Tuesday, December 19, 2006

No Gluten or Dairy Pumpernickel Bread Recipe


Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Pumpernickel Bread

Pumpernickel Bread: Full of Flavor and Gluten-Free with this Recipe

The Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Pumpernickel Bread Recipe is now available at our Glutenfree recipe library! I had promised this recipe a few days ago, and it seemed I had a few people getting a bit anxious for it, so there is the link to it. I described this recipe in my previous post where I showed it in use as a gluten-free pumpernickel sandwich bread. It works great for this, since it has a nice hearty crust and a soft spongy center, all infused with plenty of pumpernickel bread flavor.

Complementary Dill / Spinach Dip Recipe

In addition, I posted a recipe for a simple and versatile dill and/or spinach dip recipe. I don't know about you, but spinach-dip served with cubed pumpernickel has been rather popular at parties - both around the holidays and any other time of the year. Many people carve the center out of the loaf of pumpernickel bread, and fill the bread with the dip... using the carved out portion to form the cubes of bread for dipping. This glutenfree pumpernickel will work fine for that, since it is made in a round pyrex 2-liter dish, and achieves a height of about 4 inches when baked. So, plenty of volume for holding dip. Personally, I prefer keeping the dip in a separate bowl so as not to cause the remaining pumpernickle loaf (the part of the loaf you are using for a "bowl") to become soggy. This goes for bread with or without gluten. Why waste any great GF bread to sogginess?

Here's a picture of the dip with some cubed-pumpernickel bread - all glutenfree of course.
GF Pumpernickel Bread with Dill Dip
Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Gluten Free Perfect Pumpernickel Bread


Laura's Gluten-Free & Dairy-Free Pumpernickel Bread Recipe : Perfection!

Incredible Gluten-Free Pumpernickel Break Recipe

My wife has worked tirelessly on perfecting a GF pumpernickel bread (dairy-free too!) over the past few weeks, and she has finally achieved her goal! I just had to take a picture of my lunch today, which is a tuna salad sandwich on this new glutenfree pumpernickel bread she just finished baking earlier today. Here's a direct link to this wonderful Dairy-Free and Gluten-Free Pumpernickel Bread Recipe.

The bread is wonderful. A nice hearty crust, and a soft spongy center! What more could anyone ask for in a pumpernickel? Oh, yeah... taste... it tastes great too! I think it is very much like a real pumpernickel. In addition to the sandwich, we tried it with a gluten-free dill-dip / spinach-dip (recipe here) that was being made as I type this. Once again it is time to start planning how to burn off these extra calories! But, I much prefer having this "problem" of calorie expenditure over the problem of not being able to find good food to eat as a Celiac person.

With a fair number of breads in our repertoire now, there really isn't too awful much I find "missing" from my daily eating habits when compared to the pre-gluten-free days. I am so glad to have a wife that is quite gifted with baking gluten free recipes, and most food in general. And, if something gives her a rough time, she takes it as a challenge to figure it out and perfect it. This recipe and a couple others now join our online GF recipes collection (see links below).

I noticed Lynn Barry just finished a version of pumpernickel recently too! I guess it is the perfect season for pumpernickel! Can't wait to serve it at a Christmas party or dinner.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

GlutenFree Sesame Cookie Recipe


Gluten-Free Sesame Cookies : Yum!

Sesame is the star of these Gluten-Free Cookies

This one is definitely a winner - a delicious gluten-free sesame cookie recipe! I think I put on a pound today as I ate about a dozen of them! That's not likely to be a pound of muscle either, though I did make sure to go outside afterwards and walk a mile and jog another mile. Still, I doubt that will offset the calories in these gluten-free temptations of the day, but better than nothing.

I have to give credit to my daughter for this recipe. She just wrapped up another semester at college and is done with her GRE's, so she finally has had a bit of extra time between grad-school applications to get back into the gluten free baking spirit! This recipe took her a couple tries, but she definitely prevailed with a tasty cookie that has a wonderful texture.

This GF cookie has sesame and coconut inside and out, with sesame tahini in there too! So, plenty of flavor, and plenty of calories to boot I'd guess. But, it is a cookie and as such calories just have to take back seat to wonderful taste! Now if this recipe would have come along a few months back, I'd surely have considered putting into our new gluten-free desserts cookbook, but this recipe was just a bit late arriving on the scene.

I have another recipe to post soon, also from my daughter: a gluten free tea-leaf and honey cookie.  That one reminds me of a sugar cookie, but not. It worked well for holiday cut-out cookies for Christmas, and was delightfully crisp and crunchy with accents of honey and tea. Different, and good. It'll be coming soon.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Dairy-Free Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cake Recipe - Bundt


Dairy-Free Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cake, Bundt Pan style

Gluten-Free Bundt Cake Recipe : Pumpkin and Spices

Here is another gluten-free recipe, a lovely GlutenFree Pumpkin Bundt Cake Recipe which I just uploaded to our free recipes library for anyone that is looking for a holiday pumpkin treat that is a bit different than a traditional pumpkin pie.  Some other pumpkin-theme blogs also recently included a spectacular Gluten-Free Pumpkin-Roll recipe my wife created for the holidays.

This recipe is easy to make, and it has much of that pumpkin-pie type flavor but in the form of a cake. All sorts of flavor comes together in here: clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger - and even a bit of cocoa. This recipe is also dairy-free, in our push to accommodate those of you who can not tolerate milk products very well.

We made this recipe for Thanksgiving dinner, but it should be equally welcome around the Christmas holiday table - whether for dinner or at a party. We have tried it both with and without added Xanthan gums, and it works fine either way (the Xanthan gum does give it a bit better bounce, and makes it less likely to crumble), so take your pick whether to include that in your gluten free recipe or not.

Now, if I can only remain this productive in my blog postings for the rest of the week! I am finally catching up on posting a few of those outstanding recipes. Some of the others recent recipes include a new type of GF and dairy-free/casein-free muffin my wife came up with, 
some cranberry pumpkin muffins, and there is also a chocolate angel-food cake to post eventually.  I did get around to posting a gluten-free chocolate-chip angel-food cake (variation to one in our book), a GF pumpernickel bread, and a few others. I have quite a few other things I want to still get done this week though, so time will tell whether they are posted sooner rather than later on this blog.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Gluten-Free Panettone Bread Recipe


Gluten-Free Panettone Bread Recipe, baked, and sliced

Holiday Sweet Bread with Citrus: Gluten-Free Panettone


My daughter recently created a rather tasty gluten-free Christmas Holiday bread in the style of traditional panettone bread. It features orange/citrus flavors in a sweeter dough that has dried fruit and nuts in it. Here is a link to the gluten-free panettone bread recipe (as pictured above).

I promised this recipe to my blog readers a while back, and finally the gluten free recipe is online and ready for others to try. Baking a panettone, in the traditional full-cylindrical form would probably be a bit rough for a variety of reasons: the first being the tall cylindrical shape, which I doubt many would have a specialized panetone pan for. I have wondered if it could be baked in a coffee-can or a couple smaller cans, though I do not know if it would come out of the can easy when done, or if it would rise enough to fill the entire height like a gluten-containing one would probably have an easier time of.

Regardless, this version of a panettone is done glutenfree (sorry, not completely dairy-free this times), and is baked in a standard springform pan. The bread has a nice mellow flavor, with a touch of sweetness, and accents of orange. Perfect for the Christmas holiday. If anyone tries it, please let me know your thoughts. And, as always, if you have variations or improvements, feel free to share them.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Dairy-Free Focaccia Bread & Crouton Recipe


Gluten-Free / Dairy-Free Focaccia Bread Croutons

Gluten-Free Focaccia Bread / Croutons Recipe 

I had time to post the Gluten-Free and Dairy Free Focaccia Bread and Croutons Recipe today that I promised in my last blog. It features plenty of pictures to go with the various steps too, like these:

The Fresh Gluten-Free Bread Dough Rising, with Caramelized Onions on Top


Beautifully Caramelized Onions used on top of the bread dough
The picture above shows those wonderfully tasty caramelized red onions that are both in the dough and on top of the bread. The onions combine with garlic, pepper, rosemary, and more to create a very flavorful bread and crouton. It's a bit of a specialty bread, and I have not had focaccia in a long time (since going GF), so we may still end up tweaking the recipe a bit over time. But, I think it is plenty good enough for public release — readers, you tell me what you think after trying it.

Hope everyone enjoys the recipe!

I have been busy reformatting quite a few other gluten-free recipes from Word into an HTML format for upload to my gluten-free recipes-library, so stay tuned as more GF creations are coming and will be online soon.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Almond Paste in Baking GlutenFree Recipes

Solo Foods Gluten-Free Pure Almond Paste
I have had a few people ask me about Almond Paste as an ingredient in various Gluten-Free recipes. We use it in a fair number of recipes, as it adds a nice flavor to certain desserts and breads. To being with, Almond Paste is not to be confused with Almond Butter. Almond Paste is a combination of Almonds, Sugar, and water basically — it is a very thick paste. We use a canned variety of pure Almond Paste from a company called Solo for our GF recipe baking.

Solo Foods offers this nice gluten-free "pure Almond Paste" product (which has been GF for quite some time now, and although their company produces other products that are not GF, they have not had any issues with cross-contamination). I also inquired about the ability to purchase direct from them, which you can since they are one of the few manufacturers that will sell directly to the consumer as a benefit to persons that can not locate the product close to them. Moreover, if you call their customer service number (800-328-7656) you can order a 6-pack of 8-ounce cans on the phone with your Visa, and with shipping included in the price, it is only $22.50! ([Note: 2006 price; call them to get current rates] at $3.75/can, this is much cheaper than we were buying from our local store before - they were over $5/can there), and direct to your door!

I tend to stock a dozen or more cans at a time for friends and family that need a quick source for Almond Paste when they are doing their glutenless recipe baking, especially if they do not want to order 6 cans at a time.  Perhaps you can find a few fellow bakers that want to split an order.  I have to believe this stuff will last "forever" (years?) in the unopened cans. We use a can per month or more, but then again we do a lot of baking.

I plan to put eventually place a link to this article and to the Solo Foods site from our cookbook website. Although I would love to simply allow people to purchase a can of Almond Paste along with my recipe book, shipping makes that impossible, so it is best to get it in the supermarket or direct from Solo Foods. I know we use it in our wonderful Pecan Pie / Tart, and a few other tasty gluten free dessert recipes. It really adds a nice flavor to so many recipes.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.