Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Meringue - why they aren't always the safe option for a gluten free desert

We stopped off in Stroud for lunch after a visit to Shipton Mill to discuss the possibility of bagging my flour.

After a disappointing lunch ( it turned out the chef had put soy sauce in everything but the hummus in the cafe) we had a coffee at a delicatessen.  TT had some delicious meringues with vanilla cream.  As he said they were very good I had a spoonful - and then I spotted that the tongs the waiter had used were brown at the ends - they were obviously used for the chocolate brownies too.  I am normally super careful about checking how the staff avoid cross-contamination but forgot to this time.

M&S 'North Indian Menu Meal to share' - gluten free

M&S curry meal
Having a Marks & Spencer store at service stations has transformed my travelling.  I know I can always get a safe, albeit cold, meal on the motorway if I can find a stop with one of their store.  Waitrose are much less good, and as for the others, I end up having a smoothie and a pack of plain crisps.  I have wondered about using the microwave service stations provide for heating baby food to heat up a ready meal but haven't done that yet.

I spotted a North Indian meal for two: Saffron Plain Rice, Vegetable Curry, Chicken Jalfrezi and Chicken Tikka Masala. I bought one of these and a bag of the mini poppadums for a quick meal at home.

The curries all tasted different, and the vegetables were crisp and easiliy distinguished. It certainly doesn't beat going to a reasonable Indian restaurant, but for under ten pounds and less than ten minutes preparation we had a satisfying meal for two.

These can be frozen.
 

Instant gluten-free chinese meals? Rice noodles at the Coop

shelves of chinese sauces

I got excited at my  local Cooperative supermarket a while ago because they had rice noodles in a bag with the vegetables.  I don't usually buy the ready-chopped vegetable medleys for stir fry, but I decided to make a meal with all convenience foods using the rice noodles.

One pack of rice noodles.  One pack of prepared mange-tout, baby corn cobs, beansprouts etc.  Need a sauce.  Looked at the array of sauces.  Every single one had wheat in.  I know soy sauce has wheat in, but I was surprised to find that there wasn't a single jar of ready made 'chinese' cooking sauce that was gluten free.  I went and checked the (very small) 'free-from' section.  Nothing there either.

I put the rice noodles and vegetable pack back on the shelves and cooked something else instead.

Friday, 18 March 2011

the soup is Heinz ...is that ok?

we are in a 'brasserie' in Gloucester Docks, having rejected four sandwich shops as a place to get lunch .  I didn't even want to go near the one called 'Toast'.  Nothing promising on the menu so I ask about the soup .  "What flavour is it and does it have gluten in?"
The waitress came back from her fact finding mission to say it was tomato or veg and it was Heinz, was that ok?

I ate my handbag food.  Blueberry and white chocolate seed bar.  Fortunately it tastes so good I am glad to have the opportunity to eat it rather than some bad soup.

I have no idea if the two soups are safe.  I don't think it should be my job to know the ingredients in the food a restaurant is serving when they don't.

Gluten and wheat free beer and lager - Nick Stafford's Hambleton Ales


We have just tried Nick Stafford's Hambleton Ales lager and beer - wheat and gluten free.

Tesco have started selling it in the 'Free From' section which is how I spotted it.  I am not at all knowledgeable about what beer and lager should taste like, but TT says he is happy to drink these.  He likes beer and lager, and we have lately been trying out the local artisan producers (he is drinking the beer, I watch his face).  The only problem that he mentioned was that the bottles were too big (500ml).

Both the beer and lager are made from sorghum, hops, brewing sugars and Yorkshire water.  The lager has East Kent Goldings and Continental Styrian hops, the beer Cascade, Liberty and Challenger hops.

Thursday, 17 March 2011

lactase treatment of cream - use twice the lactase

I have been trying out lactase treatment of milk.  I thought that cream responded less well than milk so wrote to the manufacturer to ask for advice.  Since I have noticed that other people have had the same query here is the response:


"Thank you for email.

There is a possibility that increased fat content of the cream may slow down the action of the enzyme. These two products’ weight also differs significantly.

My recommendation is to use twice the amount of lactase enzyme in cream. I hope that will prevent any gastrointestinal symptoms.

I hope you find this useful.

Kind Regards,

Evi Vagvolgyi
Technical Department

BioCare Limited"

I am very impressed by the speed of their response though slightly surprised that I didn't get data rather than a 'possibility' statement.  

Ice cream - aiming towards lactose-free

coffee icecream
Lactose intolerance is a common adjunct of coeliac disease, though for some people the healing of their villi means this is short-lived problem.  For lots of people, though, lactose intolerance is a permanent  issue.

OK, so we could just skip milk products, but there is a problem with the work 'just'.  Milk is in lots of foodstuffs (even medicines are bulked out with lactose - when I asked about a product to help deal with gluten-intolerance it turned out it had lactose in it. Duh!). Also, milk makes yummy foodstuffs.  Having spent a lifetime of puritanical foods as I was instinctively avoiding gluten and lactose, and adeptly producing erroneous reasons why, I now want to eat icecream, cheese, etc and enjoy them.

I found that pre-treating milk with lactase drops is very effective.  I can handle the residual small amounts of lactose.  Having made gratins and sauces and yogurt I moved onto fromage blanc successfully.  There were all made with whole jersey milk.  I pre-treated a carton of whipping cream  and used it to make ice-cream.   I simply added a little sugar and some strong espresso coffee and rum and put it in the ice-cream maker.


espresso icecream - texture
The icecream came out a little grainy (over mixed I think) and a little brittle (sugar syrup needed?). It tasted very good and I  will keep at the experiments.

However, I don't think the lactase had worked as well in the cream as in the milk.  I looked on the internet to see if there were any comments on cream and lactase.  All I found were other people asking the same question and no-one giving a competent answer.

I wrote to the people I bought the lactase from.  They simply repeated the milk-treatment instructions (why didn't they read the question!).  I have written to the company they buy the product from.  I await their answer.

Having accidental made an 'almost mozzarella' yesterday by making a sauce with the fromage blanc and over heating it I would like to have a go at making proper mozzarella.  The milk solids coagulated so I made a garlic and 'cheese' bread with one of ready-made pizza bases from the freezer.
almost mozzarella
I have found a supplier of all the kit and instructions and even courses.  I would like, first, to know if there is a interaction between fat levels and lactase effectiveness.


Aged cheeses have a lot less lactose than soft cheeses, so a little mature Parmesan is OK, and the cream cheese available in the stores is OK, but we do miss the entertainment a mozzarella gives to a pizza, and the summery fresh buffalo mozzarella with properly ripe tomatoes and basil.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Why people with food-intolerances need enormous houses and some coeliacs might eat gluten

I have been looking at all my stuff trying to think how to fit into a small flat rather than a rambling farmhouse with outbuildings.  OK, so I have kept stuff from every hobby I have ever tried, and between us we have kit for sailing, windsurfing, surfing, skiing (downhill and nordic) Heelies, jewellery, electronics, welding, wine-making, pottery, embroidery on a grand scale, oil and acrylic painting (easels for three people) and so on.

But, a big problem is thinking about kitchen storage.  If an ordinary person wants a bag of flour they buy a bag of flour.  If I need more flour I have to buy at least three ingredients, at least two of which have to come from an Internet supplier.  So, OK, I need to buy three bags of flour to make one bag of flour.  Big deal.

But then, look at the costs.  A bag of tapioca or urid might cost only a few pounds ( still 7-10 times the price of ordinary flour).  Postage on one bag of flour costs much more than the flour itself.  Occasionally I have bought flour, eg chestnut, where I just paid much more for the delivery than the flour, but usually I buy enough stuff to make the unit cost of the postage seem reasonable or to hit the free delivery band.

There is also the time lag associated with Internet shopping. Most people manage a near-next day delivery now, but sometimes I have had to wait for weeks for an out of stock staple.  So more flour earlier is better from this perspective too.

So, for the flour to make a single cake I might end up with twelve bags of tapioca, six cartons of Eat Natural muesli, some blue corn tortilla and a few other bits and pieces in one box, and six bags of urid lentils, some curry paste and some cooking tongs in another box.

In one fell swoop I have gone from needing a product that for most people is available for 60p in any grocery store and takes up one small space on a shelf to twenty items which cost £70 and take up half a cubic meter of cupboard space - or on top of the washing machine and on the stairs.....

Then there is the finished food.  I bake enough bagels at a time to last about a week.  They take up a whole shelf in the freezer.  Other people can just go to a shop and buy a single cupcake or a sandwich or a loaf of bread.  Of course, if I was prepared to eat really bad food or hunt out the few reasonable specialist suppliers (Internet, postage, storage...) this wouldn't be such an issue.

If I didn't make reasonable pizza, pasties, cookies, cakes etc it would be harder for TT to keep the house safe for me too.  I bluntly said if he couldn't avoid smearing gluten all around the house I'd have to have a separate house (now that's another twist on the theme of needing more space) so it is a big deal.

Steering clear of those tiny deadly proteins means adopting an obsessive lifestyle and, for me, an obsessive interest in the structural attributes and function of myriad of other materials.  It is easy to see why, for those who don't have excruciating and immediately noticeable effects from eating gluten, that they give up abstaining, trading social integration and convenience for the threat of future malaise.



I could just eat potatoes I suppose.  Where would be the fun in that?

Monday, 14 March 2011

Bacon and ham- not always gluten free

I listened to BBC Radio 4's Food Programme today.  It was about artisan charcuterie production in the UK. I was startled to hear one of the contributors talking about soaking pork in beer as part of the curing process.  It had simply never occurred to me that a curing liquid would have gluten in it.

So, check the labels of course, but also if you are buying artisan meats be very specific in asking about the curing liquid and remind the shop-keeper that beer is full of gluten.

Fromage blanc - made with milk pre-treated with lactase

fromage blanc with fruit


Its a tricky business knowing how much lactose is left in cultured / fermented milk products.  I know I can't normally eat cheese, yoghurt etc without experiencing ill effects, so I have been trying out various uses of milk I have pre-treated with lactase.

Today's adventure was to make fromage blanc - white cheese, as close to the desert we get in the French Alps as possible.

I bought some lactic culture form Lyofast, Strain MO 032, a couple of years ago.  I used some from the sachet, and the rest I put in the freezer.  I had no idea whether the culture was still viable - I only remembered where it was as I found it every time I cleaned the freezer!

A litre of jersey milk was treated for 24hrs with six drops of lactase.  I then stirred in the freeze-dried lactic culture (without warming the milk) and put it in my yoghurt maker.  This is an electric warming pot that keeps the temperature steady at the right point. I have the yoghurt maker uk from Lakeland Ltd.  I used to use a thermos but they are harder to clean, and the thermos soon smells of yoghurt even when scrubbed.

I left it overnight and the milk set to a smooth curd. I strained this through some cheesecloth then spooned some of the curd into little perforated heart -shaped moulds to drain further.

I served it with mixed fruit compot (last year's garden produce) and, on the blue plate, some lactase-treated cream.

fromage blanc, fruit and cream

This has a flavour and texture that is different from yoghurt.  It is smooth, mild and holds it's shape.  I am running another batch using a spoonful of today's curd to see if it works the same way yoghurt does.  I only buy a 'new' pot of starter yoghurt when I have forgotten to keep some of the previous batch, so it lives forever the same way my sourdough cultures used to.

Chili Pasty - gluten free


I had chilli leftover from yesterday.  I made pastry using half hard veg fat and half butter with my usual flour.  The pastry did tend to crack a bit when shaping the pasty but a quick repair of the holes worked fine.  The finished product was crisp and tender and delicious.  Good picnic food - you can tell where my thoughts are going now the sun is shining for longer!

Using half butter and kneading a little produced a more stable pastry than yesterday's made with all hard veg fat.

And I thought I had it bad - gluten in coffee

I am very sensitive to gluten and am very careful about what I eat.  Before I had a citron presse in a cafe yesterday I checked that they squeezed the lemons and limes away from the place they made the food, and ordered one when they said the fruit was squeezed at the bar upstairs first thing in the morning and the food was prepared downstairs in the kitchen.  I also ordered a coffee.  No flavoured syrups because it is a nuisance having to ask to read the bottle.


Today a web group I am a member of published a query.  Since you might not be able to access it I have copied it here.  I hope the writer doesn't mind, but it illustrates a significant issue I hadn't thought of (Poster, if you see this and you want to take out the quote let me know).


coffee query
"Two and a half weeks ago I had scrambled eggs and a mug of machine coffee in a small cafe, next day I was bad and covered in my rash which did extend to my big toe, this was repeated for several days then I had a break of several days then returned having the coffeee and eggs.The rash got worse so I cut out the eggs, no change so then cut out the coffee and started to improve who would believe it, so went back yesterday had my eggs and a pot of tea, no problems."


I did my usual search.  I found quite a bit of discussion of the dangers of having coffee where flavoured coffees are ground or dispensed from the same machinery  This is referring to those coffees where the flavour is added to the whole bean.  Some of these have gluten in, so once they are used in a coffee machine that machine is then contaminated.  


There is more on this at gluten in coffee


Of course, coffee means different things to different people.  I've never been obsessed by it; I come from a family who mostly can't handle coffee, and I mostly use it as an emergency treatment when I know a migraine is arriving.  A double espresso at the first hint of a migraine and it changes the way the blood vessels in the head operate and almost always the migraine doesn't develop.


If you want to envy a truly great coffee experience read this glutenfreegirl- be patient, imagine yourself there, and who wouldn't want the chance to drink coffee like this. 

Granary-style gluten-free bagels -high fibre

bagels
I still miss the warm toasty flavour of granary bread when I eat my usual bagels.  I also note that people seem to find it hard to get enough fibre in their diet on a gluten-free diet, presumably because the foods available in the shops are made from highly processed starches.  Here is a lovely and flexible recipe for a seedy high fibre well flavoured-bagel. adjust the quantity of linseeds to suit your own guts - they have a powerful bulking action.

I started with the usual bagel recipe and added a variety of seeds and other flavourings.  I have made this several times, and have varied it each time, so do amend the recipe to include your favourite seeds.  I have made this with mixtures of the ground buckwheat sprouts I grew last week, with quinoa that I rinsed and toasted then ground, with pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and with brown linseed.

Ingredients and method
400ml warm water (avoid highly chlorinated - if you don't filter your water and it smells very chlorinated let it sit a while to let the chlorine disperse)
1-2 tsp of yeast depending on how much of a hurry you are in
1 tsp of date syrup or other sugar

mix these together and let them froth.  I do this even with the instant yeast you can add dry to flour.  I like to see my yeast working before I go any further.
yeasty water

250g urid lentil flour
mix with the yeasty water and leave the covered batter to rise for a couple of hours in a warm place
double in size - see the air holes

30-50g linseeds -(depending on how 'therapeutic' for your bowels you want this bread to be!)
75g pumpkin seed
50g quinoa, buckwheat etc
100g skin-on almonds (substitute with more seeds/quinoa etc if nut intolerant)
mixed seeds

grind these in your blender until as smooth as you want.
ground seeds


Add the seeds and one egg (not essential if egg intolerant) to the dough

Add about 20g date syrup / 2 tbsp (or suitable brown syrup eg treacle, honey etc)
1/4 tsp vanilla (yes - it helps)
1/4 tsp tamarind paste
add seeds and flavourings to dough

Beat dough until mixed.

Add in enough tapioca flour to make a firm but still very slightly damp dough.  If you touch it very lightly some should stick to your fingers.  Beat thoroughly.
slightly too wet

a little dough sticks

Leave to rise.  I put mine to rise in the oven with some hot water in a dish to give a moist atmosphere.  Otherwise cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap.  As it rises the tapioca flour will absorb more water and the dough will be easy enough to shape with floured hands.

texture of risen dough - see the air holes
Shape into bagels.  Use a light touch so that you dont knock all the air out.  Place on floured tray to rise again.  The dough will feel odd and slightly bouncy.   We like about 100g for each bagel.

shaped bagels
risen bagels

When risen, boil for 30 secs each side, drain and place on baking sheet.  I read somewhere that you should plunge into iced water after this stage, so I tested it, but we preferred the ones that were just drained.

Add seeds on top if wanted.
sesame seeds

Bake in a hot oven (180C) until golden.
texture of finished bagel

These produce a bagel which has an even texture, no cloying texture, toasts well, holds its shape, freezes well, and tastes great.

Cool, freeze until needed if not going to be eaten within two days.


There are a lot of steps in this but mostly the dough does its own work while you get on with other things.  Slow risen doughs are easier to digest, and the timing between each stage isn't critical.  Increase the yeast or warmth (up to but not beyond 40C) to speed the process up. If you can't finish in one day just put the dough at whatever stage it is at in the fridge and carry on the next day.

Sunday, 13 March 2011

Almost instant sausage rolls - dairy-free, gluten-free

sausage roll, gluten and dairy-free
Usual thing, had the TV on to see a programme about artisan beer and they started eating sausage rolls.  Immediately I wanted one for lunch.  I had some gluten and dairy-free hotdogs in the fridge.  I had some of my flour pre-mixed (40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20% cornmeal) and I had a block of hard white vegetable fat.

I grated some of the fat into a bowl.  As it turned out to be 60gm I added 120gm flour, stirred them together, then added cold water until the mix stuck together.  I didn't knead it at all as I wondered if it would produce a flaky effect.

I rolled this out and wrapped pastry around each hot dog.  Cooked sausages would have worked fine too.  I placed these on a baking sheet, brushed a little egg yolk mixed with water on top - I thought the pastry would be unlikely to brown by itself as it didn't have butter or egg or sugar in it.

I cooked these for about 15minutes at 180C until they were golden and the pastry firm.  You can see the pastry has slightly shrunk away from the hot-dog because it hadn't been kneaded at all.

These were crisp and amusing to eat.  The pastry holds together well enough for them to be finger food or taken on a picnic.  From seeing the initial sausage rolls on TV to eating them for lunch took about 20 minutes.

lactose-reduced potatoes dauphinoise / scalloped potatoes




I have been continuing the tests of treating channel island milk with lactase for use in cooking. I just put the six drops of lactase in a litre of milk, shake, and leave in the fridge for 24hours before use.

I took 2/3 litre of treated milk (it is 5%fat) and two large baking potatoes.  I sliced the potatoes thinly, leaving the skin on.  I cooked the potatoes in a saucepan with the milk until they were nearly tender.  I then put them in a dish and baked them at 180C until the top went brown.  I put a little bit of sea salt in but no garlic, as I wanted to assess the impact of the lactase on the flavour.


I served these with the breadcrumbed chicken I posted earlier and some vegetables.

The potatoes were delicious though sweeter than usual.  A bit of garlic would be a good complement and make it obvious this wasn't intended as desert.

I ate lots as I wanted to find out how effective treating the milk with lactase was.  I did have a little colic for a few minutes the next day, but given that I ate an enormous portion to see what would happen I think this is pretty amazing.  If I had eaten a quarter portion made with normal milk I would have been out of action for most of the next day.

So, a thumbs up again but avoid gluttony.

Friday, 11 March 2011

Rights of passage

We don't have many cultural markers for significant events in our lives.  We acquire and lose our fertility in secret, we lose family and friends without the outward markers Victorians had - the black armband served a real purpose.  The only real way society recognises our passage through time is with the onslaughts of immunisation and screening programmes.

These musing were prompted by my first mammogram. I expected the process to remind me of the tropical inoculations I got three decades ago before a student trip to India.  We lined up, buttocks exposed - jab, arms exposed - jab.  The breast screening clinic is a portacabin in a car park.  They are brisk and efficient but at least there are individual cubicles.  Sight is restricted though not sound or smell, and the air soon grew pungent with the stench of the heavy smoker who followed me.

What is the place of this in a blog about gluten?  Simply that they say it won't hurt much.  It didn't, but there was no suggestion that you could chose a time slot that would fit in with your menstrual cycle  Before I gave up gluten I have very painful breasts for about half of each month.  Regular massage with fennel oil helped, but if I had been compressed to that level then it would have made me want to scream, never mind the lack of auditory seclusion. Now I would still try to chose to avoid the few days before each period.

Gluten destroyed my joints, gave me migraines, made me feel despairing.  I was seriously thinking about how much worse I would have to get before I wouldn't be prepared to stay alive anymore.  I closed down my business, became a recluse, lost all my hobbies.  It's not just about painful guts, it's a painful life.

So, if you wonder why I do nothing but find ways of making great gluten free food and encouraging others to make visiting and joining in possible, remember, if I hadn't changed my diet I'd have been doing nothing at all.  Helping a few people to avoid those tribulations, or making it easier to feel a normal part of society is a worthwhile use of my time.

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Lactose-free / reduced lactose yogurt

lactose-free yogurt with berry compot
I have been experimenting with making my own reduced-lactose yogurt.  I got lactase drops from Bodykind; I am sure there are many other suppliers but these had both the lactase and the glutenzyme I wanted.

The lactase is very easy to use.  You just put four drops per pint ( I used six for the litre) into the milk, stir it, and leave for 24hrs in the fridge.  The milk tastes a little sweeter when the lactase has broken down the lactose into its constituent smaller sugars.  I have used treated milk to make yogurt, a drained yogurt that is like a soft cheese, and paneer.  The end results in each case were very similar to those made from untreated milk, with just the faint extra sweetness.

If you want to make yogurt treat the milk first and then add the yogurt starter.  The lactase doesnt work in an acidic environment (which I learnt by reading after I had tried it) so you just end up with normal yogurt if you put the lactase in at the same time as the spoonful of yougurt.  Yogurt has less lactase in it than milk but still enough to cause me colic.

The Wikipedia aricial on lactose intolerance is interesting and clearly written.  It is worth reading for its comments on which products have most lactase.

I ate enough yogurt last night to have expected problems this morning ( sorry- but I don't have a lab to test, have to use my own body). My enjoyment of the channel island milk yogurt with mixed berry compot last night was not marred by pain this morning.

You might wonder why I don't just buy the ready made lactose-free milk.  I don't like to be limited to one type of milk, TT likes milk from Jersey and Guernsey cows, and if you want to make icecreams, soft cheese, pannecotta, yogurt etc then being able to start with the right type of milk is useful.  The lactose free milk is semi-skimmed, and for the potatoes dauphinoise I intend to make next a creamier milk is better.  Once you have the lactase drops you can do what you like, and as the lactase free milk is more expensive, getting the drops and keeping them in the fridge works out about the same I think (not actually calculated, but it is close enough).

I have tried the lactase-free cheeses available in the supermarkets.  I find the cream cheese a pleasant addition, but the 'hard' cheese is a bit flavourless.  I have been tending to make pizzas using blobs of the cream cheese and a bit of parmesan.  This gives a complelety different style of pizza to mozzarella, but it is pretty good and means I don't have to constantly calculate how many mouthfulls I can eat without suffering.  Whilst the parmesan is the standard reggiano, the longer cheeses are matured the less lactose they have in them, so going for a highly- flavoured aged cheese you reduce the amount of lactose you eat.

I have some cheese making culture in my freezer, which I bought for making fromage blanc.  I'll be using that on my treated milk shortly as well.  Maybe a cheese making course?

Crispy Chicken in breadcrumbs - gluten-free of course

crisp oven-baked, gluten-free chicken
When making bread tests or just when making bread I sometimes make a loaf that isn't good enough to eat as bread.  Gluten-free breads are particularly prone to producing a dense mushy area at the bottom when trying to make a large loaf.  Whilst our wild birds love these highly nutritious loaves you can make use of them yourself.  If you cube the bread and whizz it in the food processor you get versatile breadcrumbs to jazz up all sorts of foods.  I like to toast them in the oven for a bit to get them dry and then bag and freeze them.
dried breadcrumbs
Yesterday I visited an organic farm to ask about strawberry varieties for a Slow Food event in the summer.  Lots of useful information and contacts, and a fresh dry-plucked chicken, so thanks, Roots at Rushwick.

In the past I have fried the breaded chicken to get a good golden crust first then finished them off in the oven.  However, that adds a lot of fat to the dish, increases the washing up, and makes the house smell of frying.  I did try just baking them dry, and that led to an acceptable but not as nice product.  I saw Ellie Krieger lightly spritz her breaded chicken with a cooking spray, so thought it would be worth a try.

I cut off the chicken breasts and chopped them into medium sized pieces.   The rest of the chicken will make a curry, then I will roast the bones then make a stock.  I reckon on about four meals for two people from a chicken.
chicken pieces
Lightly beat two eggs and place in a wide shallow bowl.  If you can't or don't eat egg use tapioca gloop or your usual egg substitute.  Tapioca gloop is very sticky - take 10g tapioca flour, 100ml water, stir together then cook while stirring until you have a thick transparent paste,
beaten egg
Put your breadcrumbs in another shallow bowl.  Add spices or crushed cornflakes if you want.
breadcrumbs
Dip the chicken pieces first in the egg then the breadcrumbs then place on a greased tray.  Spray cooking spray on the chicken then bake at 190C for 15-20 minutes depending on the size of the pieces.
uncooked chicken
cooked chicken

These produced light crunchy chicken portions.  TT has a yearning sometimes for KFCs, and these keep him happy; they are gluten-free, local organic chicken, and lower fat.