Seedy bread - sharing the flours with others and the wonders of Solanic potato protein

I responded to a query about bread on http://glutenfreeguerrillas.healthunlocked.com.  I normally don't contribute recipes for bread on this site as I now always use the potato protein I got from a LinkedIn contact, and this is not available in the shops.  If you buy it from the company the minimum order is 15kg - and given you need a few grams/couple of spoonfuls for a loaf of bread this is an enormous amount.  However, I offered to send some samples out to people if they wanted, and a batch of the flour I use, as I want to get feedback on my usual loaf.  

I have been wondering whether to take the step of trying to bring this flour mix to market, which would be a lot of work, so feedback would be useful.  I have also been talking to the company about the possibility of the potato protein being made available in consumer sized portions.  This potato stuff doesn't upset my guts at all - I can't use zanthum/xanthum or other gums, and even have to stay away from flax/chia seed.  It helps gf loaves to keep their shape so they don't slump if you want a full size/high loaf, and give improved texture even to pizzas and other flat breads.


I sent out six batches of the flourmix- enough for a loaf made in a one pound loaf tin, and 30g of the potato protein. I do hope these packages survive the post- I went to bed fretting that I hadn't double bagged everything.  I sealed them in cellophane and built small posting boxes by chopping up a large box and wrapping with lots of parcel tape, so hope the transit is fine.  I thought I should include a photo and instructions, so took the usual plain loaf ingredients and added a little cocoa and pumpkin and sunflower seeds to give a warm seedy loaf.

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This mix is made from urid lentils, tapioca, rice and potato.  The potato protein that I have have included in the small bag should be used at about 2%of the flour for yeast breads.  Makes great pizza and other flatbreads as well as the loaf.   I am thinking about trying to package it or a variation on it so would be glad of your feedback.  I have a gf house and am very sensitive so these samples should be completely gluten free.

The bag has approx 300g of flours, enough for a small one pound loaf tin.  Mix it the yeast- either a teaspoon or two for a quick rise or half a teaspoon if you want to let it rise more slowly to develop a sourdough flavour.  Put salt and sugar in if you like.  Add 250ml cold water. You can also put a little cocoa and some pumpkin and sunflower seeds for a seedy loaf, or other flavours to suit your taste.

Mix the batter thoroughly with a wooden spoon or food mixer.  It will look like a thick  cake batter.  Pour the mixture into a greased non-stick loaf tin.  It should come about half way up the sides.  For a quick loaf put this in the oven with a tray of hot water in the bottom and leave it to rise.  You want to let it rise about one third - not quite to the top of the tin.  When it gets to that point turn the oven on to 175C (fan) and set timer for 45 minutes.  It will rise further in the heat but shouldn’t come over the top of the tin as the batter hasn’t the strength to go up on its own. It needs a slower bake than wheat bread.

If you want more flavour and a slightly more artisan-style texture leave the loaf to rise somewhere cool - if you want to retard it to fit in with your schedule just put it in the fridge.  Then bake as before.

Tip out the cooked loaf and cool on a baking rack. I cool them on their sides to encourage them not to sink.  Don’t try to slice before they are cold or the bread will stick to the knife.

This should be ok for several days, or slice and put in the freezer.

Rinse your dirty dishes in cold water promptly - the batter sets quite hard.

The photo is the loaf I made this morning when I bagged up the flour (at the moment I still grind my own lentils before mixing the flour, so quite an effort).  This has half a teaspoon cocoa and a small handful of seeds mixed into the dough, and a few more seeds sprinkled on the top.  A loaf I left out to see what happened a couple of weeks ago was still ok to slice after a whole week, but I normally slice the bread and put it in the freezer. 

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I'm hoping to get some feedback shortly.  One person suggested that we buy a big bag of the potato protein and share it out between us.  That is a great idea.  If anyone reading this would like to join in and try so of this stuff let me know.

crunchy nutty cinnamon tear-and-share bread

It is cold and windy and yet again the river is in flood.  I wanted the warm comfort of a sweet spicy bread.  I have been continuing to keep a bowl of yeast dough/batter in the fridge, using it most days for a pizza or foccaccia.  This evening I took a good dollop (about three heaped tablespoons) of the batter, stirred in a teaspoon of mixed spice, four teaspoons of sugar, and a small handful of cranberries.  I would have used raisins but don't have any in stock. I spread this on the non-stick pan, and then sprinkled the top with lightly crushed pecans, a couple of teaspoons of sugar crystals and a sprinkling of spice. I put a little butter in small pieces on the top - use plenty if you are ok with dairy and want it richer.

I put this to sit in the oven with a pan of boiling water in the base for half an hour.  The steam gives a warm moist environment and speeds up rising  I then set the oven at 175C and the timer for 22 minutes.  I left the dough in the oven so that it continued to rise as the oven got hot.

This bread is soft, light, sweet and very easy to eat.  It can be spread with butter or eaten plain.  As it has very little fat you don't get sticky/greasy fingers eating it, which is a bonus for those of us that like to take a little bit every few minutes.

The dough is 500g flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal),
20g Solanic potato protein 301 (this makes the dough light and stops slumping).  The potato protein is not necessary for low-rise breads; it is very helpful if you are making a full size loaf or using a breadmaker.
about 700ml water
2tsp dried yeast
pinch sugar.

Mix yeast, sugar and lukewarm water, leave to get a little frothy so you know the yeast is live.  Stir the flour into the water and leave to rise.  Cover and keep in the fridge to use for up to a week as needed.

Gluten free apple strudel recipes - testing pastry

It became a irresistible project - to try making apple strudel with four versions of pastry quite late this evening.  So, a quick look on the internet and the second hit was  a review of strudels by  Felicity Cloake in the  Guardian.  No doubt it would have been better if I remembered to check the recipe when I came to making the strudels - I forgot to brush the pastry with melted butter and then wondered how I was supposed to get all that butter on top of the rolled strudels.  Butter before filling would make the filling less likely to make the pastry soggy and help it to be flexible.  Buttering the baking sheet or using baking parchment would have made it less likely that the strudels would stick too.  This is what I get for making tests too late in the day.  I found a lot of liquid spilled off the baking sheet so it would be better to make this in a shallow tin like a swiss roll tin rather than a flat cookie sheet.

The flour used is my usual 40% urid lentil, 40% tapioca and 20% cornmeal.

I made four versions so I could test my usual flour, and then flour with some tapioca gel that I made for the purpose, some dry prejel tapioca and some Solanic Potato protein. In the past I found that the gel tapioca made it much easier to make very thin pastes for pasta, though I also found that these worked better without egg.  I didn't try a non-egg version this evening.

I mixed the egg and butter into the flour and then divided into four.  One portion was used plain, one had 7g prejel tapioca powder, one five g potato, and one a couple of teaspoons of the gel I made myself (enough to work into a dough).

The doughs handled very differently.  The gel I made myself gave a lovely flexible dough once the gel was worked into the flour mix.  The dry pre-gel tapioca and the plain flour took a bit more work to get a soft dough.  The batch made with the potato starch, which is excellent to reduce slumping in risen breads, was very different; I needed to add more flour as the amount of water I used with the others produced a slurry.  I must have used far too much in this test as it also made the pastry taste weird.

All four pastries rolled easily to a stage where I could see text through them - I didn't struggle to get a finer pastry by using clingfilm to avoid sticking.  I was aiming at a reasonable pastry that I would be prepared to make on a normal day rather than one which took a lot of preparation.

We liked the two pastries made with the gel/prejel tapioca best. The were light and crisp rather than hard.  The potato pastry cut the cleanest but was tough and tasted odd. It is a while since I used this and I am sure that I put too much in - when the strudel was cold it held together very well but was too hard to be inviting. The plain one was good enough that I would make this again without any additives, but compared to the prejel pastry it was a bit harder rather than crisp.

note very neat cut on pastry on left - potato starch

The tapioca versions also seemed to bring out the apple flavour compared to the plain flour.

I don't think the butter on top of the pastry improved the strudel much if at all so I wouldn't bother in future, especially since I keep my dairy intake very low.

I didn't sprinkle the top with nuts or sugar as I wanted the pastry to be easy to judge.  Flaked almonds on top would make the whole thing crisper and more flavoursome.

Overall I would say if you really fancy a strudel the plain flour will make an adequate pastry.  Of course it is years since I made a strudel or even ate one, so I may be making something that bears little resemblance to a proper wheat flour strudel.  However, if you want a rolled fruit filled thin pastry these are fine. If you can't get hold of pre-jel tapioca, which I got through a LinkedIn contact, making it yourself is easy and almost as good in this recipe.

To make tapioca gel
10g tapioca flour
100ml cold water
stir together then cook on a low heat stirring constantly until a clear gel.  Use this for flatbreads to make them easier to roll and more flexible when cold, to make pasta, particularly where you need to handle it such as ravioli.

Recipe
200g flour
1 egg
10g melted butter
water to make soft malleable dough

700g Apples - I used half granny smith and half braeburn, peeled and chopped
50g raisins soaked in 40ml liqueur (soak for a couple of hours if possible) drained
zest one lemon
50g sugar
1/2 tsp mixed spice

Method
Mix egg and melted butter into flour.  Add water (or gel) to form a dough.  Mix well - running dough through a pasta maker works very well or letting it bash in a food mixer, but I just squished it for a couple of minutes in my hands.  Wrap in clingfilm and let it sit for fifteen minutes at room temperature if possible to ensure the flours have absorbed the liquid.

Roll thin, using plenty of flour to stop it sticking to the worktop.

Mix filling ingredients together.

Place the filling along one edge and roll into a log.  Slide onto the baking sheet/tin.

Bake at 190C for 20-40 minutes depending on how large your strudels are.  I made four small strudels and they were cooked after twenty minutes.

gf bread without tapioca - first tests

I started testing bread recipes using a flour mix that has no tapioca in.  For a long time I have used a standard flour mix with urid lentils, tapioca and cornmeal that gives very good results.  However, my step-daughter seems to be unable to tolerate the tapioca, and I know that some people do find this flour difficult.

What with my travels, catching up on normal life and then wrenching my foot badly my planned experiments took a back seat.  However, I tried a plain loaf and a fruited loaf the other day using one third each of the urid lentil flour, brown rice flour (which I just bought from the supermarket so do not know what kind of rice) and yellow cornmeal.  To 600g of this mix I added 1.5 tsp yeast, a tbsp of agave syrup and sufficient water to make a batter ( I think about 800ml).  I also included 30g of potato protein, which helps gf breads not slump, but this is not yet available to domestic consumers.  In the past I found that provided I kept breads below 5cm/2inches and didn't let them rise above the tin they were fine without this.

I poured the batter into the tins, left them to rise in a warm moist oven, and when they nearly reached the top of the tin put the oven on.  The loaves were baked for 50 minutes at 175C, the little rolls baked in muffin tins were baked for 25 minutes.  Remember that this includes the time taken for the oven to get hot.  I find that it is better to leave a gf loaf for longer than you think necessary rather than have an inadequately cooked middle, so if you don't feel sure the bread is done take it out of the tin and put back in the oven for a few more minutes.

The plain loaf did slump a little but does not have a layer of gluey dough.  It is ok to eat plain - just a bit more crumbly than my usual loaf.  I made good croutons with some diced bread, a squirt of oil and some garlic, baked until crisp.  Any left over bread can be turned into breadcrumbs and kept into the freezer until you want to crisply coat something.  Two days later it is still easy to slice without crumbling.

The second loaf and the buns were made from the same batter but with added ingredients.  As this was a first test, and my foot still wouldn't bear my weight, the recipe was an informal and unrecorded handful of this and that.  I added more sugar, some vanilla, a bit of cocoa, about a cupful of chopped dried apricots I had cooked with water to go with breakfast pancakes, some dried blueberries and cranberries.  I also added a tablespoon of oil.  This mixture made a smooth loaf with good  holding qualities.  Two days later it still slices well and is moist without being cloying.  It is sufficiently good that I will work up a proper recipe.

The basic loaf needs a bit more work, but it is promising.  I found that tapioca gave a smooth chewiness to baked goods, whereas rice tended to give a gritty texture.   I always disliked Doves Farm flour for anything other than pancakes and choux pastry because things fell apart and had a lousy rough texture, and thought it was due to the rice.

I am hoping to create a bread mix as tasty and well-behaved as my usual lazy seedy bread. I think next time I will add buckwheat for the additional flavour a well as seeds.

GF Seedy rolls in the campervan

I’ve been driving around France and Italy for the last month, so have been cooking in the campervan.  I made up some bread mix before I left, made with urid, tapioca and conrmeal flours, Solanic potato protein (which stops risen yeasted gluten free breads slumping), lightly crushed buckwheat, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a smidgeon of cocoa powder and some yeast.  I mix with water to a slurry, put into bread tins, sprinkle extra seeds on top, leave to to rise, then bake from cold in my campervan oven.  I have no idea what temperature it is; I just cook the bread until it is toasty brown and has come away from the side of the pan a little.

The last blog on this topic showed my high altitude bread, cooked in Bourg St Maurice when we were skiing.  This is my low altitude seedy rolls; camped by the sea near Sete, on the Mediterranean.

The bread is light, crisp on the outside, and full of flavour.  It also has no added fat or salt.

Lazy bread in the campervan

Before we left England on our European jaunt I mixed up some flours, seeds and yeast (and some Solanic potato protein which helps stop slumping) and made up 400g bags and heat sealed them.  Monday evening I added water to make a thick slurry and left the dough to sit overnight.  

I had no idea if the yeast I had used could cope with being treated this way, but next morning, even in the van which we hadn’t heated, the batter was bubbly so I put it in a bread tin and put it in the oven.  

I have found in the past that this bread copes with being baked from a start in a cold oven, so I just did that here, cooking at full heat for an hour and 15 minutes at a slightly reduced temperature.  I haven’t got a thermometer so I have no idea what temperature the bread was cooked at.  However, the bread came out well cooked and delicious, so I can very definitely say that it works well as a lazy, no idea what the temperature is, campervan bread.

This bread is made with urid lentil, tapioca, and cornmeal flours plus potato protein, pumpkin, sunflower and linseeds, yeast and water.

Gluten-free seedy bread with Solanic potato protein

A pleasant soft brown loaf, good for sandwiches.

Ingredients
500g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
30 sunflower seeds
50g buckwheat
20g pumpkin seeds
1 tsp cocoa
1/4 tsp vanilla
20g solanic potato protein
2 tsp agave syrup
700ml water
3 tsp yeast
2 tbsp rape seed oil


Blitz seeds briefly to a texture you like in a blender - or leave whole if you want a rougher texture
Mix yeast into water if using the kind that need pre-hydrating
Mix all dry ingredients together (see note on yeast above)
Mix water, oil, syrup and vanilla together.
Mix wet ingredients into dry. Beat to be sure well mixed.  Pour into a greased tin or into the container of your bread maker.

If not using bread maker
leave to rise for an hour or two in a warm damp place (I use the oven with a tray of hot water in the bottom).  You should be able to see that the batter has risen but don't leave it to double in size.
Bake at 170C for 45 -55 minutes. It should sound a bit hollow when tapped on the bottom.

In bread maker - Panasonic.  Code 01, xl loaf, dark crust.  Pour batter into tin and set programme to run.

I added a bit more liquid than usual to avoid the cross shaped crack on the top, as suggested by the provider of the Solanic potato protein.  This did avoid the crack but left the bread a little too moist - I couldn't adjust the cooking time as I was using the bread machine with its fixed timings.

I sliced this and took it to a family party where half the people couldn't eat wheat or wheat and gluten and the whole party was gf.  Whilst it was impossible to make people fill in questionnaires about the bread it did seem to be appreciated and I have been asked for the recipe.  This bread was somewhat too moist, and could have done with a bit longer cooking.  However, compared to usual gf products which are hard to eat if  not toasted it was very good.  Add to that it has no dairy, no egg and very little fat, then the bread is exceptional.

variable airholes - used Solanic 301 P

Adding the Solanic potato protein meant that I could have a tall loaf with no slumping.  The basic mixture of flours, seeds and cocoa gave a light brown loaf.  This is a good mixture I will use again.

gluten free bread test using Solanic potato protein

solanic loaf

I have been trying out my new breadmaking machine.  Small loaves are very easy to make well, where finished height of the bread is about 4.5cm.  Increasing the dough volume to make a more traditionally sized loaf tends to lead to slumping as the lack of the elastic gluten means the dough cannot retain its air bubbles when baked.  This loaf was 9.5cm high.

first loaf - slumped

solanic loaf - didn't slump

I made a second batch of basic bread adding just 20g of Passionate 201 (www.solanic.eu).  I had been sent samples to try through a Linkedin contact.  This is an additional 4% of dry ingredients in the bread dough.  I didn't try an equivalent loaf with just an additional 20g of my ordinary flour to be sure it wasn't just a reduction in the wetness of the dough that led to the differences, but I have made bread often enough to be sure that the considerable differences seen in bread without the protein and with the protein are due to the potato protein added.

Ingredients

500g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)

625 ml water

3 tsp yeast (I have been using a lot more yeast than usual due to short rising time in the machine)

1 tbs agave syrup

1/4 tsp vanilla

1 tsp oil

PLUS 20g Solanic Passionate 201, just mixed in with the flour.  All other processes the same as the previous time - cooked on the large loaf, dark crust plain loaf setting (01) in the Panasonic bread machine.  Mixed ingredients tipped into tin and programme left to run.

As can be seen from the pictures the top of the crust did not sink when the potato protein was used.  The crumb was more even.  I think it was slightly too even to feel like bread - the texture seemed more like a madeira cake than bread. It may well be like a normal standard sliced loaf but I never ate that even before I gave up gluten.  My preferred breads are artisan sourdough types. I'll try it again with a smaller amount of the potato protein.

first loaf - some rolling of dough but cut while still warm

solanic loaf - clean cut, even shape

first loaf - less coherence (blade area of tin) and less even toasting

solanic loaf - even toast ( rolling of bread seen on loaf and also blade hole)

Please note that these bread recipes do not contain any of the usual gums that gluten free bread is made with, or eggs or cheese.  The urid lentils included in the flour give better cohesion than other gf flour options.