Harvest Monday, 2 February 2015

I'm going to keep in the same theme as last week, small things. I love the huge portions of squash I get, but I also love my little things. Today's little things is dill seed. I know most people probably don't use a lot of dill seed in their lives, but I do. I use it as a caraway seed substitute. It taste a lot like that. And I love dill seed in bread.

The bread I make is all gluten free now. So I put the dill seed into a mock rye bread. Though to be honest, rye isn't a flavor the bread has, but it is the flavor of the caraway seed that makes me love rye so much. The flours that I use are mostly buckwheat and teff. These are both dark flours, so they also give the dark rye look to a bread. Then again that is where the similarity ends. However both buckwheat and teff are very healthy grains. Buckwheat especially has been shown to reduce your cholesterol and is very high in flavinoids.

For those that haven't cooked gluten free before, gluten is the glue that holds the bread together. Without that glue you need some other kind of glue. The typical things to use are gums. Xanthum gum being the most popular. I use some of that, but to be honest I'm not a gum fan. I think gums can be a bit hard on the digestive tract. So in addition I use other things too.

Psyillium fiber (which is bought from the drugstore as a fiber supplement), ground flax seed, and eggs. All of these additions add different flavors to the bread. Xanthum gum is bitter which is another reason I like to keep the volume of this down. You know what eggs taste like. And the others are maybe a little nutty. My father says he doesn't put psyllium fiber in because of the taste. I like the taste. I guess everyone has their own idea of what works.

Starches also help stick things together. And typically starchs are used a lot in gluten free baking. I tend to like to eat whole grains (though whole seeds would be more accurate here as they aren't grains). So I use very little starch. There are rules of thumb for ratios of starch to whole grain/protein when making your own recipes and I break them as I don't use much starch.

Daphne's Mock Rye Sandwich Bread

• T yeast
• 8 oz buckwheat flour
• 6 oz teff flour
• 2 oz millet flour
• 2 oz tapioca flour
• 2 oz almond flour
• 1 t salt
• 2 t psyllium husks
• 1 t xanthum gum
• 1 1/2 T dill seed
• 1 2/3 c warm almond milk
• 1 T molasses
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 c olive oil
• 1 T cider vinegar

I make this for sandwich bread so it requires a a small pullman loaf pan to bake, 9"x4"x4".

Oil and line the pullman loaf pan with parchment paper (you don't need to put the paper on the ends, one piece along the middle is fine).

Mix all the of the dry ingredients together. If you aren't sure of your yeast you can proof it in the warm milk, but I don't bother. I just put it in with the dry. Also gluten free grains are stored in the fridge so they are cold. Some people will take them out and let them (and the eggs) warm up before mixing it all together. Again I don't bother.

Mix all the wet ingredients together. When you warm the milk up make sure it isn't too warm that you cook the eggs when adding. Add the wet to the dry ingredients. And mix for about 2 minutes with a stand mixer. Don't use the bread hook. Gluten free doughs should be somewhere between a cake batter and a cookie batter. If it is too dry add more milk. Put the batter into the loaf pan.

Normal bread doughs would be slightly warm at this point. With all the eggs and cold flours this tends not to be. So it takes longer to rise. I usually heat up my oven until it is just warm and then turn it off. I put the pullman pan's lid on to retain moisture and let it rise until it is almost at the top. Which usually takes 2-3 hours. The quantity usually isn't enough to really get it to the top, but it comes really close. And you don't want it to get there. Gluten free bread is much more liquid than normal bread and it will leak out the sides if it goes over the top.

I still cook it with the lid on though. Once it is almost there, I take the pan out and heat the oven to 350F. I then cook the loaf for 50 minutes. Now I know the bread is cooked after 50 minutes with my pan and in my oven, but both different pans and different ovens heat differently. The first time you make it you should test the internal temperature. It is done when it reaches 210F (though I've read a lot of different numbers for this from 200F to 220F).

And as a side note, did you know that a cup is not a cup? There are different measures of what a cup is in different places. I hadn't a clue. Even in the US we have two different kinds of cups. The cup we use for measuring in the kitchen holds 8 fluid ounces (237 ml). The cup used for nutrition labeling in the US is larger (240 ml). A cup in the UK is 284ml according to Wikipedia, but I've seen other sources call it 250ml.

There is a big difference between 237 ml and 284 ml. That would change a recipe a lot. So I don't promise that the above recipe will work with a non-US measuring cup. But when I say cup, I really mean 237 ml. So translate as you like. And tablespoons are 14.8 ml. All I can say is I really hate the non standardized world. The US tried to switch over the the metric system a long time ago when I was a kid and it failed miserably. So now we can't talk to the rest of the world. I wish they would try again. Kids over the last decades have had to learn both anyway because science is done with the metric system. Of course it wouldn't help with the kitchen measurement issues, unless we moved to milliliters. I'd be happy to do it. We are such a global world now.

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.