Thought Bloggles

They said it couldn't be done! They called me mad! But I SHOWED THEM! Muahahaha! Yes, this is indeed a bread made without flour. Well, without wheat flour. Actually, without the carbohydrate parts of the wheat flour. It uses gluten and seed flours instead, but it comes out nice and springy, slightly denser than I would normally get it, but delicious. I ended up using less flour than usual for this, since my flour tests (post coming up on them as soon as I get the third part done) show that both sunflour and flaxseed flour soak up more water than regular flour. And indeed, with 4/5 the usual amount the dough was at the same time tough and sticky. Next time I'll lower the amount of flour a bit and see if that improves the oven spring by virtue of leaving more water available to boil and expand. Ingredients: 100g gluten, 150g flaxseed flour, 250g sunflower seed flour, 1/2 tsp baker's malt (Backmalz), 2 tsp salt. Mixed these together, but ended up putting 100g of the...

A simple but successful bread, made with flax flour and sunflour. After doing some testing of various flours (results to be posted later when I've tested the rest of my 12 different flours) and looking through my notes, I came to the conclusion that almond flour, even the fine varieties, is just not good for bread. So I used sunflower seed flour (sunflour) instead of the almond flour, plus I added just a bit (0.5% by weight) of baker's malt, which supposedly helps feed the yeast. The result was just excellent - rose like a charm, and did an oven spring I could palpably watch happening. I also this time put it into a hot oven, rather than as usual heating the oven with the bread in it. I still don't know which gives the better result - it seems to me the slow heating would allow the inner parts to get warmer and expand before the outer parts get too baked and fixed, but maybe that's not an issue, and the loss of gas by slower heating is counterproductive. Another ...

It's Saturday, and you know what that means: Baking experiments! Ok, maybe you didn't know, since I haven't posted so much about it, but at least today I did one, testing how gluten behaves in various solutions. Would it poof up in the oven? Would it form durable bubbles? How wet would it get? What would the final consistency be? I decided to keep the tests as simple as possible, using just a liquid and gluten, not even adding salt. I did four tests in little teflon pans: #1: I took 50ml cold water and poured 25g gluten into it, stirring as best I could, then let it stand for half an hour. #2: Seeing how #1 clumped up, I now took 100ml cold water and slowly poured 25g gluten into it while stirring, then let it stand for half an hour. #3: With the oven preheated, I again took 100 ml cold water and slowly poured 25g gluten into it while stirring. #4: Lastly, I beat one egg and slowly poured 10g gluten into it while stirring, then beat it some more. I pour four into t...

Due to  +Mickey Blake 's recent insulin resistance diagnosis, we've been eating a low-carb diet for the last several months. While I don't have a diagnosis myself, I have followed the diet, initially mainly to make cooking easier, but after a while also because it just made me feel better in several different ways: Disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor or even close, this is just what changed for me. I have noticeably more energy. Where I would usually wear out in the late afternoon with my mind just fizzling until I got some food, I now keep fresh throughout the day. At the end of the day, I feel tired, but more in a physical way rather than a mental way. I still like to take a short nap mid-afternoon, especially on busy days, but I can certainly keep doing more things for longer than before. I need less sleep.  My daily sleep need has dropped from 8-9 hours down to between 6 and 7 hours. Even when I stay up late, like this New Year's Eve where I didn't get...

As promised, an update on the brunkager after they were done. They worked, and even though I used the sunflower seed flour together with baking soda, they didn't turn green. It appears this particular reaction also requires oxygen, and this is a very compressed dough that was then wrapped and put in the fridge. They came out quite nice (I forgot to get some Zitronat, so they were lacking that lemony taste), but definitely softer than the usual ones. Now I like a softer cookie and eschew the efforts to make them as crunchy as possibly, so this was very much my thing, but your mileage may vary. Over all it was a success that I will repeat and refine next Christmas. Brunkager This is a modified recipe based on  God Mad  (no, nothing to do with a Divine Hulk), 6th edition. I'll only write the recipe with my replacements and modifications, for the original, get the book. Note that this recipe takes some planning, so read carefully before commencing. 125 g butter 100 g xylit...

Everybody has their particular cookies that they just must have for Christmas. For me, the cookies are the Danish traditional pebernødder ("pepper nuts", known as Pfeffernüssen in Germany) and brunkager  ("brown cakes"). With our recent dietary changes, these cookies presented a challenge. Between these and the sugar cookies, I have baked quite a lot this Christmas, and our buckets of almond flour are getting emptied at a surprising clip. With the l-carb shop offering almond flour for as little as €12/kg , I can afford to go through some - that's at least a better price than the €30+ seen in some shops. Here's the recipe for pebernødder - the brunkager must wait till tomorrow since they have to rest for several days. Pebernødder This is my mother's recipe, with low-carb replacement marked in bold: 500 g flour (replace with 200 g flour, 300 g fine almond flour ) 1 tsp ammoniumcarbonate ( hjortetaksalt,  in Germany Hirschhornsalz) - use 1 1/2 to 2 ts...

Low Carb Sugar Cookies (based on the Better Homes and Gardens recipe) Makes about 40 cookies 120 g butter, softened 100g xylitol in crystal form (e.g. Xucker) 1 egg 1 tbsp vanilla extract 140 g fine almond flour 10 g coconut flour 10 g gluten 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda zest of one lemon (optional) Pre-heat oven to 180C. In a medium bowl, blend together butter and xylitol, then add egg and vanilla. In another bowl, mix the remaining ingredients, then sift them into the wet ingredients and blend well. (The dough will start out looking dry, but will come together shortly.) On a well-floured surface, roll out the dough, flipping it repeatedly and dusting with more flour to keep it from sticking. Apply your favorite cooke-cutters and place the cut-outs on a baking sheet, not quite touching each other. Bake for 9 minutes (or until the cookies start to brown) in the top part of the oven. The gluten can probably be replaced with more coconut flour. Not sure what non-gl...