Adapted from a Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe I’ve been making since school.
They’re good but the cake is better than the cupcakes.
Lesson learned.
Food
As an aside – I’ve not been feeling very much like picking up the metaphorical pen recently. I’ve been a little daunted at the prospect of putting my thoughts down on paper. Why? No idea. But hopefully I can get over it.
One thing I’m really going to miss about being gluten-free is a decent loaf of bread. And I couldn’t believe the price of the mean little offerings in the supermarket, so I need to find a good recipe of my own. Now I have my trusted Kitchen Aid stand mixer, it takes no time at all to bake anything, so I have no excuse.
So far I’ve make 3 loaves of gluten free bread, and this is their story.
The first gluten-free loaf.
Loaf 1
I decided that a good place to start would be the recipe on the packet of the Doves Farm Gluten Free Strong White Bread Flour, so I merrily made up a batch. I only realised afterwards that I had used the wrong kind of yeast. Rookie mistake if ever there was one.
This loaf was dense and chewy and generally quite weird. In the toaster it made a fizzing noise. That is definitely not ideal. Loaf 1 was a definite fail.
Gluten-free loaf #2.
Loaf 2
I decided that I couldn’t really blame the recipe for the failing of Loaf 1, using the wrong yeast was pretty stupid, and it could be amazing with the right yeast. The texture was better and more bread-like, but it was still somehow dry and chewy at the same time. It didn’t fizz in the toaster which was a definite plus, but it wasn’t very tasty, so I’m afraid it’s still a no.
And my third attempt at gluten-free bread.
Loaf 3
I am a massive Dan Lepard fan. His How To Bake column in The Guardian is a serious must read for me, and I’ve never cooked any recipe of his without success, so I was quite excited when I stumbled across a Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread Recipe of his from 2009.
This recipe was a lot more time intensive than other recipes as you have to leave the bread to rise twice and then cook it for fifty minutes. Yes that’s right I said fifty minutes. For some reason my dough didn’t rise at all the second time, and I hadn’t really done a great job at shaping it, it was getting late and I was trying to watch something, but this is still my most successful attempt so far.
The texture was much more like bread, which having done some internet reading is probably down to the psyllium husks. These are apparently the new wonder ingredient in gluten-free baking and you’d hope so for the price! But they vastly improved the texture. My one criticism was that when the bread was warm I could smell the vinegar as I ate it, which was a little off putting. But I will definitely try this loaf again, perhaps with another vinegar (I probably used Red Wine, so perhaps Apple Cider?), and maybe next time I’ll attempt to make it look a little nicer.
Anyway, those are my gluten-free bread adventures so far. There will be more. Many many more. Watch this space.
Read MoreI have been thinking about going gluten-free for a while, and then after suddenly suffering various allergic reactions, despite never having had any allergies, I decided it was time to give it a try.
It’s quite an easy decision to make, especially now our supermarkets have great selections of gluten-free foods, but what I didn’t really think about was the transition. So after deciding to go gluten-free I went to my kitchen to get some lunch and realised that everything in my cupboard had gluten in it. Ah. Slight hitch. I couldn’t exactly just throw out my entire cupboard and start again, and I couldn’t expect The Boy to eat it all. Don’t get me wrong he wouldn’t complain and he’d manage it, but it would take him a while and, more importantly, I’d have to cook two lots of food every evening to make it happen.
So instead of cutting out from day one, I’ve been cutting down. Breakfast and lunch I’ve gone gluten free, and when we have something glutenous for dinner, I’ve just been having a smaller portion. The cupboard supplies are starting to go down, though still I need to do some baking and get through some of the flours stashed in the cupboard, and I’m starting to replace them with gluten free products. Doves Farm is my saviour, but more about that another time.
So you can expect some posts on here documenting the trials and tribulations of my new gluten-free life. Baking successes and failures (in fact there are two coming up shortly!) and no doubt various rants about lovely treats I can no longer eat. Or drink. Like beer. I had beer on Thursday night. Friday morning I looked like I was about to give birth to a beach ball. Who’d have thought the effect would be that drastic after just a couple of weeks? Cider it is.
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This morning I thought it was about time I used up the over-ripe bananas which were looking very sorry for themselves in my fruitbowl, and as I didn’t have any dark chocolate to make Nigel Slater’s Black Banana Bread I looked through my stash of recipes on Evernote for an alternative. I stumbled upon Joy The Baker’s Peanut Butter Banana Bread and was immediately convinced.
And after a little work and an hours baking, the photo above is the result. Light, moist, with a slightly crunch top, it has a good strong banana flavour with a hint of peanut butter and crunchy peanuts dotted throughout. It’s delicious.
Visit Joy the Baker for the recipe. It gets the thumbs up from me!
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