Maybe...but not quite right.

Hmmm...So I'm currently working on hacking bread flour like I did with cake flour but it's a bit tougher this go round. My first attempt was okay but it didn't really 'sing' out to me. The crust factor was nice but it dried out WAY too fast to like it long term. The second batch my yeast died so we won't mention it anymore. The third batch...

Hhmmm...that third batch was kinda nice. I did the ratio thing again and had a 40% Starches to 60% whole grain mix and I'm wondering if that's where I screwed it up. It's not bad, don't get me wrong and the crumb is gorgeous. See?

So what caused this happy accident?

I wasn't happy with the use of the quinoa seed that the first batch had, the flavor was a bit weird for me, I thought. So I thought I'd switch it, but with something but what in my ratio.

Attempt at Camp Bread Crust = FAIL

First Batch
35% Sorghum Flour
25% Sweet Potato Starch
10% Potato Starch
10% Sweet Rice Flour
10% Tapioca Starch
10% Quinoa Flour

Second Batch (Doesn't matter)

Seem a bit like hard muffins at first

Third Batch
35% Sorghum Flour
25% Sweet Potato Starch
10% Potato Starch
10% Sweet Rice Flour
10% Tapioca Starch
10% Golden Flaxseed (Milled)


This third batch is what gave the insides the nice chew I liked but it still felt like a not dry but not moist muffin to me. So it's still not right. I am using the same reference recipe as a base that comes from my school textbooks. I think it might work as a GF biscuit scone thing to eat with soup though. Very tasty. But still not quite what I want. So it's back to the kitchen to practice again.

How about your thoughts? What makes a good bread good? And any suggestions for ways to try and incorporate it into this recipe?

R&D: Hacking cake Flour

The other night I was doing a mindless internet crawl and poking about things and came to a realization; almost everything can be jury rigged. That is to say that even if it's not exactly the right thing, you can usually make something stand in for something else. Sometimes, it even does a better job than the original. Prime examples of this are Sugru and Alton Brown. I'm pretty sure if you're looking up food recipes, you don't need to be told who Alton Brown is. The guy pretty much revolutionized the kitchen industry with the idea that you don't have to have a gadget for EVERY single process in your kitchen. He's used ziplocks as piping bags and more. Sugru on the other hand might have slipped past your radar. It's an epoxy like material designed to 'fix' things but it's very moldable and it's actually a lot of fun to play with but the things I've seen this stuff do is amazing. From safeguarding a young'uns camera like they have highlighted on their website currently all the way to holding a dishwasher together or even for product prototypes.

Which of course reminds me, I need to order some.

But the idea is the same, yes, we are a consumer nation and I'm more than guilty of my gadgets and gizmos but not everything has to be the same, especially not when it comes to your health. So I got to thinking and was thinking about how all the GF flours weren't just a single flour so I'd have to come up with my own composite but how to start without practically taking a food science course in addition to the other two degrees I now have finished. My biggest issue with gluten free foods was and is how dense they are and that icky gumminess that seems to coat all of them inside and out. Which basically means I dislike a great deal of gluten free foods (sucks to be me, inoright?) But back to the basic problem. How to start figuring out ratios.

Well, to start, rarely is anything 50/50. Fair is not fair in any world but even more so in something created. So I decided (luckily as it turned out) to go with a 60/40 ratio. The question was what ingredients to use. Most of the GF recipes I've seen have used a combination of six ingredients for their 'flour' mixture. Brown Rice, White Rice, Nut Flours, Tapioca Starch, Potato Starch, and Sweet Rice. Of those, the nut and Brown Rice could be considered proteins while the others were starches. So by their own separations they gave me a simple split. Proteins and Starches, which is what a lot of baked goods already are (have I mentioned lately how much I adore having had food scientists for instructors during Culinary training?).

I could have gone about this in a lot of different ways but I was actually a little silly about it all. I hated the gumminess so I wanted the starches to be the smaller part of the ratio. Even if it meant the heavier (or so I thought) items were in larger ratio. So I decided that with my first batch the starches would be the 40% and the proteins would be the larger portion. I kept hoping it wouldn't be a rock in my mouth but I could always adjust in the next batch. Well, since the starches were 40% and there were 4 of them, might as well just split it evenly the first time, right? Yeah, remember what I said about fair? Throw it out the window...because in this case, fair was me being lazy and having no idea how to tell which one would be better.

So we had the starch ratio, now it was time for the protein. This part I wasn't so lazy on. I like the flavor of nuts but I don't want a nutty cake so I hedged in the favor of the brown rice flour mostly because I had a ton of it, I grind my own nut meals and so on. Again, trying to resist the lazy part of it all by splitting it down the center and still worried about the flavor, I went for a 35/25 ratio of the 60 ratio for the protein half. Then it was just a matter of what recipe to try it out with. I knew just the one. The one I'd missed most. The white cake recipe from my Culinary School. I made this cake so much and still loved it. I had to make it over three times for my wedding cake final and still loved it. (We never did figure out why it kept sinking in the middle but only on the bottom layer sized pan.) So I dug out my recipe books from school and dug it up.

It looks just like the evil cakes I used to make in school

Now here's the thing that occurred to me once I looked at the recipe. Most of my culinary stuff was done in weight (we even had to buy a scale for class) but once I was out, I started measuring again despite it was rarely a consistent product. Don't ask me why; but it was probably laziness on my part. But looking at the recipe, I realized that recipes when converting from metric to standard are often drastically different. Then I got to wondering about how the same size cookie can be a different weight based on the ingredients so I bet flours do as well. This led me on yet another search of the interwebs which led me to a wonderful little converter which made me realize I was right. Which if you just use a cup of almond meal, it's going to have a different volume than a cup of cake flour. So I had to do math. Ick.

So the result is.

360g / .35 (The 35% Brice) = 126g
126g x 1.60 to make up for the difference between 100cake flour and 160g of Brice = 201g of Brown Rice Flour is needed for this particular recipe.

Isn't that a beautiful crumb?

So the weights I used for my cake flour are as follows after multiplying the ratio by the percent difference between cake flour and the current flour. The amounts in parenthesis are how my cake flour which was 360grams turned into for each GF flour. It will be a more weighty cake gram wise.

Brown Rice Flour = 35% x1.60 = (201g)

Almond Flour = 25% x  1.12 = (90g)

Tapioca Starch = 10% x 1.25 =  (45g)

Potato Starch = 10% x 1.70 = (61g)

White Rice Flour = 10% x 1.60 = (57g)

Sweet Rice Flour = 10% x 2.04 = (73g)

Total = 527g

Original cake flour weight was only 360g

Tastes sooooo good!

Now, it is still a bit denser than normal cake but it's hardly noticeable and the layers don't fluff up as much so you won't really cut the top off for even layers as it tends to be rather flat and not fluffy in the middle like most cakes. The main reason I'm not putting up the exact recipe for you to use is that for the whole rest of the recipe, I'm using an ingredient that's only available to bakeries or craft stores and isn't as easy to get a hold of. However, this ratio method seems to work really well for any recipe calling for cake flour.

My only word of caution is to make sure all ingredients are at room temperature and get them as fluffy as possible when making this. My recipe calls for whipping the egg whites into stiff peaks and that helps so much with the lift of this cake. Plus cream of tarter is good with egg whites too.

Anyways, good eats!

Blue Cheese Potato Soup

When icky weather comes, I have a few recipes that I fall back on. But I am notorious for not ever doing things quite the same way twice. That's why someone needs to be in the kitchen with me writing everything down or I'd never be able to duplicate it or tell anyone about it.

Well, last week Louisiana was having one of those "Hey, here's a hint that it might still not be 90 degrees completely year round" days and I woke up chilled and grumpy. Well, luckily, A knows to just send me to the kitchen and leave me alone for a while and I'll get over it. I was debating what to fix when my eyes fell upon the russet potatoes we'd gotten on sale. I love my reds for most things usually but I knew I needed to use the russets so I decided to just make potato soup. It was warm, comforting and just a bit easy, didn't have to make my sleep addled brain really think.

So I get out the garlic and I'm about to throw the garlic in a little oil for a quick saute and I realize I have leftovers from a pack of creole seasoning mix I'd gotten a few days earlier. That is they take the celery, onion, parsley, garlic and stuff and make it into a pre-made mix you can buy in the produce section. So I saved myself some trouble and sauteed that  and added some extra garlic for the heck of it. Once I got it going through, my brain perked up and went...I want to do something different. This is the time to fear. Because those words usually signal either something amazing or something horrifying. When it came time to add the cream base to the soup....I threw in blue cheese dressing. And just that simple, a nice sharpness  swept through the soup and spiked it with just enough energy to be a bit of a perk up and go and it was amazing. It isn't going to last long around here, I can already tell.


Difficulty: A few techniques are required, but simple.
Time: About an hour
Note: The celery, bell peppers, garlic, parsley can be subbed out for a portion of creole seasoning mix if you happen to have it in your neck of the woods. The amounts aren't really exact with this recipe. It's up to you and what you feel like.
Mise en Place

• Stew Pot (6 qt or larger)
• Large Bowl
• 2 Medium Mixing Bowl
• Hand Blender(or Blender or Food Processor)
• Garlic Press (If you don't have already minced garlic)
• Cutting Board
• Knife
• Spoons (slotted, solid, and ladle)
• Whisk

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp Vegetable or Olive Oil
• Large pinch of salt
• 7-8 Large Potatoes (Russets are best due to natural starch levels)
• Bacon or Bacon Bits
• Better than Bouillion Chicken Base or 32oz Chicken/Vegetable Broth and a bit of water (Not stated GF but haven't had a problem with it yet)
• 1-2 Medium Onions (chopped fine)
• Parsley (1/4 cup or less)
• 3 split stalks of celery (chopped finely)
• 1 bell pepper (chopped fine)
• 2-3 Healthy (heaping) Tbsp of minced Garlic (see Mise en place)
• 1 cup Mozz cheese (shredded cheese works best but not fake cheese shreds)
• 1 cup Cheddar cheese (again, shredded)
• 2/3 Cup Sour Cream
• 2/3 Cup Yogurt plain full fat (or whatever level of fat you prefer
• 1-1 1/2 Cup Blue Cheese Dressing (needs to have actual chunks of blue cheese in it such as Marzetti's Ultimate Blue Cheese or Chunky Blue Cheese) dependent on how strong you want the flavor to be.

I find this all easiest to do to make it as much of a one pot meal as possible. Wash and chop your potatoes and place them in the large bowl. Make them about twice as big as you want the chunks in your soup to be. If you don't want it chunky, make them about an inch, we can take care of the chunks later. Don't remove the skins unless you really have to. It makes them so tasty!

Chop the celery, onions, parsley, and mince the garlic if it's not alreadyTake your pot, spread a little oil in it (adding bacon if you want to and of course, who wouldn't want to) and turn the heat up medium.Once the heat is ready, throw in your chopped vegetables (not the potatoes) and sweat them. A little tangent hear. Sweating is similar to sauteing but you're not trying to brown the items, you're just wanting to bring the moisture to the surface of the vegetable. Salt will help with this as well. Back to the point here. Basically, the oil should be hot but not sizzling. If it's too hot, you'll notice when you throw the vegetables in. You should here a gentle sizzle. It shouldn't be loud or popping all over the place. Sprinkle a little salt to help with the moisture draw.  Keep the food moving!

Add the garlic and parsley. and cook until the onions are almost but not quite see through. They'll look like they are really shiny. Once that's done, lower the heat to about low-medium and add the potatoes. Cover with the broth/water until just covered or just the water till just covered. Then add 2 tsps of the Better than Bouillon (or to taste). Don't add a lid but bring the water to a boil, stirring occasionally to make sure that the bouillon or broth/water is mixing well and no potatoes are burning on the bottom. After adding the bouillon you can also turn the heat back up to medium.

Once the potatoes are boiling, take a slotted spoon and bring a small piece out, run it under cool water and taste it to make sure that it's cooked through. If not, leave it at a boil for a while longer. While this last part is taking place, take that bowl you'd had the potatoes in earlier and place the sour cream, yogurt and blue cheese dressing. Whisk it all together.

Lower the heat down to the low temp but not quite keep warm. Remove about half of the potatoes from the pot and strain out the broth (if you want it chunky)Now taking a ladle, whisk some of the potato/broth mixture into the cream mixture a little at a time. Try to make it mostly broth if possible. If you want it smooth, leave all of the potatoes in. Using the hand blender, blend the desired amount of potatoes smooth. Add back any chunks and stir well.  This will help the cream not to break up when it's added into the main pot. Do this three or four times to get the temperature of the cream up.

Then still whisking, add the cream mixture into the potato mixture and stir. Then add the shredded cheeses until they are all nice and melted in. Soup is done. Spoon into bowls and serve with your favorite gluten free bread (my favorite recipe coming soon)

Bonus: Sweet and Sour Shortcakes (new Style)

I love strawberries and even though they are technically out of season in Louisiana isn't going to stop me from eating them. And I found out today that one of the theme carnival I've wanted to jump on board of was having the theme of strawberries this month, I had to join in. I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm going to try, right?

No form, no fashion but still frakin' fabulous!

So one of the staples of my kitchen is an amazing recipe by Linda of Gluten Free Homemaker. She's also the one who's doing the carnival. It's for a Focaccia bread/hamburger bun and I've been using ever since the first moment I found it. I even commented on it so you can see how long I've been using it and making it. I average at least one batch a week, I believe and use it for everything, sandwiches, pizza dough, etc, etc, etc. This was my first batch ever. Before the Muffin Rings came in the mail from wonderful Amazon. Not very pretty, but oh so very tasty when I hadn't had any kind of bread in about two months.

But the reason for this particular recipe stems from the fact that one of my signature dishes from before I was GF was a Sweet and Sour Shortcake Recipe. I needed a sweet bun, but one that could absorb the flavor of the vinegar and such. Things simmer and stew in the back of my brain forever if I have the time to let it. I mentally cook something about twenty times before it ever reaches the stove if it's not an impulsive thing. The cake I'm planning on for my best friend's wedding has already gone through about four incarnations and she's not even technically engaged yet.

You know how when you're sick, things sit and stew in your brain becoming all sorts of delirium, especially when you're REALLY sick? Well combine that with my generally stew-y nature (Hmm...stew sounds really good right now, but...oh wait, tangent again ) I should either never be allowed to cook while sick, or I should always cook while sick because the fact is, I can't follow a recipe worth a darn when I'm sick but I usually come up with a pretty sick (as in really good) screwup that works amazingly well for what I'm trying.

This is what happened when I brutalized Linda's recipe one steamy March night in Louisiana when I was feeling a bit loopy. See, when I'm sick, my brain remembers more of my culinary training than I do and I don't have any silly hangups about doing things the 'right' way and just do what seems intuitively right. Linda's recipe is amazing but what I wanted that night was a sweet bun designed for yummy fillings that made my sweet tooth happy. I have mentioned the ball of yarn, right? The one that tells me things? I listen to it far too often.

So in listening to that ball of yarn...I present

Sweet and Sour Shortcakes (New and Improved)

Ice cream and Cream Sweet and Sour Shortcakes

Difficulty: Sweetly simple with a Sour Twist (Aka not too hard but a lot of steps in some ways)

Time: 2 Hours total. Most of which is resting and baking.
Feeds: 8 Healthy Portions

Mise en Place

For the Biscuits and cream: 

Mixer (preferably stand) with Paddle and whip attachment

Mixing bowl (No bigger than medium needed)
Bowl Scraper/Spatula
Muffin Rings (For a more rustic look, you don't have to have them)
Double Half Sheet pans (Or a pan with a airpocket to help control uneven heating)
Parchment paper
Ice cream scoop (#3 is my preferred size but can also just spoon it out)
Oven
Optional: Half Sheet pan lid or pan topper ( I'll explain below)
Optional: pot of boiling water
Optional: Pan rack
Optional: Towel
For Sauce:
1 Good sized Sauce Pan
1 Heat Safe Spoon with deep pockets
A gluten Free cooking spray

Ingredients
1 1/3 cup Brown Rice Flour
2/3 cup Sweet/Glutinous Rice Flour (No Wheat Gluten, it has Rice Gluten. Different)
1 cup Tapioca starch though you can sub about half for potato starch (Not flour) for taste
2 tsp Unflavored Gelatin (I've also just thrown in a pack, it doesn't matter too much)
1 Tbsp Xantham or guar gum
1 Tbsp Instant Active Yeast
1/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1 cup water
1/4 cup water mixed with 1 Tbsp Chia seeds (Black or White, don't matter)
4 Eggs
1/4 cup Olive Oil
1 tsp Vinegar (Don't miss this part. It's pretty important)
~~~
1/2 cup Whipping Cream
2 Tbsp Sugar
Cap of Vanilla
~~~~
~4-6oz Balsamic Vinegar
2-3 Tbsp Sugar
2 lbs Strawberries


First, Add all the dry ingredients together in the mixer bowl and set to slowly mix the flours; The brown rice, sweet Rice and Tapioca plus the gelatin, gum, yeast, salt and sugar and the baking soda. Normally this recipe doesn't have baking soda, its leavening comes from the yeast, but I found that a little bit of baking soda actually gives me more of a crumbly inside that I want to help absorb all the yummy sauce.

Hold its own shape.Very soft dough.

In a separate bowl add the water, the chia water, the eggs, olive oil and vinegar. Mix it up pretty well and turn on the mixing bowl to a bit higher of a speed and add the wet ingredients. Keep it at about half speed for several minutes 2-3 usually works but if it's warmer, maybe 4 until it looks like this below. I actually tried to not add the gum into it because I'm trying to steer away from gum usage but it was just falling apart so I added at the end and mixed for like another minute beyond that. Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Letting the dough rest for a moment or two, it's time to get out the pans. I have NEVER run into an oven outside of a commercial oven that actually cooks evenly so I prefer to double pan all of my pans when it actually matters. Baking biscuits, cakes and breads do matter so they get the double pans. I place a piece of parchment up on it and place the muffin rings on it. I get between 9-10 biscuits for this amount of dough.

Then I place the pan lid over them. This doubled pan is also where the pan rack, boiling water and towel come in. After the lid is over the biscuits, I place the boiling water in a third pan which has a rack in it to place the doubled pans so I can just slide it off come baking time. This helps to control the amount of time I have to let it sit and it's almost a perfect 15 minutes every times for rising just the right amount I need.  Place the towel over the top to keep extra heat in (have I mentioned I'm a control freak yet? I like things to be able to be replicated even in my sick-y mind. I think I'm so much a control freak that it's permeated my entire being and so my sick brain knows I'll beat it up if I can't repeat something it did. *grin* Anyhoose) You don't have to do this, you can just let it rest, I just find this does its job consistently which I like.

Slide just the double pan into the oven and turn down the heat to 375 or 350 depending on how brown you like your top. With the additional sugar in my recipe versus Linda's the bottoms brown kinda easily so you don't want it at quite 400. It should take about 15-20 minutes. Her recipe calls for about 15 minutes, but since our temp is lower, we still need it to cook. At 20 minutes it should be very lightly brown. See?

Just enough to coat the bottom

Let them rest and cool to room temperature fully. This will take about 20-30 minutes. Then it's time to cut up the strawberries. There's no real way to get strawberries the same actual size so I just cut off the top so it's flat, turn the flat side to the cutting board and cut it into slices in a vertical cut. It'll take a while, about ten minutes. Once that's done, I put the vinegar into a pan, (and yes, I know acid to a metal for long term is bad but this won't be long it just cooks the items better.)

Don't want to add too many strawberries

While that's going on, I go ahead and whip the cream, sugar and vanilla together to get a heavy slog as my mum and her dad call it. Letting that sit for just a few moments, I throw a bit of sugar into the vinegar while it's heating up. Just use about a low medium heat (a 3 on an 8 heat stovetop) and stir it using the heat resistant spoon. When you can't hear the sugar scraping along the pan, it's ready. Toss in your strawberries (most pans will only fit about 1 lb at a time but you can reuse the sauce, just adding a bit more vinegar and sugar to re-situate it).

Left with fork edging. Right with knife.

 
Cut open the cooled biscuit bread with a fork for a nice English muffin like texture so it can soak up some of that wonderful sauce as well. The flat is not bad by any stretch. But I love to soak up sauces and rough edges do that better.

If using just the whipped cream, I put some of the strawberries and sauce on the cut biscuits then slap on some slog and voila, all done. But if I'm doing Ice cream like A prefers (him and his sweet tooth), then I put the ice cream on first, then top it with some cream and then slather it in Strawberries with a bit of sauce. Normally we share with our neighbors but they weren't home so our dessert today had a few more strawberries than normal. That's ALL strawberries under the cream in this picture.

Anyways, a great big Thank you out to Linda for the wonderful start to my Living Fully way of life. And I'm sorry for murdering your recipe. Actually, I'm not, it's still awesome...just different.

 This post links to Gluten Free Wednesday Strawberry Carnival