lpellegr

Summer is coming - I'll bet you could reheat frozen food in your car just fine by parking on the street with your windows closed for an hour!

I would expect "inflammatory foods" to not be good for anyone. If you have specific examples you would probably get more answers. Our foods to avoid are wheat, rye, barley, often oats, and anything made from them or contaminated with them.

The spatula is the thing that keeps me from ordering their burgers - when they are done with the burger they slide it off the spatula onto the bun, and there's the point of contact between bun and spatula. But the fries are the only fast-food fries around that I feel safe with, and they are wonderful.

I hope it worked out for you. I had a great experience at Hershey, and the best gluten-free pizza I've ever had, including my homemade. If you're in the area, try Dorney Park as well. Not as many gluten-free options, but enough to survive on for the day, especially the fresh-cut french fries.

Methylcellulose has been around for a long time in food, as a thickener and emulsifier. You have probably consumed it without knowing it. Citrucel is methylcellulose. The difference with this product is that they are marketing it to the public as well as to industry. It's not new or strange, just unfamiliar to most people. It would be interesting to see what effect Citrucel would have in bread. Hmmm, my next baking experiment...

Reduce the amount of liquid in the recipes (this will take some trial and error), and bake a little longer (5 minutes at a time, test the top with a finger to see if it feels firm - if it's too springy it may not be done inside).

Cold sesame noodles!

Cook rice pasta (spaghetti-style), rinse in cold water, and set aside.

Sauce:

Mix 4T peanut butter with 4T of sesame oil.

Add:

2T minced garlic

4T sliced scallions (or use onion and garlic powder to taste)

6 teaspoons of sugar

1/2 c white or rice vinegar

up to 1 c gluten-free soy sauce (I think 1 c is too much, I like my sauce thicker)

Top a plateful of noodles with scrambled egg, strips of chicken or turkey, and strips of cucumber, pour on some of the sauce. Hot sauce optional.

But you can throw any leftover veggies or meat in with this sauce, it's versatile. And the only cooking is the noodles.

I think it might be helpful if your co-workers and supervisors knew about you having to eat gluten-free, because I have found that most are willing to consider that when making restaurant decisions in the future. In fact, I have co-workers come up to me all excited to tell me about a new gluten-free food or restaurant they heard about, because as a celiac sufferer I am an exotic beast to them. There should be no reason to hide it from them. I'd prefer my co-workers think I'm not eating with them because I'm afraid of getting sick than they assume that I'm not eating with them because I'm a snob or have some sort of social problem.

When we go out to an Indian place with a buffet, I avoid the buffet because of cross-contamination fears, but since we have been to the same place numerous times I now know that they can make me chicken tikka masala that is gluten-free. The first time there I showed them a Triumph dining card and asked them to check the ingredients, and they did. I have to wait a little longer for mine to come from the kitchen while they all go to the buffet, but none of us have a problem with that. They also take my needs into account when planning Christmas or other lunches out. If we go out somewhere that I have not been before, I find the menu online and pick out 2 or 3 entrees that look like they are or could be gluten-free, print out my homemade dining card, write down the chosen entrees, and ask if they would check each of them for me. That way I don't have to take a lot of time explaining and looking over the menu once we get to the restaurant.

Gluten-free bread is difficult and it sometimes takes many tried to get it right, so don't give up. If you're using a mix, make sure you follow their instructions carefully. Use a thermometer to check the water temperature, and don't add all the water until you see how it is mixing. You want all of the dry ingredients to be wet and incorporated, but often you don't need all of the water. Stop the mixer and scrape the batter with a spatula - it should hold its shape but not be stiff and hard to move, but also not be drippy. How big is your bread pan? Maybe try a smaller or at least narrower one. Don't let the dough rise higher than the top of the pan. When you have baked it for the suggested time, touch it in the middle. It should be firm, but a little springy. If it feels too springy (and this is one of the things that unfortunately you might have to learn from repeat tries), put it back in for 5 minutes, and repeat if necessary. If you can stick an instant-read thermometer into the center of the bread, it should be at least 190 degrees.

Despite your best efforts it might still fall a little in the middle, because gluten-free bread is evil and hates us and laughs at us behind our backs. If it is so ugly that you can't stand to see it as a sandwich, you can always cube it and dry it out in the oven for bread crumbs and croutons. But keep trying, and learn to enjoy sandwich fillings naked, because you will probably end up eating less bread than you used to, in which case you won't have to be sad when your expensive bread mix doesn't turn out. And remember we're here for you.

I made mac and cheese today with Tinkyada elbows. 12 minutes works fine, then drain them. If the sauce is ready, don't even bother rinsing them off, just dump them in the sauce. It freezes well in individual servings. I adapted the sauce recipe from a box of regular elbow macaroni:

Melt 3 T butter on low heat

Add 2 T cornstarch, 1 t powdered mustard, 1 t salt

Stir to get lumps out, don't let it brown.

Add 2 c milk, raise heat and stir constantly until it boils.

Add 8 oz shredded cheese, stir until melted.

Add cooked pasta.

Put into greased casserole dish. Top with gluten-free bread crumbs if you want.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes.

What about non-sweet things like lunchmeat or pepperoni? Hummus and carrots if you can eat sesame? Refried beans and rice chips? Hard-boiled eggs? Pickled herring? Mashed potatoes? Might sound silly, but all good snacks to tide you over till the next meal. My snacks are often just small quantities of meal food.

There are recipes, but I wouldn't call any of them easy. And it's tough to get that rye flavor. King Arthur Flour (website and catalog) has a rye flavoring that can be added to a plain recipe, and I think it's gluten-free but I'd check before buying it. You'll want caraway seeds too, and some of the recipes add molasses and cocoa powder and coffee to darken the bread.

Here's a recipe from Bette Hagman's book The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread:

1-3/4 c Four Flour Bean Mix (a flour blend)

1/4 c brown rice flour

1-1/2 t xanthan gum

1/2 t salt

1 t unflavored gelatin

1/4 c almond meal

2 t caraway seeds

1 t cocoa powder

1/4 t rye flavor powder

1-1/2 t instant coffee crystals

1 t dried orange peel

2 T brown sugar

2-1/4 t dry yeast

Combine all of the above and set aside.

In your mixer bowl:

1 egg + 1 egg white

1/2 t cider vinegar

3 T margarine or butter

1 t molasses

about 1 c warm water (don't put all of it in)

Mix the wet ingredients. Gradually add the dry ingredients, adding more water if necessary to make a batter as thick as cake batter. Beat on high 3-4 minutes. Spoon into greased and rice-floured pan. Cover and let rise to the top of the pan. Bake in preheated 400 oven for 50-60 minutes.

I have made this and it's pretty good, even without the rye flavoring, but it's not exactly the same as real rye bread after all that work. But give it a try if you want it badly enough.

Did you notice that the Bob's mix is meant to make 2 round pizza crusts? I find that the whole mix is enough to fill a large cookie sheet and make a big Sicilian-style pie. If you were putting all of the dough on one round pan, it would be too thick. Try dividing it or making the big rectangular pie. Follow their instructions carefully and it should come out right. One tip they give that really helps is using wet fingers to pat it into the pan. That really works. I keep dipping my fingers in a bowl of water and the dough doesn't stick to them.

That would work, but I have to try for a higher loaf. It's for someone else, not just consumption by my own self, and a bigger loaf is the goal.

1. It smells great.

2. It's okay to find crunchy bits.

3. You can do it in front of anybody.

4. You can immediately do it again.

5. It's okay if your face and fingers smell like butter for the rest of the day.

6. You can lick your fingers afterwards and enjoy it.

7. You don't have to wash the sheets; everything just shakes right out.

8. You can tell people about how good it was without squicking them.

9. You can include as many other people as you would like, or do it alone.

10. It won't mess up your hair.

11. It doesn't matter if your legs are shaved or not.

12. No one cares if you leave your house and buy it somewhere else.

More?

I have smaller pans, but they are better for 2 cup recipes like many of Bette Hagman's. I get better rise with some of her recipes, which use lighter flours or include some bean flour but not sorghum or millet. But you're right, nothing like the wheat breads I used to make with that nice high dome on top. I'm also looking forward to the responses!

I bake a lot of gluten-free bread, and one of the biggest challenges so far is trying to make it rise higher. Mostly I work with Ginger Lemon Girl's Favorite Sandwich Bread (it's on her blog), which really tastes good but is rather dense and heavy. It's a 3 cup of flour recipe, so I've been using pans in the 5 x 9 or 10" range. Once it rises to the top of the pan it doesn't usually go higher. If I encourage it to go higher, it sags over the edges of the pan. I think this is just due to the nature of gluten-free dough, but if anyone out there has some tips I'd be happy to hear them. I have tried:

Rising on the counter at room temp covered by a towel.

Rising in a pre-heated (200) oven covered by greased plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out.

Increasing the amount of dough in the pan (not a good idea).

Putting a collar of greased foil around the pan to increase the height of the sides (the foil seems to have insulated the pan somewhat so that it actually rose less than its non-collared duplicate and took longer to bake).

I'm considering:

Replacing some of the millet/sorghum flours with white rice flour to make it less dense.

Using a narrower and higher pan from King Arthur Flour (4" wide, 4" tall).

Switching back from the Asian store potato starch (which might be potato flour) to BRM potato starch.

The yeast is fine and there are 3t of xanthan gum holding it together, as well as eggs and gelatin and ground flax seed. Normal wheat flour dough will cling to the sides of the pan as it rises, so the center will puff up while the sides stay down. This dough tends to stay flat on top and spill over the sides if it does go higher.

Anybody with baking experience, I'd love to hear your suggestions. Thanks!

I wouldn't be at all at ease eating from the so-called gluten free menu at TGI Friday's. My experience there is that what's on the gluten-free menu online doesn't have anything to do with the current menu and the staff is not well trained. Eat there at higher risk than in some place like Outback (although cheaper).

Try couchsurfing.org for places where people will let you crash on their couch. Probably not gluten-free, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

That would be a great recipe if I actually liked eating chard and eggplant. I can force myself, but eggplant is most edible when heavily breaded, thoroughly fried (while absorbing absurd amounts of olive oil), and drowned in mozzarella and red sauce! But thanks anyway.

Thanks, all. That recipe for baked spinach dumplings sounds like what I made, but not boiled, so maybe that's the key. I made regular flour ricotta gnocchi back in my wheat-eating days without draining, so I thought that would work, but maybe not with gluten-free flour. At any rate, I think with all these suggestions I will have a good way to use up my leftover ricotta before it turns brown and yicky from neglect (and believe me, this is really gross).

Thanks for the recipes - these have potato, but I was trying for ricotta gnocchi to use up my lasagna leftover. One is also pan-fried instead of boiled, so that would solve the falling-apart-in-boiling-water problem. I'll have to keep trying. I know I have had success with potato gnocchi, but maybe ricotta needs more magic.

The flour mix was white rice, tapioca, cornstarch, and potato starch (I forget the proportions at the moment), typical of the earliest blends before people started going for higher protein flours. I didn't measure - just kept adding and mixing, since I was using leftover ricotta and didn't measure it. I was aiming for slightly sticky, not completely dry, but I think I stopped too soon. I was adapting loosely from Lydia Bastianich's recipe for ricotta gnocchi.

I can usually hand-make anything I crave and it comes out okay, but I just had a specTACular failure! I am both disappointed and amused by how hard it failed. I combined ricotta, thawed and squeezed chopped spinach, an egg, parmesan cheese, and a bunch of Bette Hagman's original flour blend. That flour does a great job thickening things, so I figured it would hold the gnocchi together. No xanthan gum. I didn't want them to get too dense, so maybe I used less flour than I should, but they were a bit too sticky to roll out into the traditional rope for cutting into individual gnocchi, so I rolled spoonsful into balls and then flattened them with a fork, froze them on a tray, then bagged them for the freezer. Tonight I boiled water, dropped them in, and watched them mostly dissolve into white soup full of spinach bits. I managed to fish out a bowl full of enough blobs to make a dinner of, but something obviously went wrong. I recall making successful potato gnocchi (as long as I didn't cook them too long), so anybody have ideas for me? Should I have used xanthan gum? More or different flour? Cooked fresh and not attempted to freeze? These were gnot the gnocchi I gneeded.

Also be aware that gluten-free breads are batter breads - you not only don't knead them, you really can't, and rolling them out requires different techniques than wheat bread. Because the batter is sticky, you will want to roll or pat out between sheets of wax paper or plastic generously coated with gluten-free flour, and don't expect it to behave the way you are used to. There may be a few bad words involved before you finish.

Another thing to be very aware of is that if you haven't been baking gluten-free long but you have been baking with regular flour, you could unknowingly contaminate the gluten-free stuff with gluten. Check that all utensils (pans, bowls, etc) are completely free of old crumbs. Don't use a sieve or colander that has been used for regular flour. Don't use butter or Crisco that you have used for gluten baking, because you might have reached into it with something contaminated by gluten. Open new packages. Did you ever dip into the sugar or brown sugar with a cup that had been filled with flour? You would have contaminated the entire container of sugar. Wooden spoons are porous and will trap gluten, so get separate spoons for gluten-free work. Carefully clean all work surfaces to make sure there are no crumbs left from anything with gluten. Could there be flour trapped in the crevices of your mixer? Think of all these things before you bake something gluten-free. We know you want to provide your loved one with the comforts of good food, but you have to be sure not to accidently include any nasty surprises!