lpellegr

Look into Bette Hagman's crumpet recipe. She has one with bean flour and one without, and either one turns out unusually soft and fluffy. I make them in English muffin rings but they would probably work fine in a bun pan. I have even used it as pizza dough.

Someone suggested that the yeast should do most of its growth before it hits the oven. Try letting it rise longer, until the center of the dough is about level with the top of the pan, and bake at 400. I just let it rise at room temp on the counter, covered with a clean dish towel. Lately it takes about 30-40 minutes to rise that much on the counter, and about an hour and 10 minutes total in the oven. When I put it out to rise I set a timer for 30 minutes, then come back to check on it and heat the oven when it goes off. Also try preheating your oven about 10 minutes longer because when that little bell goes off to tell you it's ready, the air inside is heated, but the walls aren't fully heated yet. Giving it more time allows for more even consistent heating, which might kill the yeast quicker and stop the over-rising. I always put foil over it after 10 minutes in the oven, which theoretically keeps it from overbrowning, and by then it seems to have hit maximum height.

This is for a recipe with 2 cups of flour total in an 8-1/2 x 4-1/2 pan. I find if the recipe calls for 3 cups of flour you need a bigger pan (9 or 9-1/2 x 5 or 5-1/2) or a small pan with some buns on a separate tray or muffin tin. I have to say I also tried that famous flax bread that everyone raves about, and had no better luck with it than with anything else. But I'm going to keep using smaller amounts of yeast because it seems to be working for me.

Man, I thought making regular bread with all that kneading was an art! It had nothin' on the peculiarities and eccentricities of gluten-free bread.

Lasagna or baked ziti with gluten-free pasta (Tinkyada is best). Deviled eggs. Swedish meatballs in the crockpot (use stale gluten-free bread for crumbs). Stuffed mushrooms with gluten-free ingredients. Some of these may be time consuming, but you could make meatballs or lasagna ahead and freeze, boil eggs and stuff at the last minute. With cheese plates, etc. If you have non-gluten-free bread for sandwiches, put it in another room from the rest and have a note by the deli platter instructing people to go get it after everything else is on their plates so they don't contaminate your serving utensils. Good ice cream with toppings (nuts and syrups and crushed gluten-free cookies) for dessert. Check all labels, of course.

I just wanted to follow up on this and see if anybody else has tried it. I have been having good results using less yeast - the bread doesn't seem to over-rise any more and doesn't collapse as it cools. I have also been giving it an extra 10 minutes in the oven to help with the final cooking in the center, but I think it helps a lot that it didn't go overboard rising. I use 1t where 2-1/4 t is called for. Today I used 1 t instead of 1 T, and it still worked. It doesn't seem to take longer to rise to the top of the pan, either.

If you want to bake from scratch, try this awesome flourless chocolate mousse cake.

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a springform pan (they recommend 8 or 9 inches, but it comes out fine in larger size) and sprinkle it with ground almonds if you have them.

In a double boiler or the microwave, melt 1 and 1/4 sticks of butter and 10 and 1/2 oz dark chocolate (they recommend 70% cocoa, but others work) and 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar, stirring frequently.

Beat 5 eggs. Add 1T ground almonds, but I really don't think you'll notice if you leave them out. Fold the eggs into the melted chocolate mix and stir until thickened, several minutes. Pour the cake into the pan, smooth the top, bake 45 minutes or until the top is set and beginning to crack. When cooled, remove the sides of the pan and cut.

If you don't have a springform pan, use any kind of pan - it will still taste amazing, but you won't get nice neat slices. Heck, I never get nice neat slices anyway but nobody seems to care once they taste it.

I used to make kneaded wheat bread on a regular basis. The only time I saw instructions for overnight rising was from very old recipes (where you might have been using a sourdough starter of unknown potency in a house without central heating) or for a breakfast bread where you let it rise in the fridge overnight. Generally it was an hour or so for the first rising, punch down, then put in the pan and let rise again until it was where you wanted it.

Yes, the yeast is doubling over and over and over, and so eventually after enough time you will get it to the point where there are the same number of yeast cells as if you started with more in the first place. Kneading and punching down wheat bread allows the gluten to develop and maxes the amount of yeast in your bread by reducing the gas volume and allowing growth to continue without the dough running over the edge of the pan. However, the gluten in those breads allows the gas pockets created by the yeast to stretch to large volumes without the walls of that gas pocket coming apart. The sides of my gluten-free loaves always look like the top pulled apart from the side during that first 10 minutes in the oven, which doesn't happen so dramatically with wheat breads. I suspect that the xanthan gum and proteins we add aren't as strong and stretchy as gluten, so when the gas bubbles form in our bread they don't stay in neat small bubbles, but break and merge to form larger bubbles that end up as holes and tunnels. At least in my disappointing breads. So maybe by starting with less yeast the gas pockets will be smaller and won't be able to merge into giant bubbles. It's worth checking out. I am a scientist so my training is to experiment to find out if my theory is correct or bogus. That's where all of you come in. I'm sure many of you have more experience with these breads than I do, and it could be I'm wrong, or I'm right but for the wrong reasons, or that it only works in my kitchen. I figure the worst that happens is I waste a little time and generate another bag of bread crumbs or croutons if the bread is no better than usual. I wonder what would happen if we let our bread rise, then beat it down with a wooden spoon and let it rise again? Experiment number 2.

Last week I made a loaf of bread from a mix - I think it was Bob's Red Mill multigrain gluten-free or something - lots of seeds. When I put the yeast into the water it was very unenthusiastic and showed little sign of growth, but I went ahead and used it anyway. The bread came out normal height (for wheat bread), and hardly collapsed at all, and wasn't full of holes and tunnels. It even held up for sandwiches. Could it be that non-gluten bread works better with less yeast? Without as much force from the yeast growth pushing the bread to ridiculous heights once it hits the oven, there might be fewer large cavities inside and less pressure breaking apart the xanthan gum/gelatin/protein connections inside. Or maybe it's just that particular bread mix was good.

At any rate, I tried baking a loaf of Bette Hagman's four flour bean bread today and I used 1 teaspoon of yeast instead of 2-1/4 (which is the amount in a packet). This is a recipe where the yeast is added to the dry ingredients so you don't get to see the yeast growing and foaming before you add it. It seemed to help - the bread still rose to stupid heights, but not as much as usual. I baked it an extra 10 minutes to try to prevent the usual collapse, and between the lower yeast and the extra time, it held its shape pretty well. When I finally cut it, it had a very regular crumb with only a few oversize holes, compared to my usual mess.

Give it a try and let's hear what you find. I think I'm going to do this on a regular basis with my scratch recipes and see if it makes a difference. It doesn't seem to hurt and it might help. Tell us, bakers - does it work for your recipes?

It helps to use good quality pasta. I have frozen lasagna made with Tinkyada noodles with good results. If your pasta dish will stay edible for a few days in the fridge then it should be okay in the freezer. If it is gross in the fridge by the next day, don't attempt to freeze it. Some pastas just can't cut it. Always test the noodles for doneness well before the time on the package, too. I use Tinkyada elbows for homemade mac and cheese, and I only cook them 12 minutes. I think the package says 16-17. This keeps well in the fridge and also freezes well.

A separate prep area for your husband's food outside the kitchen? That rocks! I had to divorce mine to get my kitchen gluten-free (among other benefits)...

This is exactly the same as Bette Hagman's Rapid Rise French Bread from "More from the Gluten-Free Gourmet". The original recipe calls for 2T egg replacer (from Ener-G, contains no egg), not egg substitute, but either way it's optional. I agree, it's very good and has made it into my "Keep" file. Once it's cool you can slice it the long way and make French bread pizza. I made a bunch of those, then vacuum sealed and froze. Take them out of the freezer and bake for 15-20 min and get crunchy hot French bread pizza whenever you have a craving.

I haven't tried it, but I'll bet cornstarch would work.

But from what I've read there's really no proven medical value in keeping cholesterol numbers down. It doesn't reduce deaths from heart disease, and in some populations there is actually more death in low cholesterol than in high cholesterol groups. Sure, all the doctors believe that it's necessary to keep cholesterol low because teams of doctors with links to the manufacturers of statins told them so, but the studies don't show any consistent benefit. Other things are more likely risk factors for heart disease. I'm going to eat like my ancestors, most of whom lived to 80 or more, and see how I do.

I forgot - if you have an Apple store nearby, you can set up an appointment and they will look at it.

Keep looking online - there are places that do iPod repair. I think I remember names like Mac ResQ and iPodrepair, but google "iPod repair". You might just need your battery replaced. The place I used charged $30 to send me a custom made box with shaped foam inserts to send it in for diagnosis. They then told me what was wrong and what it would take to fix it. This particular iPod was damaged beyond repair (my daughter tried to change the battery but missed a few crucial steps in the instructions) so they bought it from me to use for parts for $30. They will tell you what's wrong and you can decide how the cost of fixing it compares to buying a new one. Note: if you do buy a new iPod, check first to see if you have the operating system it needs. I bought a 3rd generation nano and found out too late it needed OSX 10.4.8, and I only had 10.3.9 and had had them engrave the damn thing so I couldn't return it. Fortunately I made a trade with someone with the right OS. The only time I ever cursed Apple.

I started taking cholesterol meds at the same time I went gluten-free. I had tried niacin, but just couldn't cope with the flushing (which also itched like mad). My total cholesterol wasn't bad, but my lipid ratios weren't good. The lowest dose of Vytorin worked, keeping everything well below bad ranges, but I often wondered whether my numbers could have been bad due to gluten and I wondered how they would look now after a few years gluten-free. Now that the news about Vytorin not being any more effective than Zocor alone has come out, I stopped it and was thinking of having my doctor write a prescription for Lipitor. Since you never know if a generic has gluten I looked up "atorvastatin and gluten" on Google and found a link to one of these gluten-free forum threads referring to the book "The Cholesterol Con". I haven't read the book, but I've read lots of reviews and summaries online and I think I'm just going to say screw it and stop the cholesterol meds entirely. I have been trying to eat real, simple, unprocessed food that my great-grandmother would have recognized, and I'm going to keep that up. Butter instead of margarine, meat, veggies and fruits, cheese, beans, nuts, as little man-made food as possible. Like Michael Pollan says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". I have spent most of my working life in the pharmaceutical industry, but I'm not going to swallow their products anymore without some proof I need them. Now the Zyrtec, that I'll keep - that really does make a difference. I'm not a Luddite, I'm not avoiding drugs, but if there's no proof that lowering my cholesterol will keep me alive longer or save me from disability, I'm not going to waste my money (and my insurance company's money). Thoughts?

I make Bette Hagman's Rapid-Rise French bread from "More From the Gluten-Free Gourmet" and it's good, especially hot out of the oven or as a base for french bread pizza, but you're right, the batter can be a little thin. Instead of a cookie sheet I use a baguette pan, and instead of rolling the kneaded dough into a loaf like with wheat bread, you don't knead gluten-free bread, you just spoon glops of it onto the pan in a line. If you don't have a baguette pan, I would suggest using foil to create half-pipes on the cookie sheet to help the dough keep its shape, otherwise it might just spread out on the pan and not give you that long thin shape.

Agar is probably what you get from the Asian store. Sometimes called Agar-agar. It's a different texture from gelatin, but you can still make a soft but solid block with it.

It actually looks like a pretty good list of healthy stuff. You could add more vegetables and beans and salads to round it out.

Can you eat hummus, using carrot sticks and other veggies to pick it up?

Can you find corn tortillas to make wraps and sandwiches?

How about using chicken broth (Swanson regular is safe) to make soups out of some of these ingredients for a little variety, like chicken noodle with broken gluten-free pasta or vegetable beef?

I don't see beef or pork - you could add those if you like them.

You could find gluten-free waffles for breakfast (check the labels for dairy and eggs).

Bush's or B & M baked beans are nice as a side dish or just a quick lunch with a corn muffin.

Other kinds of beans make interesting and filling hummus-like dips when you mash them up with garlic or other seasonings.

Try refried beans and salsa on corn tostadas.

Make tacos without cheese.

How about stir frying some of your meat and vegetables? Cut up chicken or pork bite-size and stir fry with shredded carrots, cabbage (napa or bok choy work well), bean sprouts, season with something like sweet and sour sauce.

Sausage dishes, risotto with onions and veggies and meat (leaving out the cheese).

Cook chicken in the slow-cooker with interesting sauces and serve over your grains.

Look through Atkins or South Beach cookbooks for lots of meat and veggie recipes.

I'll bet you could make gluten-free rice crispie treats with the right cereal.

Your list might feel limiting to you, but it's full of healthy food and I'm sure you can safely expand it with help from this group. Try looking through the recipes on this site for ideas for livening up what you can eat.

We just got one and I love it. The fries, especially, if you haven't had fast food fries in a while and can handle peanut oil. The fries are just potatoes fried in peanut oil, nothing else is fried in the oil, and if you ask for regular fries to go and nothing else you get a whopping massive amount. The burgers are good, get them without the bun, but for me the fries are the attraction. I hadn't had fast food fries in 3 years, and although they are not like McDonald's or Wendy's fries, they are pretty darn good. I was going to save half of that massive first purchase, but they were so good I ate them all. Unfortunately they opened up next to Curves so I worked out this morning to the aroma of frying onions and left to the smell of bacon. Good thing Five Guys wasn't open yet or I would have completely negated my workout.

Yes, and they make great "Chex" mix!

This is not vegan, but here's a not too difficult sauce for mac and cheese:

On low heat, melt 2T butter (or any substitute).

Season with 1t salt, 1t dry mustard. Vary to suit your taste.

Stir in 3T cornstarch until thoroughly combined.

Add 2 cups of milk or milk alternative. Doesn't seem to work with Lactaid, though. Raise the heat to high and keep stirring until it thickens and just begins to boil.

At this point add shredded cheese (2 c works well) and stir to melt. Add cooked macaroni and bake at 375 for 25 min or pour over it like a sauce and just eat. It seems to keep in the fridge very well when I use Tinkyada elbows and only cook them (2 cups dry) for 12 minutes before adding.

If if says no wheat, it should be okay. The other option is to buy a tiny bottle of La Choy and take that along when you go out. It's not great, but it's better than no soy sauce at all.

I don't think anybody ever likes these breads, they just find ones they can tolerate and get used to them. I found a brand of frozen bagel I like, waffles I like, pizza crust that's not bad, and recipes that work most of the time for bread and pizza crust. But mostly I just gave up on bread. This diet is a matter of adapting and saying goodbye to your old way of eating. Find what works for you and don't look back!

I have good luck with this recipe, but I don't use most of the dies that come with the cookie press because even before I went gluten-free I couldn't get the damn cookies to press out properly! My favorite was always the die with a small 6-pointed star that created a long spiky snake of dough which could then be shaped into wreaths or candy cane shapes. Most new presses don't include that die. The other that works well is like a long jagged line that makes a flat bar cookie that looks like a plowed field. Whatever die you choose, here is the recipe that works for me:

2 sticks/1 cup butter at room temperature (margarine would probably also work, but get one with high fat content for baking, and butter just tastes better)

2/3 cup sugar

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Add 3 egg yolks. Do not use whites or the cookies will puff up and not have the shortbread texture.

Add 1 t almond or vanilla flavoring.

Gradually add 2 1/2c flours: start with 1 c brown rice flour, then 1/2c sweet rice flour, then go back to the brown rice flour. You may have to adjust the final amount of flour until the dough is stiff enough, depending on the moisture content of the other ingredients.

Press out or roll thin and cut into squares. Place on ungreased cookie sheets. Sprinkle with colored sugar. Bake at 400 F 7-10 minutes - you want the bottoms to be just starting to brown. Let sit on the pan a minute to firm up, then transfer to paper towels to cool.

Don't overmix - that will toughen it up. The more liquid you add, the softer the finished meatballs will be. The crumbs will soak it up. I make Italian meatballs - ground beef, gluten-free crumbs (lots), lots of minced garlic, parsley, salt, one egg per pound, and while I mix it with one hand I use the other hand to add water a little at a time from a cup I have ready, until it feels moist enough. My father, the Italian who grew up in the Depression, says if you don't have breadcrumbs you can use things like cooked rice or potato or even cooked lentils to stretch the meat - anything moist. I roll it into 2" balls and saute in olive oil, repeatedly turning, until crunchy on all sides, but if you have enough time you can drop them, raw or cooked, into tomato sauce while it cooks and they will come out extremely tender - you just have to make sure they're in there long enough. At least an hour would be my guess, although I don't do the raw ones myself. If you're going to simmer them in sauce you could bake the whole batch in the oven to get them cooked through, then transfer to the sauce. We usually like ours crunchy, so frying does it for us.

Bowl of Greek yogurt topped with cashews and honey or whatever fruit you have on hand will keep you full longer than you would think, and no cooking. I also make batches of gluten-free corn muffins, freeze them, then take two out in a plastic bag to defrost the night before, or toss in the microwave if I forget.