Lavash crackers and dip - Daring Bakers September

This month's challenge is gluten free and vegan so for once no adjustment needed. Actually the none alternative bakers were given a wheat based version if they wanted it but quite a few tried it gluten free which is great.

Just realised the pictures are on my camera that has stopped working. I will add them later when I find it and get them off the card directly.. I hope !

So what are Lavash crackers, apparently they are an Armenian flat bread made very thin so it becomes hard and well cracker like. Natalie from Gluten A Go Go, and co-host Shel, of Musings From the Fishbowl set us the challenge to do the gluten free crackers and a vegan dip, because of potential difficulties and pricey ingredients the gluten free was optional though not here obviously. The vegan dip however was a must.

Dip first. I ended up doing a fairly simple cooked tomato dip purely because I had excess tomatoes that needed using and were of a type that was better cooked than fresh. I lightly fried some onion then added a little agave syrup to help them caramelise, then I added the tomatoes and cooked them gently. Very simple and very tasty, of course you could use honey or sugar but I was using the agave syrup in the crackers and wanted to give Treestump the dip and honey is one of those things they suggest no giving till they are older.

So on to the crackers.

The recipe below is as we were give, italics for my comments.

RECIPE

Recipe Reference: The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread, by Peter Reinhart. Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA. Copyright 2001. ISBN-10: 1-58008-268-8, ISBN-13: 978-158008-268-6.

Here's a simple formula for making snappy Armenian-style crackers, perfect for breadbaskets, company and kids...It is similar to the many other Middle Eastern and Northern African flatbreads known by different names, such as mankoush or mannaeesh (Lebanese), barbari (Iranian), khoubiz or khobz (Arabian), aiysh (Egyptian), kesret and mella (Tunisian), pide or pita (Turkish), and pideh (Armenian). The main difference between these breads is either how thick or thin the dough is rolled out, or the type of oven in which they are baked (or on which they are baked, as many of these breads are cooked on stones or red-hot pans with a convex surface)...

The key to a crisp lavash,...is to roll out the dough paper-thin. The sheet can be cut into crackers in advance or snapped into shards after baking. The shards make a nice presentation when arranged in baskets.

Makes 1 sheet pan of crackers

* 1 1/2 cups (6.75 oz) gluten free flour blend (If you use a blend without xanthan gum, add 1 tsp xanthan or guar gum to the recipe) I used 1cup general gf mix, 1/2 cup buckwheat to get a wholemeal style plus xanthan gum.
* 1/2 tsp (.13 oz) salt
* 1/2 tsp (.055 oz) instant yeast
* 1 Tb (.75 oz) agave syrup or sugar
* 1 Tb (.5 oz) vegetable oil
* 1/3 to 1/2 cup + 2 Tb (3 to 4 oz) water, at room temperature (several people noted that the water needed to be increased I used about 3/4 cup in the end.)
* Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, or kosher salt for toppings.
I did four different toppings, poppy seeds, course salt, cajan spice mix and balti spice mix.

1. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt yeast, agave, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup + 2 Tb of water, but be prepared to use it all if needed. (as noted I used more than this to get it to join together)

2. The dough should be firmer than French bread dough, but not quite as firm as bagel dough (what I call medium-firm dough), and slightly tacky. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

3. Ferment at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size. (You can also retard the dough overnight in the refrigerator immediately after kneading or mixing).

4. Lay out two sheets of parchment paper. Divide the cracker dough in half and then sandwich the dough between the two sheets of parchment. Roll out the dough until it is a paper thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. (I found this much easier than I expected as it didn't stick) Slowly peel away the top layer of parchment paper. Then set the bottom layer of parchment paper with the cracker dough on it onto a baking sheet.

5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Mist the top of the dough with water and sprinkle a covering of seeds or spices on the dough (such as alternating rows of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, kosher or pretzel salt, etc.) (forgot to mist but did re-roll once toppings were added to fix them well. which worked well) Be careful with spices and salt - a little goes a long way. If you want to precut the cracker, use a pizza cutter (rolling blade) and cut diamonds or rectangles in the dough. You do not need to separate the pieces, as they will snap apart after baking. If you want to make shards, bake the sheet of dough without cutting it first.

5. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crackers begin to brown evenly across the top (the time will depend on how thinly and evenly you rolled the dough).

6. When the crackers are baked, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. You can then snap them apart or snap off shards and serve.

They came out very nice indeed, we nearly ate them all while discussing what to make for tea! The salt ones were a good replacement for crackawheat which I still crave at times! I have plans to try some with ground hazelnut instead of buckwheat.

Menu 29th Sept - 3rd Oct

Theoretical will have a bit more time now as Treestump is at nursery 2 days a week. Of course I'm meant to be doing useful stuff and possibly even money making stuff though working on the house counts as they we don't have to pay someone else..

Anyway menu for the week. I'm not using the ingredient chosed by Kimberly at Living Free because it's almond which I tend to be wary of after a couple of bad reactions I can't tracy to anything else though it doens't always heppen nut allergies are so serious I don't want to develop one. Also i want meals I can mince down for Treestump as he is very keen to eat solids and it's to soon for him to have nuts. Please check her blog for the list of other gluten free menus.

Monday - turkey stirfry with rice noodles

Tuesday - himself is out of the evening meal so we are having bought in Aberdeen angus meatballs and rice.. they look great!

Wensday - stuffed marrow and cauliflower cheese

Thursday - veg and bean stew or curry depending how we feel.

Friday - bangers and mash. (bangers are sausages for the none brits) or fish if I manage to get out and find something nice later in the week.

Baking - planning to retry the eclaire recipe from the August daring baker challenge and do the sept one again using hazelnut flour will blog that in a moment.

Argg missed the posting for Daring Bakers

It's rather too late tonight for me to write anything coherent. I have done the challenge and will post sometime tomorrow so please check back then. What I will say now is was one of the easiest challenges I've done but then I had an advantage as the main part of the challenge was that the recipe was gluten free and vegan so no conversions needed for me :)

Baby food

We have gradually been introducing Treestump to food for several weeks but this week he very much jumped from having some purée ever now and then to wanting to eat whenever anyone else does and also from just having purée to being able to cope with lumps and indeed eating things like rice crackers and biscuits unaided.

He had one day of trying to chew, getting food stuck and coughing so we would have to tap him on the back then going back to eating his rice cracker. This happened a few times over the course of the same rice cracker but he kept being adiment he wanted to eat it. After that he seems to have learnt how to chew or at least swallow once he has gummed something to pieces.

Just now he sat and eat a good chunk of banana , just straight as it comes and is now gumming to death a small biscuit. Not bad for just over six months.!

He is definitely following in his big brothers footsteps of preferring strong flavours too which I'm not going to complain about.. but then my favourite food at two was pickles, indeed anything in vinegar.

According to the Uk version of Gluten free for dummies, which is actually a very good book, the best time to introduce gluten to minimise the chances of them developing Celiac is six months so we are planning to start introducing it a little bit. As most f our meals aren't gluten based he isn't going to get as much as most kids would but the boys eat real bread and so forth so he will get some.

We wil see how it goes.

Weekly menu

A little late posting and very brief but better late than never.

Monday - Pasta and mince sauce (enough left lunch for later in the week)

Tuesday - Steak and chips

Wednesday - (First day back to school for Small and my Karate class) Salad, including boiled eggs.

Thursday - Chicken and rice

Friday - veggy stew and dumplings.

This weeks Gluten free menu swap line up can be found at Gluten Free Goodness.

I should be doing more with the rest of the apples I was given as well this week. They are Bramleys which cook down to a smooth purée so I've already frozen some cooked with a bit of agave syrup (as Bramleys are not at all sweet) in ice-cubes for Treestump over the next few weeks but should do something with the rest for everyone else.

Daring Bakers do éclairs

Smelling the baking !

So this month our challenge is éclairs, having missed last month I planned to do this one regardless but when I found out what it was I was even more determined as I haven't had an éclair since I went fully gluten free and it was always one of my favourite cream cakes so I looked forward to trying them again. That said I only managed to find the time with a day to spare.

We were told to keep to these three rules
1. The dough used for the éclairs must be a pâte à choux from the recipe given.
2. Keep one chocolate element in the challenge. The recipe below is for a chocolate glaze and a chocolate pastry cream. You choose which chocolate element you want to keep. Then feel free to mix and match flavours to the base recipe.
3. Everything else is fair game. Enjoy!

As always those of us who need to are allowed to change things for being gluten free or indeed other restrictions for those who have them but we are still asked to stick to the spirit of the challenge.

The finished article as per the original recipe.

For the dough I used the recipe as given with the exception I replaced the flour with 1/3 each of tapioca starch, Rice flour and millet flour plus I added a tsp of Xanth gum. Then I chose to do the chocolate pasty cream as we were given it but used a simpler chocolate glaze as the one they gave had several stages and I was pushed for time.

The recipes are at the end of this post for those who might wish to try them.

So how did it go?

Well a pâte à choux is made by cooking most of the ingredients together in a saucepan till you get a nice ball of dough and then you mix the eggs into it in a mixer. The resulting mix is then piped out and baked.

I followed the recipe as given and it worked surprisingly well particularly as other gluten free bakers had varying success. As you can see from the pictures things went quite well I was really surprised. There was a moment I thought it wouldn't come back together in the mixer but I turned it up and left it mixing for a minute and that seemed to sort it out quite well.

We tried the chocolate pasty cream which is OK but reminded me of kids chocolate pudding and we all found them a little too sickly.

Round one - cream.
Long one - apple and blackberry

Then as we had been given a lot of free cooking apples and had blackberries growing in the garden due to my lack of gardening this year I did some apple and blackberry ones. Basically I cooked off some apple, mixed with a bit of whipped cream and added fresh blackberries. These were finished with the same chocolate glaze and I though were an improvement as they were less sickly. We also had ones just filled with whipped cream which is the standard way they are done here in the UK and in some ways the way i like best but then I am a cream addict !

It was obvious that the pastries we had left after all that were not going to be much good by tomorrow as even after just a couple of hours the texture was going and they were starting to seem distinctly eggy rather than like pasty so I filled the rest with cheese and ham and gave them a quick blast in the oven. These turned out to be a very nice snack though I thought the pasty was starting to taste quite like an omelet something which wasn't obvious when it was smothered with chocolate sauce !

The Small ones view was as follows, " You could make them again tomorrow if you have the ingredients." I think that means he liked them !

Recipes
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Pierre Hermé’s Cream Puff Dough
Recipe from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé
(makes 20-24 Éclairs)

• ½ cup (125g) whole milk
• ½ cup (125g) water
• 1 stick (4 ounces; 115g) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
• ¼ teaspoon sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (140g) flour (1/3 cup each of tapioca stach, rice flour and millet flour) plus a tsp of Xanth gum
• 5 large eggs, at room temperature

1) In a heavy bottomed medium saucepan, bring the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt to the
boil.

2) Once the mixture is at a rolling boil, add all of the flour at once, reduce the heat to medium and start to stir the mixture vigorously with a wooden spoon. The dough comes together very quickly. Do not worry if a slight crust forms at the bottom of the pan, it’s supposed to. You need to carry on stirring for a further 2-3 minutes to dry the dough. After this time the dough will be very soft and smooth.

3) Transfer the dough into a bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or using your handmixer or if you still have the energy, continue by hand. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each egg has been added to incorporate it into the dough.
You will notice that after you have added the first egg, the dough will separate, once again do not worry. As you keep working the dough, it will come back all together again by the time you have added the third egg. In the end the dough should be thick and shiny and when lifted it should fall back into the bowl in a ribbon.

4) The dough should be still warm. It is now ready to be used for the éclairs as directed above.

Notes:
1) Once the dough is made you need to shape it immediately.

2) You can pipe the dough and the freeze it. Simply pipe the dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets and slide the sheets into the freezer. Once the dough is completely frozen, transfer the piped shapes into freezer bags. They can be kept in the freezer for up to a month.

To cook
1) Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Divide the oven into thirds by
positioning the racks in the upper and lower half of the oven. Line two baking sheets with waxed or parchment paper.

2) Fill a large pastry bag fitted with a 2/3 (2cm) plain tip nozzle with the warm cream puff dough. Pipe the dough onto the baking sheets in long, 4 to 41/2 inches (about 11 cm) chubby fingers. Leave about 2 inches (5 cm) space in between each dough strip to allow them room to puff. The dough should give you enough to pipe 20-24 éclairs.

3) Slide both the baking sheets into the oven and bake for 7 minutes. After the 7 minutes, slip the handle of a wooden spoon into the door to keep in ajar. When the éclairs have been in the oven for a total of 12 minutes, rotate the sheets top to bottom and front to back. Continue baking for a further 8 minutes or until the éclairs are puffed, golden and firm. The total baking time should be approximately 20 minutes.

Notes:
1) The éclairs can be kept in a cool, dry place for several hours before filling.

Chocolate Pastry Cream
Recipe from Chocolate Desserts by PierreHermé

• 2 cups (500g) whole milk
• 4 large egg yolks
• 6 tbsp (75g) sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch, sifted
• 7 oz (200g) bittersweet chocolate, preferably Velrhona Guanaja, melted
• 2½ tbsp (1¼ oz: 40g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1) In a small saucepan, bring the milk to a boil. In the meantime, combine the yolks, sugar and cornstarch together and whisk in a heavy‐bottomed saucepan.

2) Once the milk has reached a boil, temper the yolks by whisking a couple spoonfuls of the hot milk into the yolk mixture.Continue whisking and slowly pour the rest of the milk into the tempered yolk mixture.

3) Strain the mixture back into the saucepan to remove any egg that may have scrambled. Place the pan over medium heat and whisk vigorously (without stop) until the mixture returns to a boil. Keep whisking vigorously for 1 to 2 more minutes (still over medium heat).Stir in the melted chocolate and then remove the pan from the heat.

4) Scrape the pastry cream into a small bowl and set it in an ice‐water bath to stop the cooking process. Make sure to continue stirring the mixture at this point so that it remains smooth.

5) Once the cream has reached a temperature of 140 F remove from the ice‐water bath and stir in the butter in three or four installments. Return the cream to the ice‐water bath to continue cooling, stirring occasionally, until it has completely cooled. The cream is now ready to use or store in the fridge.

Notes:
1) The pastry cream can be made 2‐3 days in advance and stored in the refrigerator.

2) In order to avoid a skin forming on the pastry cream, cover with plastic wrap pressed onto the cream.

3) Tempering the eggs raises the temperature of the eggs slowly so that they do not scramble.


Chocolate Glaze

100g dark chocolate
slug of double cream

Do you like my accurate measurements?

Melt the chocolate in a bow over boiling water, then once it is melted stir in some cream. Allow to cool before spreading on éclairs.

Assembling the éclairs:

• Chocolate glaze
• Chocolate pastry cream

1) Slice the éclairs horizontally, using a serrated knife and a gently sawing motion. Set aside thebottoms and place the tops on a rack over a piece of parchment paper.

2) The glaze should be barely warm to the touch (between 95 – 104 degrees F or 35 – 40 degrees C, as measured on an instant read thermometer). Spread the glaze over the tops of the éclairs using a metal icing spatula. Allow the tops to set and in the meantime fill the bottoms with the pastry cream.

3) Pipe or spoon the pastry cream into the bottoms of the éclairs. Make sure you fill the bottoms with enough cream to mound above the pastry. Place the glazed tops onto the pastry cream and wriggle gently to settle them.

Notes:
1) If you have chilled your chocolate glaze, reheat by placing it in a bowl over simmering water, stirring it gently with a wooden spoon. Do not stir too vigorously as you do not want to create bubbles.

2) The éclairs should be served as soon as they have been filled.

Weekly Menu 25th - 29th August

Rather late this week as Monday was a bank holiday so felt more like the weekend. Monday was in fact THE bank holiday the time everyone traditionally goes away though we didn't but only because what we had planned to do got cancelled. However this weekend did have something new and it was food related.

We have just got a new supermarket open near us, now I'm not totally keen on supermarkets when they drive out small shops and we try and get things like vegs and bread from local shops. However this isn't Tesco or Sainsburys or even Morrisons this is a Lidl which is a German company and the range of items is very different. From a gluten free perspective one of the great things about them is they do continental sausages, we came out with four different types and we didn't get any salami or that sort of sausage these were all suitable to replace a traditional banger with.. guess what we are having this week !

The gluten free menu swap is hosted by Fresh Ginger this week and she picked Eggplant or as we call them aubergine. I like aubergine but we don't often have them so I will check the Indian grocer later in the week and if they have them I will do a dish or two with them.

Monday - went to Habibi a local Arabic restaurant, we sat out the back on cushions in a tented area open to the fresh air and all of us including Small really enjoyed both the atmosphere and the food. If you check out the website you can see the menu and everything is made fresh. Most of the dishes are naturally gluten free and indeed we had the mezza for four and all the dishes were fine, apart from the bread on the side which was easy to ignore. Even Treestump (5 months old) had some humus off my finger and seemed to enjoy it.. it's a bit of a family tradition now to introduce them to humus early. Any place that apologises they can't do us a second strawberry milkshake for Small because they ran out of strawberries gets high marks from me as nearly everywhere uses milkshake syrup not fresh fruit. I had a limeade which was again freshly made and fantastic.

Tuesday - sausages in tomato sauce served with rice or pasta.

Wensday- gammon, eggs and new potatoes

Thursday - If I have time Involtini di Pasta e Polpette or moussaka or I might check this Aubergine recipe site a little more and pick something easier.

Friday - Some sort of veggy bake or soup depending what we have extra of veg wise.

I have also been given a bag full of cooking apples so some baking for the freezer seems on the cards.