Gluten Free Bread
Recently I have bought myself a breadmaker. We’ve ordered a large quantity of flour (enough to make 50 loaves) and I have priced these loaves at just over $2 each. I can plug the breadmaker in to the campervan electrics during times of full sunlight to run it for most of the cycle.
After gloating for four days in a row that I had made a loaf of bread entirely off our solar panels the batteries went flat overnight. This meant that the freezer had defrosted by the morning. Luckily being in the desert the ambient temperature overnight meant that although it had defrosted it was all cold still. I just had to cook a lot of meat. One way to defrost the freezer. Jarrad told me that we just didn’t have enough electricity to run the breadmaker each day like that on the solar panels. We plugged in the generator, and realized that it didn’t actually seem to respond at all to an increase in demand until it got to the baking cycle. The kneading, rising, and shaping all seem to be fine for the solar panels. Maybe the gas stove will fulfil the purpose for the baking phase sometimes?
Recipe
coconut milk 400ml
oil 3 tablespoons (I have tried avacado, olive and macadamia. They are all nice)
3 eggs
balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon
sticky rice flour 1 cup (160g)
brown rice flour 1 cup (160g)
potato flour (not potato starch) 1.25cups (220g)
soy flour 1/3 cup (50g)
tapioca flour 1/2 cup (75g)
sugar 1/4 cup
salt 1.5 teaspoons
xanthan gum 1 tablespoon
tandaco yeast 2 teaspoons.
I combine the wet ingredients and mix the dry ingredients. I then mix them all together and put it in the breadmaker, selecting the gluten free setting. The gluten-free setting has a shorter rising time and a higher baking temperature than normal wheat bread.
It is actually suitable for making sandwiches with. We have also used it on the dough setting for pizza dough. The breadmaker beeps at a certain point if requested to add in extra ingredients. I have used this to make olive and pesto bread, chocolate bread, and fruit bread. So far they have all turned out well, except for the loaf when I was running low on xanthan gum. Apparently the gelatin and cornflour I added in to the 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum just weren’t enough to hold it together.
Dairy Free
We are also dairy free. I have soy milk in my coffee or if I am having a chai tea. We have recently started to make our own soy milk. The following recipe will make approximately 2L.
Soy Milk Recipe
- 250g hulled soy beans soaked for about 10 hours in water.
- Heat them up after this time (if you are in a house you can use a microwave, we use the stovetop).
- Discard the water that they’ve been soaking in.
- Add 2L of fresh drinking water.
- Use a blender to ‘puree’ the mixture.
- Strain it (preferably using something very fine like a cheesecloth)
- Bring the liquid to the boil and continue boiling for 5 to 10 minutes.
- Refrigerate and use for the next three days.
Or our own rice milk, as this is expensive and hard to get in a lot of places. This is the kids’ main drink other than water, and we have it on our porridge every morning, too.
Rice Milk Recipe
- Wash 1 cup uncooked brown rice.
- Bring 2L water to the boil.
- Add the rice, cover the pot and simmer on a low heat for three hours.
- Add 1 teaspoon salt.
- Use the blender to puree it until very fine.
- Put it through a fine strainer twice.
- Drink or store.
These have cut down on our expenses. It is also an awful lot lighter and easier to carry brown rice or soy beans than it is to carry an extra 20 L of milk.
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