Gluten free baking in November

Well November is well and truly arrived, the plants are starting to enter their Winter dormant phase, so it is time to start baking, gluten free of course  Being a ceoliac , which means a total intolerance of anything gluten is challenging enough, but as I get older I seem to be getting more finickity, oats, even ones guaranteed gluten free are now definitively off the menu, which is a right pain as there are quite a few delicious commercially made gluten free cookies. Our usual diets does not really include much gluten free products, we tend to concentrate on just eating simply, and well, home made food made out of the original vegetables we pick up in markets, very little transformed food apart from cheese and ham, gets used. However I do like my sweet things, and the sweetie section of french supermarkets should have a big sign that says everything here contains gluten, and the gluten free section needs a sign that says only buy if you have won the lottery recently.  So gluten free baking is a must to ensure that I end up eating things that actually agree with me at a price we can afford.

But never fear, Caroline is here. In the Narbonne organic market for the last few months there have been some replacement organic bakers, David, the usual organic baker is off in Brazil getting in touch with his real self, not I suspect easy when there is a general election going on, but there you go, each to their own. Anyway I digress, this young couple make lovely chocolate chip and hazel nut cookies which Caroline has started to buy for her breakfast in Saturday morning. Laura, who bakes the sweet things while her boyfriend, Rom, does the bread, thoughtfully wrote out the recipe for us and Caroline gave it a go. Now usually with gluten free baking it is a question of trial and error, at the start more errors than successes which can be very trying at times. However Caroline’s first attempt at chocolate chip and hazel nut cookie were absolutely superb, crisp on the outside and sift and melt in the mouth inside, they are so rich that even I, who can demolish a bar of chocolate in one sitting, can only eat one at a time.

I have written up the full recipe here Gluten Free chocolate chip and hazel nut cookies.

The other discovery was how to bake gluten free bread cheaply. Gluten Free baking can be an expensive business, the flour, yeast, and other gluten free ingredients are much more costly than their gluten equivalents. For our everyday needs of gluten free flour and Xantham Gum we find that ordering from Dove’s Farm in the UK, delivered free for orders over 30 GBP to a UK address, then shipped across by friends with a second home nearby helps keep the expense down a little. Dove’s farm are primarily an organic flour producer but they do do a good range of Free from flours.

However Martine, an old friend of ours from Ribaute gave us a call a couple of weeks ago, she had been hunting around a discount shop in Lezignan Corbieres and come across some very cheap gluten free flour. So after the Wednesday market Caroline and I paid it a visit. It is called the Magic Shop and is opposite the InterMarche petrol station. It is run by a couple of lads who have connections with some retailers in Spain by the looks of it, everything is past or on the edge of it’s sell by date. Hidden away at the back is a load of Schar Gluten Free Bread B Mix . Now Schar have been in the gluten free business as long as I remember, for some reason I thought they were a German company but they are actually Italiano German one, well South Tyrol to be more precise, they have been in the gluten free business for over 40 years. The Gluten Free B Mix is a lentil rice flour blend. I have used it before with mixed results, and retailing at 3.90 euro  kilo it is a bit rich for our taste, and budget. But there it was on the shelves of the Magic Shop at 1.20 a kilo. So I grabbed a box and bought 10 kilos. We nipped over to Carrefour and picked up some gluten free yeast, some organic sunflower seeds and a small pack of organic pumpkin seeds. Ironically the organic seeds were cheaper than their industrial equivalents (Just in case you thought I had turned into some Parisian bobo).

The first attempt did not go well, taste was good, but the bread did not rise, and the pate was damp and dense. Gluten free baking is like that, not everything goes as planned all the time. It leads to lively discussions at the aperro hour. I mentioned this to another gluten free friend, Paula, who is a wiz at making gluten free bread. Apparently it is  all in the mixing, she had bought herself a retirement gift of a top range mixer, err 400 euro top end, way out of our budget. But now she had her dream machine her old hand held mixer was retired, very kindly she gave us her old faithful mixer. What a transformation, it has taken our gluten free baking to a new level.  The dough was light and fluffy, the bread rose to double its size on top of a warming oven and then rose again as it was cooked. The bread is light and delicious and, with three loaves coming out of one kilo bag, cheap. It is so simple to make that it now gets baked twice to three times a week here. Thank you Martine and Paula.

Here is our recipe for  Gluten Free Seeded Bread