Philly Slices and GF Baguettes

So, while waiting at the Marsh deli line for GLUTEN FREE DELI... can I hear an "OH YEAH BABY!" (They even sliced it on the cheese slicer to keep it free from cross contamination... Marsh on Kinser Pike)... I saw this little display with recipe cards. Took two.


One was Italian Sausage and Spinach Rotini... family loved it! The other was Philly Slices... basically you take puff pastry, roll it out.. fill it with sauteed onion, pepper and garlic, sliced/shredded beef and shredded provolone. The vote was 2 for it and 1 "okay". We'll see... with my inability to handle wheat products I donned gloves to make this... that was interesting. And filling hit the floor, I'll be honest. And really... rolling puff pastry in rubber gloves? It's very interesting. The second roll I asked WeeOne and Mealsie (friend of MMH) to help roll it. Well.... that one sort of popped or leaked... anyway, the girls ate the cheese off the counter. So, not sure how frequently that will make it to the rotation.


In other tried attempts I made my first gluten free baguettes. Now, mind you, I had to make it sans corn, so I'm not sure how it was meant to taste, but my vote is "not bad." I piled on some chicken salad and enjoyed it for dinner this evening. The recipe I used came from Nicole and is found on this web site. For the flours I used a high protein mix of garbanzo bean, potato flour and white rice flour. Because I'm trying recipes for our church's communion I needed to make this very cost effective. Once I added up the costs, figured out cups of flour per pound (4.5 in case you ever need to know), tablespoons per 8 oz. (21-25 roughly), and then added up costs I came to a whopping $2.50 per loaf... without adding in electricity, power, salt, yeast, and vinegar... At the store a similar loaf would cost $4.00, so it's a savings. We'll see what the consensus is. The crumb is great, the taste is fairly good... I now recognize that extra tang in GF breads/rolls... frequently vinegar is used as an acid which is needed to help things rise since there is really no gluten present.

photo found on Living Without

A fairly successful day. I did, however, forget to take a photo... another vote for an IPhone.. ease of use and uploads...so, you'll have to trust me that this was an interesting looking bread. (Their professional photo of their final product is much prettier than my loaf!) But, taste my friends... probably between a 7 and an 8.
Happy Cooking!
Kim

I thought this was pizza night!

And indeed, it was. But, it wasn't the homemade pizza I had planned. Dear had an excellent day at work, and called to say we could celebrate at Buccetto's. Which is great because they have YUMMY GF pizza. They are very careful of how they prepare it and it's so tasty that frequently the family asks to share it with me. Not the most common thing said of GF food. 


My favorite is the "Lean Machine." Their menu reads: " about 1/3 the fat of our regular pizza, a thick crushed tomato sauce full of herbs & spices, sprinkled with fresh Parmesan & Romano cheese..." I also ask for them to add spinach which makes it even more amazing! It's super yummy, low cal and GF. What's not to like? 


So, the baguette/pizza dough experiment has been pushed ahead to tomorrow. The family will be having Philly Beef Slices and I'll be having, I hope, some GF garlic bread from my made-from-scratch recipe, along with a leftover GF chicken/apple/maple sausage. YUMMO!


Happy Eating Everyone... recipe will follow for the baguette. And hey, this blog might be just the reason to buy that new IPhone... that was how we spent the earlier part of the evening.. shopping at the phone store. Didn't buy, but had fun looking!

Shalom, 
Kim

One Bread. One Body.

1 Corinthians 10:15-17

American Standard Version (ASV)

 ¹⁵ I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.

 ¹⁶ The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?

 ¹⁷ seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we are all partake of the one bread.

When I first found that I was truly gluten intolerant the whole extent of what was to happen in life had not yet hit me. I was, truly, focused on the "poor me, I can't eat cookies, brownies and baguettes." It was a selfish focus, understandable, but selfish. As time wore on I began to find GF substitutes for some of my favorite things, although brownies were hard to come by. However, the true thing I would miss didn't become evident till this fall. 

You see, as the first time for communion rolled around after going GF I realized there would be a problem. My husband and I talked it over and it was determined that I would take a VERY VERY VERY small piece of bread to dip in the cup. And, before all you GF eaters tell me that even one crumb can cause damage, let me assure you I was aware of this. But, we were moving forward and trying to find what God would have us to do. 

Fast forward to this past fall after my fall into poison ivy. At that point my gluten free life style took a HUGE step in a new direction. It turned out that I was not only needing to eat GF, but that I did, in fact, also have a true wheat allergy. As in... wheat touches me and I break out in hives, extremities swell, etc. How did this come to light? Well, the poison ivy was bad enough, but coupled with taking communion and getting my hair colored (who know hair coloring had wheat products? Seriously!) and my body went into allergic overdrive. 13 days of prednisone, prescription strength anti-histamines (benadryl didn't even begin to touch it!), and cold wraps and sitting very very still with NOTHING touching my arms helped me to deal with the 30+ day reaction. The dermatologist deemed it a "life altering" allergy. And, her next statement... "No more communion bread for you"... really left me reeling. But, at least we knew what God wanted. 

So, I'm now going to start working on a recipe for some sort of Italian or French bread that the church can use. As I spoke with one of the elders yesterday he thought for a few hours and then suggested that his wife and I work on this. Now, knowing how expensive the flours are I suggested they not add this to their expenses when I already had so many flours (Thanks McCardle family!!!) either through gifts or purchase. 

Now I need to find a good base recipe and then work on it a bit to see how cost effective and also how suited for the purpose I can make it. I'd love to have your input. (We also have some with dairy and corn allergies in the church body, so I need to make it dairy free as well. I'm hoping the use of canola oil will work...) I think I'll start with Bette Hagman's GF flour mixes since they worked so well for the GF donuts on New Year's Day. Not sure which recipe base I'll start with though. 

So, one body... the body of Christ, the church... one bread... and that's the aim . I'd appreciate your prayers as I work through this. I'd like to have something ready to show in a couple weeks at most. I may be eating a lot of GF loaves in the next few weeks. Glad I've got some homemade jams to eat with them. 

Shalom, 

Kim