Applesauce Bread

If I call this bread, I can eat it for any meal, but if I call it cake, it's only for dessert. So let's call it bread, shall we?

Now, why would we want to eat this bread for any meal? Because, in the words of my daughter who can eat whatever she wants, "I thought this was just going to be another one of your boring crumbly things, but it's delicious!" Today, I was walking along with some chips in a bowl, and she looked eagerly at me and asked what I had. When I said it was chips, she looked at me with forlorn brown eyes and said "oh, I thought it was going to be that cake." I quickly whipped up another pan for her!

What I love about this recipe is that it never called for eggs or milk, so it was easy to adapt to be gluten-free. I've been able to lift some of my salicylate restrictions, but if you are a fail-safer, the cinnamon and cloves are out...

Beat:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup margarine (we use Earth Balance shortening)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce

Add in:
2 cups gluten-free flour blend: I recommend using 1/4 cup each of rice flour, potato starch, teff flour, and sorghum flour, plus 1 scant tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt

Spread into a 9 inch round pan, or whatever size/shape suits you, and bake at 350 for about 30-40 minutes. Enjoy!

Crunchy oat crumblers

This is one of those recipes that first seemed like a total disaster: the batter rose up way too high and was burning on the oven floor. Then, we tasted it and decided that we had seized victory from the jaws of defeat--it has a delicious oatmeal cookie texture with a light maple flavor. It is excellent mixed into soy vanilla ice cream. That being said, a few caveats:

• The batter rises A LOT. Don't fill your muffin tins too high, especially if you use mini muffin tins.
• This might be more of a home treat than the one you bring for the school bake sale. It tends to fall apart (hence the "crumbler" name), so it's not going to win any food beauty contests.

Mix:

1 stick melted butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 Tbsp ground flaxseed + 3 Tbsp water (let it sit for a few minutes)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup soy milk

1 cup gluten-free rolled oats

1/4 cup teff flour (note: if you don't have teff, just use 1/2 cup total of some gluten free grain flours--this 1/4 cup plus the 1/4 cup listed next)

1/4 cup buckwheat, amaranth, or other gluten free grain flour

1/2 cup all purpose rice flour blend (see the January 2010 post)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon (or less, or none, if you're watching salicylates)

Bake at 375 in muffin tins, loaf pans, whatever you like, until crumbly and crispy and the fork comes out clean. Enjoy!

Movie Night Bread Mix

This one is called Movie Night Bread Mix because we happened to make it on a night that involved watching a movie...it is so delicious that we always keep a canister of this mix on hand. For a very similar, single-batch version of this recipe, see http://aprovechar.danandsally.com/?p=228.

The mix:
1 1/2 cups teff flour
4 1/2 cups millet flour
2 cups sorghum flour
1 cup brown rice flour
6 cups potato starch flour
3 cups tapioca flour
4 Tbsp xanthan gum
3 Tbsp salt

To make a loaf:
Proof 1 Tbsp yeast in a bit more than 1 1/2 cups of warm water and 1/4 cup sugar (we use the tan crystals from Trader Joe's).

Meanwhile, if you don't have a really good place to let bread dough rise, microwave a bowl of water for about 10 minutes to get your microwave warm and steamy, and you can use it as the warm spot. This is the best method I have ever tried.

When the yeast has gotten poofy, mix the yeast/water/sugar mix into 3 cups of the dry mix plus 2 tsp oil (olive oil unless you're low-salicylate, in which case I recommend canola oil). When it's all well-mixed, spoon the dough into a greased loaf pan and let it rise for about 20-30 minutes. Bake at 400 for about 45-50 minutes, or until the inside isn't wet anymore.

Some notes on cost...millet and sorghum flour are about $1/pound at most Indian stores. Potato starch and tapioca flour can be found for a good price at many Asian grocery stores. For yeast, if you bake bread fairly often, Costco sells a brick of Red Star yeast equivalent to a few hundred packets for about $3!

Teff banana bread

This is our adaptation of the old classic.

Mix dry ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour (see previous post on how to make that)
3/4 cup teff flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Cream together:
2/3 cup sugar (we like the tan sugar crystals from Trader Joes)
1/3 cup shortening (we use Fleischman's low-sodium, which is dairy-free)
Mix in 2 Tbsp soy milk (or you can use cow's milk or rice milk)

Mix in 2 "eggs", which can be real eggs, but we use:
2 Tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with 6 Tbsp water, let this sit for a few minutes before adding to sugar/shortening mixture

Add flour mixture and about 1 1/4 cup mashed very ripe bananas to the dry ingredients, and mix until smooth.

Bake at 350 for about 1 hour in a 8x4 loaf pan, or put into smaller pans and bake for a shorter time.

A few notes on cost...
Trader Joe's sells the ground flaxseed from Bob's Red Mill for less than most other stores. For bananas, I buy the over-ripe bananas in a big bag from the clearance rack of our local produce market, and then I mash them all up and freeze in ziploc bags, 1 1/4 cup per bag. I'm still working on a good low-cost source of teff flour...