Banana Loaf

I had some bananas which I'd forgotten about, so I made this loaf with five of them. I used 335g of spelt flour, an egg, the mashed bananas, two pinches of salt, two tablespoonfuls of Allinson's yeast, and two tablespoonfuls of olive oil, and about 150 mls of whole milk. Beaten together with an electric mixer, until smooth. 

Allowed to rise overnight, and then decanted into a silicon bread tray. Cooked on the middle shelf of the oven for 45 minutes at 180 deg C. Then allowed to cool in a dry cupboard for half a day. Great texture and flavour. Great with marmalade!

(NB: I used two tablespoonfuls of Allinson's yeast, because it had been sitting on the shelf for some time. Fresh yeast will be fine with one tablespoonful). 

 

Buttered Toast with Brussels Pate

A favourite snack dish made with lightly toasted wheat-free bread (Genius brand), salted butter straight from the fridge, so not very runny, plus 75g or so of Brussels pate. Spread thick across the surface of the buttered toast.

Cut the slices into triangles.

Dressed in black pepper. Delicious! Two minutes to make.

Roman Army Bread (Spelt Grain)

A loaf I've made before with spelt flour, but not with any of the recipes I've used before from the packet. This one is different, using much less olive oil, and so produces a stouter (if not finer) texture.

I also cut the flour with 150g of oats (the remainder 350g of spelt flour). I couldn't find a jar of honey at the front of the likely cupboard, so I used three dessert spoonfuls of demerara sugar instead of one dessert spoonful of honey. The switch worked just fine.

The recipe called for one dessert spoonful of olive oil (earlier recipes for this loaf have called for 3 spoonfuls), and called for only half a teaspoonful of salt. I used one dessert spoonful of quick yeast. It called for no vinegar at all, but the Romans used vinegar in almost everything, including their sweets, so I added a dessert spoonful, just to be on the safe side.

All the dry ingredients were assembled in one bowl, and gradually added to a similar bowl contained warm water and the olive oil.

Mixed with an electric mixer for seven minutes in the bowl, then decanted into a 2lb bread tin (silicon in this case), and allowed to stand for an hour in a warm place.  Then baked in an oven preheated to 190 deg. C for forty-five minutes to fifty minutes on the middle shelf.

Caesar Salad

A Caesar salad is essentially a chicken salad with croutons, lettuce and mayo. This is a variation on the basic recipe.

Made with diced roast chicken pieces (chicken breast in this instance), fresh from the fridge. Plus bread croutons (wheat-free), fried in butter in an omelette pan until browned and crisp.

Once cool, the lettuce salad, the chicken, and the croutons were mixed together in a bowl with some mayonnaise. Along with some diced or crushed garlic, a couple of dashes of Worcester sauce, and also two dashes of Tabasco sauce. Simple and fabulous!

Apricot and Coconut Cornbread

I used peanut oil in this recipe - if you have an allergy to peanuts, use coconut or sunflower oil instead. I also used milk.

Made with 100g of semi-dried apricots, 150g of coarse cornmeal, 50g of peanut oil (I weighed this in a bowl), 2 heaped teaspoonfuls of baking power, a pinch of salt, one egg, plus 150mls of milk (actually a low fat blend of milk and buttermilk, bought from the co-op).

The Apricots were chopped up with a sharp knife. The cornmeal was added and stirred together. I added the milk, the peanut oil, the salt, and the egg. Then I added the baking powder and the dessicated coconut (two teaspoonfuls). The mix was gently blended with an electric foodmixer for five minutes, at a medium speed.

I decanted the bread mix into a silicon bread tin. Cooked at 180 deg C for forty minutes on the middle shelf, until the bread had risen, and the surface had browned. Check the bread at 25 minutes, even if you are using an accurate oven thermometer.

The loaf can be knocked out of the bread tray without breaking or sticking (just turning it upside down is enough!).

 If you would prefer a sweeter loaf, you can add some granulated sugar before blending. Dissolve the sugar in the milk to make sure there are no crystals in the bread mix.

Excellent eaten with rhubarb and ginger jam!

Banana and Polenta Bread

A cornbread by another name. Simple to make, and it can be wheat-free and gluten-free, if the baking powder does not contain gluten (beware - some do). It can also be lactose free, if the milk is substituted with oat or soya milk. I used peanut oil in this recipe - if you have an allergy to peanuts, use coconut or sunflower oil instead.

Made with three small ripe bananas, 150g of coarse cornmeal, 50g of peanut oil (I weighed this in a bowl), 2 heaped teaspoonfuls of baking power, a pinch of salt, one egg, plus 90mls of milk (actually a low fat blend of milk and buttermilk, bought from the co-op).

The bananas were peeled and mashed in a bowl. The cornmeal was added and stirred together. I added the milk, the peanut oil, the salt, and the egg. Then I added the baking powder. The mix was blended to a smooth consistency with an electric blender, for five minutes at a medium speed.

I greased the inside of a glass bowl (suitable for oven cooking) with a small knob of butter, and decanted the bread mix into it. Cooked at 180 deg C for forty minutes on the middle shelf, until the bread has risen, and the surface is browned. Check the bread at 25 minutes, even if you are using an accurate oven thermometer.

The loaf can be knocked out of the bowl or bread tray without breaking or sticking.

The only sugar in this recipe is the natural sugar in the bananas. If you would prefer a sweeter loaf, you can add some granulated sugar before blending. Dissolve the sugar in the milk to make sure there are no crystals in the bread mix.

This recipe is easy to make, and is endlessly adaptable. Other ingredients which might be used instead of banana are cheese, caramelised onion, cooked lentils, or some tomato passata, Herbs might be added also.

Split Panini with Butter and Rhubarb and Ginger Chutney

Rhubarb and ginger is a favourite flavour combination for Scots. Most often in the form of jam, which is how I first encountered it as a child. But it works just as well as a savoury chutney.

This is a simple snack, made with a split panini (from Asda), grilled in a toaster, and then buttered. After the butter is spread, add the chutney. That's it! Delicious!

Pork Steak with Gluten Free Toasted Sourdough Bread

A straightforward breakfast of toasted sourdough bread,  surmounted with squashed fried tomato quarters and half a teaspoonful of English mustard. A slow cooked pork steak (low heat, twenty minutes under glass, turned twice), along with some diced chestnut mushrooms, and a fried egg - all cooked in a light drizzle of sunflower oil.

I didn't bake this sourdough bread. It was made by Warburtons. It keeps really well in the fridge.

Honey Ham Wrap

This is a substantial meal which can be put together in minutes. Honey ham trimmings, sweetcorn, spring onion and mayonnaise, in a herbed bread wrap.

Chop up two spring onions and place in a glass bowl. Add a small tin of sweetcorn (drained), and two dessert spoonfuls of mayonnaise. Add a little black pepper. Stir together thoroughly.

Lay the wrap on a plate, and add the honey ham on one side. Add a few spoonfuls of the sweetcorn and spring onion salsa on top. Roll the wrap, folding at the side along the way to close off the ends. Then cut the wrap diagonally with a sharp knife. Voila!

Minimal Wheat Brown Bread

Made with Dove's Farm wheat-free brown bread flour, with 20 per cent of Khorasan wheat (Kamut), which is an ancient variety that is often ok for people with a wheat intolerance to eat. So this is not a wheat-free loaf, but eighty per cent of it is wheat-free.

Essentially the process is easiest if you use two glass bowls, one for the wet ingredients, and the other for the dry ones.

Weigh out 400g of the wheat-free brown bread flour and add to the dry bowl. Weigh out 100g of the Khorasan flour, and add to the bowl also. Add sugar (one dessert spoonful), and a teaspoonful of quick acting yeast. Blend together thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

Add 400g of whole milk to the wet bowl. Add one beaten egg, six dessert spoonfuls of olive oil, one dessert spoonful of vinegar, and blend together with a whisk.

Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet bowl, and stir together. When it gets stiff, use an electric blender the rest of the way. Beat the mixture for five minutes and allow it to rest for a while. Then beat the mixture for another five minutes.

Allow the dough to rest, and to begin to rise. Then decant the dough into a standard bread tin (silicon ones are the easiest to use), and allow the dough to rise to the desired level in a warm dry place.

Bake in the oven at 190 deg C for around 45 minutes (middle shelf), checking by eye frequently toward the end of the process.

Generally the bread will keep for around a fortnight in the fridge in an airtight container.

Scrambled Egg with Pastrami

Made with peppered pastrami trimmings, two medium sized eggs, shredded tomato, flat parsley, butter, and milk (or single cream).

The pastrami was chopped into small pieces and fried in a skillet with 25g of butter, until cooked through. Then a quarter cup of milk was added to the pan, along with the two eggs. Stir thoroughly until the yokes are broken. Add a pinch of parsley, and continue to stir occasionally until the egg separates from the liquid, which begins to run clear.

Served on unbuttered wheat free bread. 

Shred half of a salad tomato as a garnish.

Leek and Chorizo Soup

A pretty simple soup, made with one large leek, three carrots, 100g of spelt grain, 50g of green lentils, and around 150g of chorizo sausage.

The vegetables were cooked for 45 minutes in water until all were soft. Then they were mashed for two minutes.

Diced chorizo was added, and the soup was cooked for another hour at a low heat under glass.

Add two pinches of rosemary, and a teaspoonful of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce, ten minutes before the cooking is complete.

Serve with buttered bread (wheat free or otherwise).

Devilled Kidneys

A UK dish in its heyday in the nineteenth century as a breakfast, often in gentlemens clubs.

Kidney (about 270g), butter, spelt flour, mustard, Worcester sauce, red currant sauce, white pepper, tomato puree, and one medium onion.

Made in this case with beef kidney. Chop the kidney into chunks, removing the white tissue with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors. Add two teaspoonfuls of the flour to a freezer bag, along with the Worcester sauce (four dashes), mustard (teaspoonful), white pepper, and the red currant sauce (half teaspoonful). Add the kidney pieces to the bag, seal, and shake and manipulate the bag until all the chunks are evenly covered in the mixture.

Heat a pan with two knobs of butter. Chop the onion and fry for five minutes at a medium heat. Add the kidney chunks, and stir fry for four minutes, stirring frequently. Add about 75g of boiling water, along with two squeezes of tomato puree. Cook for ten to twelve minutes until the gravy thickens, stirring every thirty seconds.

Serve with toast or potato bread (illustrated here with a toasted panini), dressed with a sprinkling of parsley (optional).

Chorizo Stew

A simple stew made with chorizo sausage, sun-dried tomato, sweetcorn, leek, onion, spinach, kamut, vegetable and ham stock, paprika, white pepper, and garlic.

Bring water to the boil in a deep pan, and add chopped leek, onion and spinach. Slice the chorizo and add to the pan, along with the vegetable and ham stock. Add 4 crushed garlic cloves. Add the sweetcorn and the sundried tomato (cut into small pieces).

Return the contents to the boil, and add a large pinch of paprika, and a quarter teaspoonful of white pepper (or according to taste). Add a small handful of kamut grains, which acts as a thickener, as well as adding a flovour of its own. Simmer at a low heat for ninety minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve with toasted pita bread. Dampen the pita and drain before putting it into the toaster. Use it as a tearing bread. The garnish is a baby leaf salad of chard, spinach, purple lettuce, and rocket.

Wheat Free Smoked Paprika Brown Bread

I modified a standard wheat-free recipe for brown bread, using Dove's Farm brown flour, by adding a heaped teaspoonful of Spanish smoked paprika. The recipe and preparation details are available on another page.

This loaf has a cracked surface, probably because the preheated oven was too hot when the loaf was put in. Better perhaps to have the start temperature a little too low, and to raise the temperature after that. The first yeast I used was ineffective, so I added another batch of yeast and remixed the dough. That might also have had something to do with it. But the integrity of the loaf was fine, and it was very easy to cut thin slices from it.

The result is delicious! The texture of the bread seems to be softer than without the addition of the smoked paprika. Great to eat with French Brie, or a cottage cheese with pepper and a dash of Tabasco Sauce.

Wheat Free Smoked Paprika Brown Bread

Omelette with Double Gloucester Cheese and Chives

A simple two egg omelette topped with roasted Double Gloucester cheese with chives, and served with buttered toasted wheat free bread. 

Beat two eggs thoroughly after adding half a teaspoonful of water to the mixing bowl. Allow to stand. Slice 75 grams of the cheese into squares, or grate it if you prefer (I chose to grate the cheese in this case). Put a little sunflower oil into an omelette pan, and brush evenly over the surface. Once the pan is hot, beat the eggs again, and pour into the pan. Turn down the heat so the omelette does not burn, and cook for two minutes. Cover the surface of the omelette with the cheese.

Remove the pan from the hob and place under a preheated grill. All grills are different, so this part of the process needs to be watched by eye. The pan should be just a couple of inches under the grill element, with the handle facing outwards. Turn  the pan left after a couple of minutes, and then right after a couple more, keeping the handle away from the element as far as possible. Grill until the surface of the omelette is golden brown. 

Serve with buttered wheat free brown bread, black pepper, and brown pickle (Branston pickle in the picture) or ketchup. 

Omelette with Double Gloucester Cheese and Chives

Eggplant Soup

Made with an aubergine (eggplant), half a sweet potato, three spring onions, three sticks of celery, a courgette, a clove of garlic, and five chestnut mushrooms.

All the vegetables were chopped into chunks, and stirfried in olive oil for fifteen minutes. Boiling water was added, and the contents of the pan were allowed to simmer for twenty minutes until soft.

The vegetables were blended with a Mouli blender. A vegetable stock cube, white pepper, and a large pinch of rosemary were added. Served with slices of home made wheat and gluten free bread.

Can be served with some grated blue Stilton cheese.

Eggplant Soup

Wheat and Gluten Free Brown Loaf

Brown loaf made with Dove's Farm Wheat and Gluten Free Brown Flour. This recipe produces a loaf with taste and texture virtually impossible to distinguish from a loaf made with a variety of wheat. Can be eaten as it is sliced, or as toast. 

Made with 500 grams of the wheat and gluten free brown flour, two eggs, half a teaspoonful of vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar (or honey), 450 mls of whole milk, 6 dessert spoonfuls of olive or sunflower oil, half a teaspoonful of salt, and 7 grams of yeast. Topped with poppy seeds (optional). 

Weigh the 500 grams of flour into a bowl, add the yeast (I use Allinson's yeast, since it is one of the quickest acting) and fold it into the flour. In another mixing bowl, add the 450 mls of milk, half of the oil (3 dessert spoonfuls), the eggs, the sugar, the salt, and the vinegar. Whisk together. 

Add the whisked liquid to the bowl containing the flour and the yeast, and stir together with a wooden spoon. Then mix the dough thoroughly with an electric mixer for five minutes, in order to get as much air into the dough as possible. Add the remaining 3 dessert spoonfuls of oil, and fold it into the dough. Mix again with the electric mixer for a minute. 

Allow the dough to rise a little before pouring it into a silicon bread tin. Texture the surface, and add the poppy seeds. Put the bread tin in a warm place, and leave until the dough has risen close to the preferred height.  Bake in an oven preheated to 220 deg. C for 50 to 55 minutes. 

For baking bread (and any kind of baking for that matter), an accurate oven thermometer is recommended, since that will give reliable and repeatable results. You will find that the temperature on the dial is often significantly different from what the thermometer tells you. 

I used the latest Dove's Farm recipe (in the past I made a successful loaf using this flour with a different recipe, which can be found on this blog), and it came out beautifully as you can see, The comments on the Doves' Farm page for this flour suggests a lot of people have been unsuccessful in baking it. This may be a combination of not leaving the dough long enough to rise, using a slow-acting yeast, or not using an oven thermometer. 

Wheat and Gluten Free Brown Loaf

Wheat and Gluten Free Pizza

Home-made wheat-free pizza. Made with 'Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza Crust Mix from the US, though it can be ordered from UK stockists.

Unproblematic to make. Just add eggs, water and olive oil. The mix contains a yeast packet and bakes just like a real wheat crust. Great texture and taste. It’s crispy and chewy and has the wonderful yeast flavor of a wheat crust. You can add basil, oregano, garlic, or finely chopped rosemary to the mix to expand the flavour range. Makes two 12 inch pizza bases.

Serves 8 people. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cook time is between 22 - 27 minutes. Resting time is 20 minutes.

Ingredients: whole grain brown rice flour, potato starch, whole grain millet, whole grain sorghum flour, tapioca flour, potato flour, evaporated cane juice, xanthan gum, active dry yeast, sea salt, and guar gum,

The topping contains tomato, tomato passata, sliced red pepper, sliced button mushrooms, spring onion, anchovy fillets, mozarella cheese, and lots of grated cheddar. With no added salt.

Wheat and Gluten Free Pizza

Pork and Beans

Served on Genius wheat free bread, The photograph was taken before Genius had production problems in 2015, I was not convinced they had a proper grip on what those problems were (they blamed the bakery, rather than the production process. Though they did talk to me during that period, when I was trying to find out why the quality of their bread had declined). Now, I would make my own wheat free bread.

Cumberland pork sausage (fried or grilled), baked beans in tomato sauce, with white pepper. Served without butter. Not a wheat free meal, since pork sausages usually contain wheat. I used to live close by a supermarket which supplied wheat free sausages. These outlets appear and disappear.

Tinned pork and beans used to be normal before WWII on both sides of the Atlantic. After the war started, baked beans were available as just that in the UK, and in the end became a favourite.

Pork and Beans