My Celiac Blog

I build websites. That's what I do. Today I built another website for people on a gluten free diet. It is called Gluten Free Celiac. This site uses the SMF discussion forum package with a front end portal add-on. I also set up some bots to fetch gluten free recipes and food items for sale and post them as messages. There are already 99 recipes and about 50 food items listed, and this part will continue automatically.

What the site needs now is human users. Human users make all the difference in the world. You seem to be a human, so I'd like to invite you to visit the site: http://glutenfreeceliac.com/

Of course it is and always will be free!

Today I had my first complete success in baking GF bread, the first loaf that was completely vegan, gluten free, and did rise without collapsing during the bake cycle. There were two new factors in this loaf that I had not used before. First I used silken tofu as an egg replacer, and second I used Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour, which I will definitely be using in the future. There was no brown rice or white rice flour in this bread at all.
This mix contains Garbanzo Flour, Potato Starch, Tapioca Flour, White Sorghum Flour, and Fava Bean Flour.

I used a recipe based on "Chickpea Yeast Bread" on page 116 of The Best ever Wheat and Gluten-Free Baking Book, I substituted the Bob's Red Mill mix for the 3 cups of various flours, and I used tofu instead of eggs.

Wet Ingredients:
5 ounces silken tofu
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 and 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon Vermont maple syrup

Dry Ingredients:
3 cups Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
3 teaspoons xanthan gum
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 cup Better Than Milk Vegan Beverage Mix, Soy
1 package yeast

Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, try to break up the brown sugar clumps.
Put the silken tofu, olive oil and 1/2 cup of the water in a blender and mix thoroughly.
Put the dry ingredients in your Zojirushi or other bread machine
Pour in the tofu/oil/water blend
Pour in the remaining cup of water
Push the quick cycle (or gluten free cycle) button
Then wait about 2 hours for your delightful bread-like loaf of gluten free bread. Loveses it!

Technorati Tags: Gluten Free Recipe, gluten free bread, gf bread, wheat free, celiac diet, gluten free food, Bob's Red Mill, Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour, Zojirushi, bread maker, bread machine

This was my first ever attempt at a banana pie, and only the third pie I've baked in my life, but 5 minutes after the first tentative slice was cut, half of the pie was gone.

Bottom Crust:
Combine 2 cups of teff flour with 1/2 cup cold water and 1/2 cup olive oil in a mixing bowl. Press this crumbly mixture into the bottom and sides of a 12" pie plate. Some will be leftover. Quantities adapted from a Bob's Red Mill recipe.

Filling:
Blend one 14oz package of silken tofu, 4 heaping teaspoons of brown sugar, 3 ripe to over-ripe bananas and a 1/4 cup of unsweetened soy milk with a teaspoon of cinnamon. Continue blending until it becomes a gelatinous mass. Pour into pie plate. Slice a fourth banana into 1/4" high slices and press into pie filling.

Top Crust:
With any remaining bottom crust mixture, add 1/2 cup brown rice flour, 1/2 cup buckwheat or sorghum flour, 1/4 cup teff flour, 3 heaping teaspoons of brown sugar, and just enough water to form small balls as you mix it all up. Drop this as crumbs onto the pie filling. If needed make some more so that none or very little of the banana pie filling can be seen.

Bake in a 425 degree oven, check in 35 minutes. Should be done in 45 minutes or less. Remove when the top crust looks darker.

Because of all the tofu this pie is unusually high in protein, and bananas are good for you too. Some people might want more sugar, but not me. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Gluten Free Recipe, gluten free diet, bananas, vegan recipe, banana pie

There is a new website for people with celiac disease, the intended use is to provide information and news about celiac disease. Users can register free, and each user is encouraged to maintain their own blog as well as posting messages to a fairly basic forum. Users can also create polls which anyone can vote on, registered or not.

Perhaps the best feature of this new website is the Celiac-related news. It is categorized, mixed, blended and served in your choice of several ways -as just headlines in the left and right sidebars, or in more detail if you use the navigation links.

There is also a big long section of GF recipes, and links to a few GF food items.

The site designer (c'est moi) hopes to build a community of people with celiac disease, and people on a GF diet for other reasons, like autism, are certainly welcome too. There is still time for you to be among the very first people to create an account at All About Celiac. Really, visit http://allaboutceliac.org/ today! It's all free, of course.

Technorati Tags: celiac, gluten free, celiac disease, gluten free diet, gf, autism, gluten free recipe, GF videos

Recently I got so tired of watching everyone else eat baked goods and not having any myself that I decided to try baking my own breads and muffins again. I've stocked up on various GF flours, and today I made a bread loosely based on a recipe from The Best Ever Wheat and Gluten Free Baking Book, page 115. It was called Yeast Bread with Molasses before I made my changes.

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups brown rice flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup potato flour
1/2 cup whole millet, cracked in a coffee grinder
2.5 tsp xanthan gum
1.5 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients:

3 "eggs" worth of Ener-G egg replacer (or real eggs if you like)
1.5 cups warm water
2 tsp rice vinegar
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (or equivalent butter or margarine)
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
3 tbsp sugar
1 packet yeast

Blend the dry ingredients. In another non-metallic bowl mix the liquids and egg replacer, then heat the mix in a microwave for 20 seconds, or long enough to make it feel warm to your finger. Then add the yeast to the liquids, stir gently, and let it stand for 5 minutes or until you see foam from the yeast working.

Put the dry ingredients in your bread machine, and pour the wet ingredients in on top. Run a quick or gluten-free cycle. Or if not using a bread machine mix the ingredients and let it stand to rise for 1/2 hour. Then bake in the oven at 350F or 180C or gas mark 4 until brown. Enjoy!

My first useful loaf of bread in a few years did not rise very much in our bread machine, but it sure was delicious. I loved it!

Technorati Tags: Gluten-free recipe, GF recipe, gluten free bread, celiac disease, GF diet

A Rosti is a Swiss dish consisting primarily of grated fried, or sometimes baked potatoes. Often there are other ingredients added, for example cheese.

I've discovered a way to make a Rosti that has a sort of fake cheese flavor. I often make this dish for breakfast on a weekend morning. It's easy and tasty. The secret to the fake cheese flavor is the vinegar.

Cover the bottom of a 10 inch skillet with peanut or olive oil. Add about a half bag of frozen hash browns, it should be about an inch high in the skillet while still frozen. Add a tablespoon of turmeric, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a teaspoon of salt, and pepper to taste. Mix all the ingredients to spread out the golden yellow color of the turmeric, then let it sizzle over medium heat until the bubbling of escaping moisture slows down.

Use a pizza sheet or other flat metal object to flip the Rosti, then slide it back into the skillet. If you have waited just the right length of time you'll see a delightful golden brown color on the surface of what was the bottom.

Let it cook a few more minutes and enjoy with a fresh cup of coffee. Yum.

Technorati Tags: gluten free recipe, breakfast, gf diet, celiac

This morning I made a batch of Orgran Apple Cinnamon Gluten Free Pancake Mix, which I use in my waffle maker.

Whenever I use any GF pancake mix, I always make waffles instead, I really like waffles, and the GF versions of waffles usually are not too bad either, because the flours tend toward making a crisp finished product, and that is expected in a waffle. I use an ordinary small Krups waffle maker and the finished product comes out pretty much as expected. If you look at the list of ingredients, the first one is corn starch. This is a highly processed carbohydrate and is likely to make your blood sugar bounce. It seems many people with celiac disease need to watch out for this. To help minimize this effect I used soy milk instead of water to mix the batter.
So I always drench my waffles with peanut butter, which is high in fat, or fruit which also slows down digestion. The first batch I made today was covered in mandarin oranges before serving.

It's a special event when I cook something that is sold explicitly as a gluten free product, so after I had my two waffles with oranges, I smeared one more with peanut butter. Most weekday mornings I'll have a pair of Trader Joe's Gluten Free Banana Waffles literally covered with peanut butter. Mmm.

Orgran gluten free products are made in Australia and sold, among other places, at Amazon.com.

Technorati Tags: gluten free recipe, gluten free, celiac, gf waffles, gluten free food, gluten free diet