Behold, my first (successful) loaf of gluten free bread! I had seen this recipe on Gluten Free Girl and the Chef's blog recently and it looked delicious. Last week Jenn posted her own success and photo's of the bread on The Whole Kitchen and I decided I would try my hand at it today. This was only my second time making bread ever, gluten bread included. My last loaf was really really dense and it was my first time working with yeast. It still tasted pretty good and I ate the entire thing, but I knew I needed to look up some bread making tips, particularly gluten free bread making tips.
The recipe makes two loaves and the dough is good in the fridge for up to 7 days so I baked one tonight and I'm saving the second to pop in on Thursday or Friday. This will probably be my go-to bread recipe from now on and I'm already thinking about little adjustments I can make. The salty vinegar taste of the kalamata olives gives the bread a sourdough taste and made me remember how much I love sourdough bread. Apparently I'm not the only one because I just stumbled upon the Art of Gluten-free Sourdough. I'll definitely be revisiting this idea.
Ryan and I are trying to be really budget conscious now. Last month we decided to try and stick to an $80 a week grocery budget. Very tight (and didn't include our F.O.O.D. box) and a little too tight to realistically live on. We've upped the total weekly budget to $123, including the box. Using Gail Vaz-Oxlade's ingenious approach, we keep our grocery money in a jar, each putting in $50 a week. Even though I really make an effort to use as much as I can before things go bad, depending on the perishables we have on hand, sometimes we still end up putting a fair bit in the garbage or compost.
The fact that we live in an apartment and have a small than average fridge means we have virtually no freezer space to store frozen perishables. More and more I'm becoming fascinated with different ways of perserving food. As I've said before, I'm really interested in canning but collecting all the materias needed is going to take me a while and be fairly expensive so I'm thinking I'll collect the things I need a little at a time, maybe buying a piece every month.
In the meantime I've been thinking about food dehydration a lot more. I've always really liked dried fruit and jerky - jerky is one thing that I often can't eat anymore because many types of jerky use soya sauce or teryaki sauce, both of which often contain wheat. I got interested in food dehydration last summer when I was planning some backcountry camping trips. A lot of people will just pick up a package of dehydrated food to bring on these trips, then you add water to rehydrate when you're ready to eat it. There's no reason why you can't just make these meals at home yourself for a much more reasonable price.
I was excited to be able to dry dehydrating food in the oven when we moved into the apartment until I discovered you can't set the temperature below 170 - something that has caused me aggravation more than once so far. But after browsing Amazon.com I realized I could purchase a good quality dehydrator for less than $100. I'm going to do a little more research but once I've decided on a model I'm pretty sure I'll purchase one within the next couple of weeks.
I just discovered a great new blog called Well Preserved that has me excited about trying out some new things that hadn't occured to me before, like a few of the following here:
Dehydrated onions and carrots
Dehydrated orange slices
Dehydrated lime and lemon zest
Dehydrated lemons
Dehydrated pineapple and apple
Beginning around early July, we aren't planning on signing up for the F.O.O.D. box. At that point the St. Norbert Farmer's Market will be open and we'll likely do most of our weekly shopping there, meat included. The F.O.O.D. box is great because now I'm at the point where I'll see what we'll be getting, make a list of the most perishable items, and then make a list of possible recipes to throw together. This has meant we've been able to use almost all our items without throwing anything away for the past two weeks. The farmers market will mean I won't have the ability to plan my meals as easily but it will give me the freedom to try even more variety and to bulk up on items for (hopefully!) canning and (hopefully!) drying.
Now that seeds are starting to appear at some local grocery stores too, I'm looking forward to getting a few pots to fill our windows. These old apartment windows are great for plants because there's more than enough room between the outside screen and the inside window pane - having fresh herbs again will be fantastic. The Forks has a decent variety but why pay when I could get them for free?
Now that February is almost over and we're about to enter March, I can just about feel spring just around the corner. Winnipeg is still a long way off from "warm" but I'm getting excited about having more time (a training course I'm in ends at the end of March) and longer days to enjoy the local flavours, sights, and sounds.
Mmm, that bread looks super good.
ReplyDeleteWe have the same problem with eating all our box stuff before it goes bad. We ate very little of it this week because Heather was in town so we were always out with her, so last night we manned up and ate all the potatos, yams, beets and brocoli. It was pretty damn good. I steamed the beets and made a mustard sauce my dad gave me. It was super good.
I can't believe February is almost over. I can almost imagine summer.
OoOooooooOOOoo, I want this mustard sauce recipe. That sounds lovely. I wanted to make a broccoli apple salad but I ate all the apples and pears. Oops!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links :) We'll have a lot more dehydrating going on soon (making yogurt with it tomorrow night)...
ReplyDeleteI do love Winnipeg - was there about 8 times in year in the early 90s when I toured Canada on a lot of Greyhound busses... :)
We dehydrated tomatoes before having a dehydrator - they didn't completely dry through but would keep in oil for a week or two and were really awesome - a good place to start before you get a dehydrator (and they were as yummy as anything I've had) - a link is here: http://wellpreserved.ca/2009/01/05/slow-roastedtomatoes/
The dehydrator does have a crazy amount of uses, many of which we are just learning. A friend is Saskatchewan who did a lot of backcountry trips used to even dehydrate tomato sauce. It became a powder that he could use for soup or pasta (or a GF alternate in your case)....
:)
j
Oh Winnipeg. I love it too but sometimes I feel like we're so behind other places like Toronto or Vancouver that have more access to local markets and foods. But I think we're really starting to catch up now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recipe, that sounds delicious. Any tips for buying a dehydrator?
Mine was a gift and I was spoiled with an industrial unit for Xmas. A few random thoughts - buy as big as you can buy. A lot of food makes a little. A little food makes a teenie amount.
ReplyDeleteThe major difference between commercial-type units and most household is the shape. House units tend to be circular with air only going up the middle. Ours is square and air is circulated through 9 big trays. The advantage for me is more food dried faster. The disadvantage is that the entire house can be warmed with the amount of hot air generated. Buy as largs as is practical and affordable.
Think about where you are going to store it in advance. Ours is as ugly as it gets (in it's own charming kind of way).
Check cragislist and things like that - I suspect a lot of people buy them, have good intentions and fade away rather quickly (I had a juicer I used twice with good intentions to use daily so I'm not innocent here :)). I suspect there are some deals out there and there's little that canbreak on them.
Buy a cookbook first to understand the work. It's not a tonne but is a bit more than I thought. A lot of food is blanched or marinated for extended periods of time (or even "checked"/pricked) before being ready for the dehydrator. It's not tough, just good to know what you are getting in to.
A lot makes a little. A lot makes a little. A lot makes a little. Laugh.
Know too that eating frmo it takes some self control. 2 full pineapples dehydrated into slices fill a single mason jar. I could eat the jar in a singe seating because it's sooo good. But eating 2 pinapples in a single seating is probably not wise.
:)
It's a lot of fun and totally worth it. Spend as much time as you can cultivating relationships at farmers markets and you will find access to ingredients at a price you won't beleive and feel great about supporting individuals who sustain you and yours.
We're making yogurt in in tonight (an experiment).
J
Thanks for more blog love, Erin! And I'm so glad that you liked the bread - I need to go get more GF flours so I can make some more!
ReplyDelete