Busy day baking

I don’t know how many people out there have noticed that whilst there are some fantastic gluten free products on the market, a lot of them are really expensive.  Now before anyone jumps on my back about the fact that you can get gluten free staples on prescription, the bread etc I like isn’t available on them.  As I said previously, I love cooking and experimenting, so as I had no work today, I decided to pick up some gluten free flour and see what I could come up with.  The results really surprised me.

To start with, I am going to sing the praises of Dove Farm gluten free flour, you can check out their range here.  When it comes to gluten free flour you have two options, blend your own from the many different base flours available, or buy a pre-blended one.  I took option two this was my first attempt at baking.  I started with a basic Victoria sponge recipe.  This was fairly easy to make the mix for, it still works in a very similar way to a normal sponge recipe.  I will give one bit of advice though, don’t rush to get the cakes out of their tins, the cake is a lot lighter than normal sponge and when it is still warm it will just break, although I managed to salvage mine before it broke apart.  Once it had cooled fully it held its form much the same as a normal sponge.  The all important part of making anything is always the tasting, and I have to say this is by far the best sponge I have ever made.  It is so light it’s unbelievable! and just with a little mixed fruit jam and a light dusting of sugar, no one would be the wiser that this was gluten free.

The next experiment was to make some bread.  Now I have made bread many times before, as there is nothing quite like home made bread, and it makes the house smell great.  Gluten free bread is very different in the process to make it.  For one, you can’t get away with just strong flour, water, yeast and a pinch of salt.  Thankfully the preblended flour contains the magic ingredient, Xanthan  gum.  It also made a change to put egg in my basic bread mix, but it made a ball of dough, all be it more like cake than bread.  It proved well though, and after cooking it looked and smelled like bread.  Again, it has to be said, leave your bread to cool completely.  I made the mistake of having some after 10 minutes of cooling and it was a little cakey.  Once it cooled though, it was a lot more like bread, but a little heavier, it tasted great though.

Overall, it was a really successful and productive day.  I will certainly be making a lot more of my gluten free staples at home as it works out cheaper, and tastes so much better.  I will post the recipes up, but pictures will have to wait until the next batch as these have already have pieces taken from them for munching on!  Well, a good cook always tastes the fruits of their labors before giving them to others!

The Coeliac Gamer