Gluten free with grains on hand? Win! Our #breadbakers theme for this month is: gluten free breads. I went through a gluten free phase for a while. My girls and I have tested wheat sensitive but not gluten sensitive, and it is not a large sensitivity. So I try to stick to spelt and other ancient grains which don't affect us, but a little flour now and then doesn't really do much. Now this brings up one important point: I will never attempt to bake anything "gluten free" for a celiac, and we do know several people officially diagnosed with that condition. Because I do use gluten in my house, even if I washed everything fresh, the measuring cups, the tins, the counters, the cutting boards, my house is not set up to be gluten safe. There will be cross contamination that I missed, maybe in my salt, maybe in some baking powder, my sugar has definitely had cups touch it after they had flour in them. I would never want to set off the awful reaction that a celiac exposed to gluten has to deal with. So I will leave that to certified processors. But I can do 99.9% gluten free for those just wanting to avoid gluten for inflammation issues or whatever reason. Sometimes it's fun to try something different.
Since I haven't baked GF in a while, most of my flours are probably not really good anymore and need to be composted. Even kept in the fridge, they don't have a very long shelf life. So if not used up in a few months, they go to waste. This time, rather than get another couple bags of flour I won't use often enough, I decided to mill my flours fresh and see how it turned out. I had brown basmati rice and whole, hulled buckwheat on hand, and since this recipe has plenty of liquid plus a rest time, I was fairly confident that there would not be any extra grittiness from my possibly less refined flours. Potato starch has a long enough shelf life and I do use it on occasion, so that one I went out and purchased, since I was actually out. The little bit of extra flour from milling, (~¾ cup mixed) I will add to some struan. Perfectly delicious way to use it up!
This was a recipe I've had pinned for many years and hadn't tried. I can now attest that they make a tasty little muffin! I love the crunch of the exterior when they are toasted, they are quite delicious with jam. Eldest child gave them two enthusiastic thumbs up! That's a hefty endorsement. So thank you to Sizzling Tastebuds for choosing this month's theme, and to Stacy at food lust people love for stepping in to host this month!
Gluten Free English Muffins
from Hannah's Gluten Free Bakery
Makes 8 muffins
1 cup brown rice flour (I milled this fresh)
½ cup buckwheat flour (I milled this fresh)
1 cup potato starch
2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp sea salt
2¼ tsp instant yeast
In a separate bowl mix together:
1 cup warm (not hot) water
½ cup milk
2 tsp sugar or honey
Combine the flours, starch, xanthan gum, salt, and yeast in a medium bowl. Mix the wet ingredients together in a small bowl until the sugar is dissolved. Combine the dry and wet ingredients thoroughly. Cover the bowl and let sit in a warm place for an hour.
Lightly grease the inside of your muffin rings and line a cookie sheet with parchment. After the dough has risen, set the rings on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the pan inside the rings with a bit of corn or millet meal if you like. Fill each ring halfway with dough. (I used a muffin scoop to fill the rings and got two batches of four, with varying sizes. Two scoops was a bit much. Going for about a scoop and a half would probably yield the best overall size for splitting. Or you can weigh the dough if you want to be really precise.) Let the dough in the rings rise another 10-15 minutes, until puffy. Bake in a 450ºF oven for about twenty minutes or until they are slightly golden on top. Slice while warm with a fork or bread knife and spread with your favorite English muffin accompaniment. (We love buttered muffins with jam, as well as poached eggs on English muffin.) (I found that the muffins split by fork best when completely cooled.)
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.
We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.
Dough will be very light and puffy after an hour. |
Rings easily wipe clean with a napkin between batches. Sprinkle sides with meal if desired. |
Oil fingers to pat down dough into ring, sprinkle with more corn or millet meal if desired. |
Lightly grease the inside of your muffin rings and line a cookie sheet with parchment. After the dough has risen, set the rings on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the pan inside the rings with a bit of corn or millet meal if you like. Fill each ring halfway with dough. (I used a muffin scoop to fill the rings and got two batches of four, with varying sizes. Two scoops was a bit much. Going for about a scoop and a half would probably yield the best overall size for splitting. Or you can weigh the dough if you want to be really precise.) Let the dough in the rings rise another 10-15 minutes, until puffy. Bake in a 450ºF oven for about twenty minutes or until they are slightly golden on top. Slice while warm with a fork or bread knife and spread with your favorite English muffin accompaniment. (We love buttered muffins with jam, as well as poached eggs on English muffin.) (I found that the muffins split by fork best when completely cooled.)
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.
We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.
Check out our other gluten free goodness this month:
Approximate nutrition for one English muffin:
Those turned out beautifully! I love being able to grind my own grains.
ReplyDeleteThese look so good, like the idea of milling your own grains.
ReplyDeleteSuper impressive that you ground your own flour for this recipe. I love English Muffins and can't wait to try this recipe.
ReplyDelete