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Showing posts from 2014

Turkey Day Recipes from the Archive

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This is a re-post of my holiday recipe roundup from last year.  I hope you all enjoy your holidays! Gluten-free Gravy Dinner Rolls Gingerbread Cookies Traditional Stuffing Quick Bread Stuffing Butternut Squash Pie Pie Crust Turkey Soup Coq au Vin Baguettes

My New Favorite Gluten-free Pastas

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Have you noticed any new pastas on the shelf at your grocery store lately? I got so used to buying my previous favorite pasta, Ancient Harvest , that I didn't try anything new for a really long time.  Read my 2009 review of gluten-free pastas to see how times have changed in 5 years. Recently I found a bunch of new GF pastas at the store by brands that I already know and trust like   Glutino  and Ronzoni .  New-to-me pastas by Jovial and DeLallo are actually made in Italy! I had to try them.   These are not just brown rice flour pastas all over again - some of these are totally new flour

Gluten-free Baguette Recipe from Gluten-free Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

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Photo credit: Stephen Scott Gross I recently reviewed the new book  Gluten-free Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day  by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe François.  They have given me permission to share one of the recipes with you.  It's one that I've tried several times and I've gotten to love making it on a regular basis. If you don't have the book in hand yet, here's a recipe to get you started.  It's reprinted with permission

Book Review: Gluten Free Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

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For all of you bread lovers out there, this holiday season has a special treat for you:   Gluten-free Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day , a new book in the "Bread in 5" series by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François.  Released on October 21st, this book is just for you gluten-free folk, with beautiful, stunning photos of crusty, golden-brown loaves of bread of all shapes and sizes, and a comprehensive list of recipes for everything from baguettes to doughnuts.  I was lucky enough to get an advance copy so I could try some of the recipes and tell my readers what I think. I was excited to try these recipes because the first gluten-free bread I ever made was from a recipe adapted from one of the original Bread in 5 books and published on Gluten-free Girl .  It wasn't

Easy Gluten-free Bread Flour Blend

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I have been working to provide my readers and customers with some flour blend recipes so they can enjoy high-quality, home-cooked, gluten-free baked goods.  I have been trying to come up with some flour blends that are easy to make, take few ingredients, and are delicious as well. Find recipes in the Bread Tab .  It's easy to multiply the recipe to make a big batch if you measure by weight. This blend has a high concentration of whole grains.  If you would like a whiter flour, you can use these same ingredients to make my  Rustic White Bread Flour Blend .   Or, of course, you can  make your own bread blend! I use Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flours for my breads.  They are easy to find here in Portland, Oregon.  However, I chose this group of flours because they should be easy to find and inexpensive in many parts of the world.  If you try this blend with other brands of flour, please let me know how it works for you! Easy Gluten-free Bread Flour Blend Makes 450

Flours No More

After long and considered thought, I have decided to stop producing Gluten-free Gourmand flours commercially.  While I am proud of that branch of the business, I would like to concentrate my efforts in other directions both personally and professionally. There are still a few bags of product left which can be purchased here:  http://glutenfreegourmand.bigcartel.com/ Once this product is gone I will no longer be offering retail sales of my custom flour blends.  In time I may come out with some new flour blends and recipes that you can make at home.  In the meantime there may be some broken links on this blog and some recipes that don't have a flour blend to refer to.  I will try to sort out as many of those as possible.  A newer, sleeker blog may be able to emerge from this transition. Thank you for your patience and patronage. Gina Kelley Founder, Gluten-free Gourmand

Chicken Parmesan, Gluten-free

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I like to eat big.   When I was a kid, just a skinny little thing, family and friends would marvel at the huge piles of pasta I would heap on my plate and top with meatballs.   I mean, I would really pile it on – and at 10 I would pack away more of the dish than most adults.   Italian food was a staple growing up and my mom taught me how to make my grandma’s spaghetti and meatballs, as well as other hearty meals like fresh pasta and home-made bread.   Whatever I loved to eat, I would learn how to make it. My home-made creations weren’t always perfect.   I am still teased for the time I tried to make eggplant ravioli without a recipe when I was 16.   It took 5 hours.   When we finally sat down to eat at 10 pm, everyone was famished, but I had made some miscalculations.   Each person got about three ravioli.   They weren’t even good!   That was when I learned that eggplant, while delicious, can be spongy and bland when not cooked properly.   Eggplant ravioli was one recipe I ne

Quick Pie Crust Recipe

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I've been working on this recipe for my mom, who requested an easier, faster recipe than a traditional all-butter pastry crust  without any egg.  This crust is every bit as good, and much easier to handle due to the egg.  Plus, it's just in time for making your first strawberry rhubarb pie of the season. Gluten-free Pie Crust Recipe Makes one crust.  Double for pies that need a top crust. mix time: 5 min rest time: 30 min (optional) cook time:  30-50 minutes filled (like apple pie) or  20 minutes pre-cooked for a custard filling or as a gallette

The Fluffiest Waffles with Blueberry Sauce

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When a person first goes gluten-free, she often immediately thinks of all the delicious foods she won’t be able to eat again.   Croissants?   Beer?   Baguettes?   WAFFLES?   What a catastrophe!   Well, catastrophe averted.   I haven’t figured out how to make my own beer yet, but waffles are one thing that no one should ever have to miss with easy gluten-free recipes like this one.   In fact, these waffles are even lighter, fluffier, and more delicious than the wheat version.   Why?   No pesky gluten, of course!   Gluten can toughen waffles if you aren’t extremely careful in mixing.   With this recipe, there’s no gluten worry.   The texture is extremely pillowy, the flavor is full and buttery, and they are easy on the belly. They are even soft and springy the next day.

Gluten-free Pad Woon Sen

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Here's a post from my sister publication, Just Another Shallot and Asparagus Blog .  I collaborated with "Shallot" blogger Christopher on this recipe.  Just make sure your  fish sauce  is gluten-free, or substitute with gluten-free  soy sauce ,  and you're good to go with this healthy asian meal.

GF 24-hour Sourdough Bread Recipe

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This is a very traditional sourdough bread recipe, using artisan methods to create a nice, tangy, San Francisco-style sourdough bread.  If you like a really sour-but-smooth sourdough bread, this is the recipe for you. There are just a few differences between this recipe and a standard wheat-based recipe.  The most notable difference, of course, is the psyllium husk, which is a gluten substitute.  Read more about psyllium and other binders here .  Then of course there's the flour.  I use my own Bread Flour Blend for bread baking, but if you live outside the U.S. read my post  Make Your Own Gluten-free Bread Flour .  If you use your own flour blend, you may have to adjust the amount of water and psyllium you use. Why sourdough?  It's incredibly delicious, for one thing.  The natural process of fermenting the bread through the sourdough process makes it really good for you, too.  Then there's the fact that sourdough bread stays fresh much longer than regular bread.  It

A Brief History of Bread

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Breads are considered the stuff of life in many cultures.  Those of us who are gluten-free in a gluten-loving country can fee left out of the main event of our culinary heritage.  Knowing something about the history of bread has helped me keep gluten in perspective. When did people start making bread?  The most ancient and the simplest method of making bread does not use fermentation.  This is the method that's still used to make tortillas: a simple mixture of flour and water, patted into a flat circle and grilled on both sides until done.  People have been using this process for making flatbreads since time immemorial. People figured out how to ferment the water-and-flour mixture as long as 20,000 years ago in Africa.  The invention of cultured doughs made injera and other types of sourdough pancakes possible.  The grains used for these yeasted flatbreads are mainly teff and sorghum.

Sourdough Starter in 3 Days

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Update: See my updated version of this recipe:  https://glutenfreegourmand.blogspot.com/2021/10/sourdough-starter-ready-to-use-in-3-7.html When I was a kid, my dad loved to make the family sourdough bread on the weekends.  I loved watching him feed the starter, knead the dough, and put a raw lump into the oven to see a golden half-globe of bread emerge later.  We could get really good fresh San Francisco sourdough bread in the store, but that had nothing on my dad's bread.  It was one of my favorite foods. I like my sourdough really sour in the San Francisco and pioneer traditions.  My dad's sourdough was from an old country recipe that was handed down from a farmer neighbors, the Lists. Old List Family Sourdough  Bread Recipe I decided to track down the recipe and re-create it, gluten-free.  When I get an idea in my head to re-create a recipe I loved as a gluten eater, I'm like a dog with a bone.  I just work on it tenaciously until the job is done.

What is Sourdough Bread?

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Definition Sourdough is not a description of a type or a flavor of bread - it's a process.  Sourdough is an ancient method for making bread that uses a starter of natural yeasts and bacterias found on the grain itself.  These microorganisms are cultured by the bread maker to have a healthy balance of flavor and the power to let the loaf rise. Bread History in a Glimpse It used to be that sourdough bread was just called bread.   Commercial yeast has only been available for the last 100 years.  Before that, leavened bread was made using either the sourdough method or in a similar process that used the yeast left over from fermenting alcoholic beverages. The sourdough process has been used for 10,000-20,000 years.  When you think of that length of human history, and then compare it to the last 100 years of bread making, that puts the tradition of sourdough bread in perspective. Process Making sourdough bread is more like growing a garden than executing a formula.  

Traditional Baguette Recipe

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I know that I've got a good bread recipe if, after first tasting a loaf, my boyfriend immediately plans on making a sandwich out of it.  If the bread is just okay, I get an unconvincingly encouraging "That's good!"  If it's great, I get, "We could cook some bacon and make a BLT with melted cheese!"  Then, even if it's 11:00 at night after a heavy meal, he will make that sandwich. I got all kinds of compliments on my baguettes for Christmas dinner, from people who ate gluten and from those who were gluten-free.  It was an amazing and filling meal, and yet my boyfriend made little turkey sandwiches afterward with baguette slices and turkey bits.  That says it all. I made a quick version of this recipe which works great for a tight schedule.  This recipe is more traditional, with two rises of the dough.  That slow process improves the flavor and the browning of the crust for a more traditional artisan look and taste to your bread. T