking...). 3 Tbsp in a loaf of bread, 2 Tbsp in a pizza recipe for 2 8/9" pizzas, 2 Tbsp in my cookie recipe.

3) Making mixes has saved my sanity. I just started working away from home this past October, so I'm so happy I had the summer to learn a lot about gluten free baking. Basically I take whatever recipe I'm premixing, 6 medium or large ziplock bags, my ice bin of flours, whatever ingredients I need from the cupboard (salt etc.), and measuring spoons and cups. Then I sit at the table, either so I can watch TV, or listen to an audiobook.
I then go through my ingredient list, adding one ingredient at a time to all the bags, so, first 1 cup of sorghum flour to each bag, then the next ingredient. I do not add the xanthan gum, or yeast, or egg white powder (I might have egg whites in the fridge or I might want to pre-whip the egg whites).
I have 2 exceptions to the 1 bag per mix rule: pancake mix and muffin mix (I include the xanthan gum in that one and I shake it before measuring out).

4) I love Expandex (modified tapioca flour), it has made my bread have a nicer crust and crumb and my cookies and other baked are just nicer. I use 1/4 cup in my bread mix (1 loaf) and in my cookie mix (which makes about 3 dozen cookies).

5) I use Ziplock bags for all my flour mixing and mixes so that
a) I can reuse
b) I can label with masking tape (e.g. add xanthan gum - I'm never sure, and 1/3 cup sweet rice flour - I ran out while premixing)
c) I can shake and mix the flour to my heart's content

6) I use a variety of flours when baking gluten-free. This is because these flours all taste different and have different properties. That said, my bread still tasted gluten free.

7) I add sprouts to my bread 'dough' - hand mixed in just before putting in pan to rise. I have a ton of seeds (ok, a box) now, from Enviroharvest, the majority are Mumms seeds that I first saw in my local health food store. Now my bread tastes like vegetables and has the odd 'hair' in it, and it's so much more nutritious! It really does taste good.

OK, and as I've been working sort of full-time since October (definitely since mid December), that's my reason (this time :) ), for not posting.

I'm sure I didn't cover everything I do, but I was thinking about sharing this, as I am making up bread mixes today. Oh, when I started out, I made 6 bags of all my favorite mixes (pizza, cookies and bread) and now I make whichever I need when I run out.

I. AM. A. BELIEVER.

Wow... Two days ago, I made our usual gluten free chocolate chip cookies, but wasn't around to bake them. So, into the fridge they went.
I baked them up yesterday afternoon. Oh my gosh... a flavour sensation!

I had read about 36 hour cookies, and now I know why they are touted.

Since these are basically the only cookies I make - yeah, I do like the same ol', same ol', I do use nicer chocolate chips and I can appreciate why expensive high cocoa percentage chocolate wafers are recommended.

Grapes???? GF Bread that really rose!

Last week I was having a tough time baking bread... same recipe, kept overproofing, and I'd only get a slice or so from the loaves.

After the 3rd failure, ( I had been modifying a few things as I went), was using Expandex and montina flour to make things work better, along with a cold oven to start (really doesn't make sense to do if your bread rises so fast). My bread was rising in 30 min. or less - I couldn't get distracted... I finally realized I had only ever made this bread as a sourdough type and had never made it with yeast.

So I gave up and went with another recipe, my other go to gluten free bread recipe that I'm pretty happy with - but since I've never had a problem with it, I thought I'd try the grapes (just squeezed out 2 green grapes and proofed the yeast with that), oh and why not whip the egg whites? so now I'm not sure if it was the egg whites or the grapes that produced this stupendous rise (common consensus is the grapes)... the original recipe said to use 2 8x4 or a bigger 10" pan, but my dough was too small so I used a 9x5 pan, but now...

This was not over-proofing - the dough actually rose that high in the oven - it went in the oven just barely at the top of the pan, and due to the aforementioned failures that week, I had preheated the oven - ok, one bubble at the top in the back, but it couldn't support the height - of course... But it was the best bread so far - just weird size of slices...

BTW, you should have heard me laughing when I saw this and HAD to take the picture, all week long things puffed up extraordinarily when I made them, even pancakes...

Moldy, stinky front load washing machine? Meet MagicEra Washing Balls!

We were so happy to replace our top loader washer and old dryer when we moved into our new house. However, we soon learned that there was a price to pay for that nice front loading washing machine - I had to keep the door open and clean the boot regularly. Then there were the stinky towels... sigh...

I was happy when a product came out that I could use in the washer that would help keep down the mold and mildew.

However, when my sister told me I should try something really different, I sort of brushed her off. Then I researched it a bit, and found I could purchase them locally.

So I did, and yesterday I returned my regular laundry detergent to the store.


I've used these washing balls (Magic Era) for a few weeks now, I still separate my laundry into colours, but I run all my loads as Normal - 45 minutes, instead of Custom (as long as I could set the washer) - 1.5 hours. I use vinegar in the softener container, throw in 1 or 2 washing balls, depending upon the size of the load, and my clothes seem to be getting clean!

I tried soaking for an hour for dirty socks, and that helps too.

Of course, in my dryer I use dryer balls...

I got my washing balls at my local Home Hardware - they had to special order them in.

I'm finding that my washing machine is not nearly as stinky, and hopefully the mold problem is a lot less.

Has anyone else tried these?

Gluten Free Pasta

OK, I admit it, I'm not a big fan of pasta, but shortly after we went gluten free I picked up a hand crank pasta maker as I figured I would be looking to use one.

I do not like the texture of white rice pasta, esp. in my soup, I would rather eat rice in there.

I've heard that brown rice and brown rice/spinach pasta are not bad.

Now my youngest daughter loves her chicken noodle soup, so, what to do?

The other day I got an offer in my email from Katie Ross, to try out her gluten free eBooks - she has 3 sets of eBooks, baking (I already have), pizza/pasta and cooking - for $1 each for a week.

I chose the pizza/pasta set, and dived into the pasta book - I'd not read anything this detailed for pasta yet. Lots of pictures, tips and explanations.

So yesterday, I dived in, first I messed up the recipe (bye bye 3 eggs...), but then I made successful dough, with the generous use of lots of sweet rice flour, using the pasta maker was quite simple (much to my surprise!).

My daughter used some noodles fresh in her soup for lunch and I'm drying the rest (takes approx. 24 hours apparently), and then I can store them in the cupboard - as my fridge/freezer are way too full.

Thanks Katie Ross!

A yeasty experiment

What a fun experiment I had today! I came up with the idea after visiting my sister and fully realized what a challenge living without wheat and sugar (not to mention a host of other things) could be.

I was rewriting a gluten free bread recipe (ooh, I will be selling these recipes) and saw 'combine the yeast with the warm water and set aside'. Huh, really? what's that going to do? Yeast needs to feed on some sort of sugar!!! So, I did some researching and found that potentially any natural sugar will feed yeast.


Well then, I was wondering what would best replace white sugar in an otherwise sugar free bread recipe.


I compared 7 different samples (but I am going to have an update with some other samples - my lucky family gets to smell lots of yeast): just yeast, yeast and white sugar, yeast and a smushed grape, yeast and Stevia, yeast and maple syrup, yeast and agave and yeast and honey.

I didn't want to do the full 2 1/4 tsp yeast and 1 tsp sugar that I would use for a regular loaf of bread, so I used 1 tsp (or 5 ml) of yeast and 2/5 tsp (2 ml) of the sugar and 1/4 cup of water (60 ml).

I warm my water first in the microwave. About 30 seconds per cup of water, so I tried 1 minute for a little more than 2 cups and then let it cool to 109.6F.




Here's what I started with:

Just yeast:	Yeast and white sugar:
Yeast and grape:	Yeast and Stevia:
Yeast and agave:	Yeast and raw/natural honey:
Yeast and maple syrup:

Since I always mix my sugar and my yeast before adding the water (well, when I remember...), I mixed all of my samples, this got a bit gooey. But in order of appearance we have maple syrup at the very top, then from left to right going down, plain yeast, agave, honey, and in the closest row, grape, Stevia, white sugar.



Then I took pictures at approximately every 5 minutes...

Time 0min. - just stirred:	Time 6min. - all proofing nicely except the plain yeast and, huh, the Stevia:
Time 11min. - still no Stevia action, and sugar is as high as it's going to get:	Time 18min.:
Time 24min.:	Time 29min.:
Time 36min.:	Time 41min.:
Time 48min.:	Time 54min. - both agave and honey overproof and collapse:
Time 59min. - maple syrup joins the gang:	Time 64min. - sugar and grape are still stable:
Time 70min. - ooh, sugar is starting to go...:	Time 75min. - grape wins!:

Conclusion: my first choice for a good replacement for white sugar in a bread recipe would be a smushed grape - ok, I'd probably strain it through cheesecloth or just squeeze out the juice, next would be maple syrup, then agave or honey. No way would I recommend Stevia.