Homemade gluten free puff pastry (take 1)

I have had it in my head that gluten free croissants will be mine. After seeing this recipe, its obvious that I am not alone in my quest. The more I got to thinking about it, the more I wondering about butter turns - the folding and layering of butter between layers of dough - and began pondering if a gluten free puff pastry could be a better jumping off point. Pouring through cookbooks and websites, I have yet to come across a single recipe for gluten free puff pastry. AH HA! I instantly wanted to see if I could create one.

Working off of Rebecca Reilly's recipe for Filo Dough - from her book Gluten Free Baking - I decided that if filo could be achieved, then so too should puff pastry. I made a lot of changes and substitutions including: argar argar instead of gelatin, potato starch instead of all rice flour and sugar instead of honey.

Warning - I am purposefully not tagging this as a recipe because this was my first attempt and scroll down to the bottom to see my comments about how I would change MANY ingredients and techniques for next time.

Gluten Free Puff Pastry (take 1)
1 1/2 cups sweet rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
4 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp argar argar
1 tsp sugar
1 egg
1/4-1/2 cup water
1 stick of unsalted butter, melted

1. Mix dry ingredients together, for a well.

2. Mix the wet ingredients together - make sure to break up the egg.

3. Add additional water if needed to form a soft dough that is cohesive. (more wet than pie crust, more like a dough)

4. Wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Day 2
In preparation for rolling the dough and layering in the butter, I found this video extremely helpful.

Take 2 sticks of unsalted butter and knead them together into a rectangle.

The butter needs to be at the same temperature and consistency as the dough, so its important that the butter in thickness as possible. To do this, I borrowed a friend's technique of kneading the butter under cold water (in a bowl). This made the butter pliable without it melting. It is very important to dry the butter thoroughly before trying to add it to the dough.


After working it under the cold water and patting it dry, I placed it between two sheets of plastic wrap to help even out the shape and to be able to easily transfer it onto the dough.

Set the butter aside.

Working between two sheets of plastic wrap*, roll out the dough to about 1/4" thick. It needs to be large enough to completely wrap the butter.

*I am a huge fan of parchment paper, but for this plastic wrap is best. This dough will stick to parchment and you will spend too much time fiddling with it trying to pry it off the dough and time is your enemy right now. You need to keep everything cold.

Place the butter near the center of the dough.

Fold the dough over the butter, overlap is not a bad thing, you need to completely envelope the butter.

Fold the other side of the dough over the butter.


Fold the bottom of the dough upwards.

Fold the top of the dough down. Now its really important for you to check your seams and make sure that there is dough everywhere and no butter poking out. The dough is not what a gluten-based one would be like; its similar to a slightly gummy pie dough. It will break and crack but you can patch it together.


Place another sheet of plastic wrap atop the dough and with a rolling pin, push downward making and X-shape across the dough. Then use the pin and push down on the dough horizontally and vertically - you are trying to smoosh the layers together - before you start rolling.

Then begin rolling the dough out. You want to keep the rectangle shape.

Notice here that the butter started breaking through. THIS IS BAD. Puff pastry only puffs when there are layers of dough-butter-dough throughout the mixture. If the butter layers start touching you are running into pie dough territory, not puff pastry.

Next time, I would refrigerate the butter and dough package before attempting to roll it out. Giving it time to ensure that the butter and dough were at the same temperature.

In trying to keep the butter layers from touching, I generously sprinkled the dough with sweet rice flour. And continued rolling.

So right now there is one mass with three layers: dough-butter-dough. The process of adding more layers is called "putting in turns" and its all about taking those three layers and layering them atop one another and making more layers - the more layers, the more flaky the dough.


You are going to make two folds, cutting the dough in thirds and stacking each atop the other - like folding a business letter.

Fold the top third down.


Fold the bottom third up, covering the top third.


Turn the folded dough 90 degrees, so it faces you so it looks like the opening of a book.

Then proceed to roll out the dough again into a rectangle.


This is the completion of 1 turn.

You can see that there is still some butter poking through - again, this is NOT a good thing.


Follow the same steps of folding the dough in thirds and then turning it 90 degrees and roll it out again.


*It is really important to keep an eye on your plastic wrap and lift it up from the dough pretty often. As the dough is rolled and stretched, so too is the plastic wrap and it will break and tear. For this whole process I went through 2 sets of plastic wrap.


Second turn complete.

Then refrigerate for at least an hour.




Putting in the third turn.

I then put it in the fridge to rest.


After removing it from the fridge and putting in the 4th turn, I then rolled it out and cut off an edge piece and baked it off. (At this point I thought that too much butter and made its way through the dough and I had ruined the batch and was not ready to put in more time rolling if it was going to be a blob and not flake.)

But it did puff and flake!


But the dough lacked salt. This was something I was worried about from the get-go, but thought maybe it was unnecessary. I was very wrong.


So I ground up some table salt and sprinkled it on the dough and put in a 5th turn.

You can see the dough is looking a lot more homogenious now. No visible butter breaking through. Working with very cold dough takes a lot longer - it is very hard and takes a while to roll out - but I think it might be the trick to preventing the butter from escaping.

I left it here, about 1/2" thick and wrapped it and put it in the fridge to rest overnight.

DAY 3
The dough was very cold and equally difficult to roll out. (Hence less photos because I spent that time mumbling under my breath that I should be more patient and let the dough warm up and I would struggle less. But I digress.)


I decided on an apple tart and I rolled the dough out to between 1/4" and 3/8" thick. I cut a rectangle and then strips to run around the edges. I glued the edges together with egg wash, placed sliced apples in the center, brushed the top of the edges with more egg wash and sprinkled sugar over everything.

I constructed everything on an upside down cookie sheet lined with parchment.

I placed it in a 400F oven for 40 minutes total.


(I started with just 20 minutes and checked on it every 5 minutes until the edges were golden brown.)

You can see that the sides should have been a little wider but they puffed and browned!

While not the most beautiful thing I have ever made, I have never been prouder of something I baked. I served it up with a quick homemade caramel sauce, not pictured here.


Ideas for next time
-The pastry has a very distinct rice flour taste - a different blend of flours might help. Perhaps tapioca starch, more potato starch and some corn starch and much less rice flour.
-Maybe a full tablespoon of sugar in the initial dough.
-Definitely salt is needed in the dough, maybe 1/2 a tsp?
-Work the dough and butter together when they are cold, don't put more than 2 turns in at a time; refrigerate between each time.
-Maybe up the argar argar to prevent the dough from cracking when rolling it out when its so cold. (I am not sure if this would work) Or roll the dough out thinner and do two additions of butter in stead of one.
-The bottom dough was chewy and a little flaky, but the outer crust was much better. This recipe might work best for shells that are filled after they are baked rather than for tarts or turnovers.

Hot-Spaghetti-Dogs

A friend shared this post from boingboing last month and I really couldn't wait to try it out. Its slightly terrifying and oddly intriguing and reminded me of octodogs. When Tikyada pasta went on sale last week at Whole Foods, well I couldn't really resist the temptation to string hot dogs on pasta and call it dinner.




It was hard to manipulate the pasta, which got moist and pliable and started to snap if I strung too many dogs on it. But it held up long enough for me to make some weird shapes.

(this one is suppose to be a giraffe - his head is way at the top)

(hot dog tree!)

One of the biggest concerns, voiced by others, was fear that the past inside the dogs wouldn't cook, but you can see that the pieces of hot dogs got larger as they took on water and the pasta cooked through.



The biggest problem was what to serve with this dish. Ketchup, mustard, spaghetti sauce?
We went with mustard, which tasted great with the dogs, but a little weird with just a mouthful of spaghetti.

I would totally make this again and think its a great idea for kids of any age.
Making up interesting names is almost as fun as eating it. Weenieccinni, Spaghettidog, dogs on a rope...

Fiddleheads and Arepas

There is something about the arrival of fiddleheads to market that provides reassurance that spring is here to stay. They are baby ferns, picked before they unfurl. (Do non't go picking these from your yard or forest willy-nilly, some ferns are poisonous.) I only tasted them for the first time last year, and I have to admit that I wasn't bowled over. A bit like asparagus mixed with green beans and a hint of okra, but more bitter, fiddleheads are special because they have such a short season, so I thought it best to give them a second try.

I have also been experimenting a lot late with gorditas and arepa recipes. Portable, pocket foods are awesome - they are the culinary marsupials! I have modified the Bob's Red Mills recipe for gorditas on the back of the masa harina bag, but they are still too dense. Last week there was some significant success using P.A.N. pre-cooked cornmeal during a group effort to produce arepas and I thought tonight was the night to make them again.

I didn't have any P.A.N. precooked cornmeal, but I did have a bag of this:

The translation on the back of the bag said it was pre-cooked cornmeal, so I figured I could just mix it 1-to-1 with water, add salt and make arepas.
I should have known something was amiss when the mixture needed an extra cup of water to form a dough. But I pressed on, shaping the balls, forming disks, searing them on each side and then placing them in an oven till they cooked through and made a hollow sound when tapped.


The fiddleheads
I cleaned them (washed them in water a few times, and snipped off the brown ends) and then sauteed them in brown butter with garlic. They lightened in color as they cooked.


I served them up with seasoned black beans (onions, garlic, cumin, oregano, turmeric) and chopped avocado with lime and some scallions.


The fiddleheads were much better than I remember them being! They retained a bit of their crunch and had a nice green asparagus-green bean flavor. And honestly, what doesn't taste good sauteed in brown butter with garlic?
The arepas on the other hand were very dense and the flavor was off. I am going to have to hunt down some P.A.N. cooked corn meal and some more masa harina and do more experiments.

Salt

Better know an ingredient: SALT

All salt is, or was, sea salt. Mined salt that is harvested from in the ground, and is evaporated sea water. Humans require the mineral salt (sodium chloride) to balance and regulate fluids. (Salt is a rock that we need to eat!)

Table salt is most commonly mined salt. Many forms include the addition of small quantities of postasium iodide, sodium iodide or iodate, and are sold under the moniker of iodize salt. (Iodine is found naturally in kelp but is often added to mined salt. Iodine deficiency can cause serious health concerns including certain forms of mental retardation, and thyroid problems.)

Fleur de sel (flower of the sea), is collected using the traditional Celtic practice of and-harvesting the solar-evaporated crystals from Atlantic marshes in Brittany, France—a technique which dates back over 2000 years.

Grey salt, which is also made in the traditional Celtic method, gaining its purple-grey color from the clay in the salt flats where it is harvested.

Smoked salts
This technique has its roots with the Vikings in Denmark and the Native Americans of the northwest. Evaporated seawater, forming sea salt, is often the base of this complex condiment. The dried crystals are then smoked using a variety of wood chips.

Kosher salt
This refers to the practice of koshering meats, by drawing out the blood with salt. These larger flakes stick to the meat better and are the salt typically used for this practice.

Pink or red salt (Hawaiian or Himalayan)
This usually refers to the red clay that these salts are harvested from, which impart a red to pink hue.

Saltpetre (sometimes referred to as "nitre," "niter," "pickling salt" or "pink salt")
This is actually potassium nitrate and is what keeps corned beef pink, instead of turning gray.
It is also a key component in gunpowder.

Rice

Better know an ingredient: RICE

The term rice refers to the seed of the plant Oryza sativa, native to Africa. Brown rice is rice that is harvested and has the hull removed. White rice is rice that has been harvested, has the hull removed and the bran is removed as well. The germ of the seed is also removed during this process, thus making white rice more shelf-stable since the fat source has been removed and it will not go rancid or sprout. White rice can be further processed by buffing (using talc or glucose, producing polished rice), or parboiling (producing quick-cooking, converted or minute rice).

Rice is often categorized by size: short-, medium- or long-grain.
-short-grain rice: the grains must be less than two times longer then the width.
-medium-grain rice: grains must be two to three times longer than the width
-long-grain rice: grains must be at lest three times longer than the width

In addition to the size of the grain itself, it these groupings also refer to the amount of starch released during the cooking process; the shorter the grain, the more starch is released, producing a creamier or sticker final cooked product.*

Long-grain examples: Basmati rice, Jasmine rice, Carolina rice, Himalayan red rice, Indian red rice, Kasmati rice, Thai black rice, Wheani rice, Surinam rice, Pecan rice, Texmati rice
Long-grain rices tend to hold their shape and easily fluff or separate after properly cooked.

Medium-grain examples: California medium grain rice, Southern medium grain rice, Black Japonica rice, Chinese black rice, Italian black rice, red rice, Valencia rice, Venus black rice

Medium-grain rices will release some starches and stick together when cooked. Some are used for risottos.

Short-grain examples: glutinous rice (does not contain gluten!), sticky rice, Arborio rice, Mochi rice, sushi rice, bamboo rice, Bhutanese red rice, Bomba rice, Carnaroli rice, Nishiki rice (used for sake production), pearl rice, Roma rice, sweet rice.

Short-grain rices are used when a creamy or sticky finished product is needed, like in the production of risotto or sushi. This category of rice is often ground into "sweet" or "Mochi" rice flour, used in the preparation of sweets and baked goods.

Wild Rice
Wild rice is not technically “rice” because it is a seed of plant in the grass genus Zizania (What is commonly referred to as “rice” is Oryza sativa, which is in the grass family Poaceae.)


*It is more complicated than that. The wiki page on “rice” has links to the different types of sugars common in the different sized grains and their structures.

Gluten Free Cake at Starbucks

I wrapped my excitement in skepticism as I approached Starbucks. The gluten free rumblings had put me onto the release of a new product: Valencia Orange Cake, that's gluten free. While cleaning my desk, I found a gift card from two years ago - don't judge, we all procrastinate - and was giddy to see if a gluten free treat could be mine!

I tempered myself, conjuring up all the not-so-great and down-right horrible ____-free products I have tasted. Its not fair to set the bar too high, especially on a company's first try.

Upon reaching the counter I thought I had been thwarted, no orange cake in sight. The barista informed me that they do carry the Valencia Orange Cake, they are tucked behind the counter and individually wrapped for safety. The same cheery fellow commented on how moist and delicious the cake was. I let my enthusiasm shine through a bit and commented: "I am just excited that you even have it!"

The cake was not only moist, it had a small, even crumb. I was afraid it would be overly sweet, but the orange flavor was light; the orange oil flavor much more strongly pronounced than the orange peel or juice. The almond flavor was not very strong either, and without the few sliced almonds dotting the top, I am not sure their contribution would be easily recognized.

VERDICT: Would eat again. More importantly - and increasingly becoming my new measuring stick - it was good enough that I would share this with a gluten-eating friend.

New Ideas

So in the past two weeks at least 4 people have mentioned visiting this blog. (Normally this calls for an exclamation point, maybe even two, but hold on for just a moment.)
It has come to my attention that the nod to Phil Collins' 1985 Grammy Award Winning No Jacket Required is not being picked up by visitors, rather "oh I have seen your blog, its the one with the, uh, giant scary head, right?" is the general response and vibe.

So perhaps the time has come for a bit of a redesign. (This is me reluctantly getting "it")

I am open to suggestions. What would you rather see than my "giant orange face"?