Bread!

Alright, I keep saying that I'm going to post my bread recipe and then life gets in the way. But here it is! And unfortunately I'm not even sure that I know equivalent volume measurements for the dry ingredients anymore, but I will give my best guesses, but seriously consider trying to bake this by weight if you want the best results. This was inspired by/modified from a few recipes in the book "You Won't Believe It's Gluten-Free!: 500 Delicious, Foolproof Recipes for Healthy Living" by Roben Ryberg. I like to mix the dry ingredients in ziplock bags ahead of time and have a bunch in my pantry so that when I decide I want bread it only takes about 5 minutes to mix it up and then ~30 minutes in the oven.


Ingredients:
Dry:
75 grams brown rice flour (about 1/2 cup)
1 tbsp ground flax seed (this is approximate - just for flavor and fiber - you can leave it out, or add more/less)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp sugar
pinch of sea salt
1 3/4 tsp xanthan gum


3 egg whites
1 tbsp oil (I usually use grapeseed, sometimes olive, if you're into coconut oil you can use that, but you have to melt it first)
1/2 cup water (you can also use milk or non-dairy milk)
1 tbsp vinegar (I usually use white wine vinegar, but plain white vinegar, rice vinegar, and apple cider vinegar are all good choices)


Preheat oven to 375 F. Beat the egg whites until they are frothy, but not starting to form peaks. Add the other wet ingredients and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix until it thickens. You can use a mixer or do it all by hand. Either way works. The texture will seem really weird, but trust me, it will work. Place in a greased loaf pan or into a greased jumbo muffin pan to make buns. Smooth out the top a bit with wet hands. Bake for about 30 minutes, but check it after 2o minutes. It should be lightly browned and pulling away from the sides of the pan and it should slide out of the pan easily. Makes 1 small loaf of bread or 6 buns. 1/6 of the recipe has 2 Weight Watchers points if you're into that sort of thing.


Variations (note that adding things like raisins and cheese makes it stick to the sides of the pan a bit more, so slide a butter knife around the edges before trying to get it out):
-I like to add basil, garlic powder, and onion powder for herb bread.
-Add the above herbs plus 3 oz grated cheese for cheese and herb bread.
-Add just grated cheese and make in muffin pans for cheese buns.
-Add cinnamon and raisins for raisin bread.
The possibilities are endless...

Banana Muffins

Ingredients:
3 mashed bananas
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1 tbsp ground flax
3 tbsp water
105 grams brown sugar (about 3/4 cup)
210 grams brown rice flour (about 1.5 cups)
70 grams cornstarch (about 1/2 cup)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix flax with water and set aside. Mix sugar and flour together, then mix in banana and flax mixture. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Drop into muffin pan and bake at 350 F for 25 minutes. Makes about 12 muffins, more if you make mini muffins (48+). Baking time will be shorter for mini muffins (more like 10-15 minutes), so watch them.

Whole Grain Gluten Free Vegan Cinnamon Cookies

Also known as lazy snickerdoodles, because the cinnamon is right in the dough instead of you having to roll them in cinnamon and sugar. I just kind of made this up after googling recipes and looking at common trends in them, and this actually makes a very good general cookie dough if you take out the cinnamon and sub in chocolate chips or oatmeal or whatever else you might want in a cookie.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp ground flax seed + 3 tbsp water (mix in small bowl and set aside - this is sometimes referred to as a "flax egg" and is taking the place of both egg and xanthan or guar gum here)
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
70 grams brown sugar (about 1/3 cup)
105 grams brown rice flour (about 3/4 cup)
35 grams cornstarch (about 1/4 cup)
1 tsp baking powder


Directions:
Mix together oil and sugar, then mix in flax mixture. Mix in dry ingredients. Form dough into a ball (it's actually the right texture to do that!) and chill for 1 hour. Chilling is very important so that your cookies don't spread too much. Shape into balls and bake at 350 F for 10-12 minutes. Makes 10 regular or 20 small cookies.

A note about baking by weight

I am not primarily a baker. I'm much more into the non-dessert, non-bread aspect of cooking, but I do bake sometimes (especially pizza crust and flatbreads). Other people who are much better at baking than I am (including Shauna over at http://glutenfreegirl.com/) have found that gluten free baked goods come out much better if you measure flours by weight rather than volume. This also makes it easier to substitute one flour for another, because they can have quite different densities.

Weighing things may seem really sciencey and intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. I find it easier to do because you can just stick your mixing bowl on the scale and zero it each time you start adding a new flour, and you don't have to bother with measuring cups and sifters. I strongly recommend that you bake by weight, and all of my recipes for baked goods will include weights. You don't need some sort of fancy high tech scale either. I bought mine at Canadian Tire for $10, and as an added bonus I can also use it split skeins of sock yarn in half by weight, so it's a multipurpose piece of equipment.

However, I know that some of you will absolutely refuse to bake by weight. I will try to also include approximate volume measurements, but if I ever don't, this is an approximate conversion you can use:
140 grams = 1 cup
105 grams = 3/4 cup
70 grams = 1/2 cup
35 grams = 1/4 cup
Hopefully you can interpolate a bit from there. This will also help you convert regular wheat flour recipes to gluten free recipes if you're really into baking. Just use 140 grams of gluten free flours for every 1 cup of white flour a recipe calls for. I really want to emphasize, though, that your will get much better and more consistent results with your baked goods if you bake by weight.