Gluten Free Baking- Double-baked Cheese Soufflé

Souffle is not something I’ve eaten much of, even before diagnosis, but something that I’ve always found quite intriguing. The mousse like texture of soufflé is appealing and I thought I’d give it a try. I made the double-baked cheese soufflé from the Hamlyn all colour cookbook ‘200 gluten-free recipes’. These are the ingredients I used:

The recipe involved making a rice flour based cheese sauce, into which whisked egg whites are folded. The cheese I used was a Cheshire blue and the mixture also contained chives, thyme and mustard. This was then baked for 15 minutes at 180C, here they are in the oven:

After the first bake they had gone golden, but not risen very much. They looked like this:

The soufflé then had to be left to cool completely before the second bake. Before baking again, a mixture of double cream and grated Parmesan was poured on top. Here they are just before the second baking:

This time they were cooked for 10 minutes at 220C. This is what they looked like when they came out:

They have risen a little but unfortunately soon sunk. The soufflé had a really great flavour, very cheesy and creamy complemented well by the herby flavour of the chives and the subtle hint of mustard. The texture was very pleasing; the lower layer was a dense mousse, thick and creamy. The upper layer was quite wet and cream like still, it probably needed a little longer which would have allowed it to stay up after it had risen. The Parmesan in the upper layer had melted to a stringy consistency, which made eating it even more interesting. Here is a picture of the texture inside:

You can see the mousse like texture lower down with the wet cream above and Parmesan skin on top. The soufflé was very good and surprisingly easy to make, definitely something I’d try again, maybe a sweet one next time.

Gluten Free Baking- Simple Focaccia

Recipes reproduced with permission of sasquatch books

Focaccia has always been one of my favourite breads. I really like the comforting oiliness of it, the peppery olive flavour and the loose texture with large air spaces. It is also a bread that my Mum is particularly good at making, seeing her produce dozens of them each month fills me with jealously! Since diagnosis I am yet to have gluten free Focaccia that tastes or looks like focaccia. The unique structure and flavour of focaccia seems to rely on the presence of the forbidden gluten. 

Here is a simplified version of the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp chia seeds

½ cup water

1 cup teff flour

1 cup tapioca flour

½ cup arrowroot

½ cup sorghum flour

¼ cup garbanzo bean flour

¼ cup millet flour

¼ cup flax meal

2 tablespoons herbes de provence

1 teaspoon salt

1 envelope(2 ¾ tsp) active dry yeast

1 cup room temp water

5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp maple syrup

1 large onion, halved and sliced

Here is a picture of the ingredients:

1. Soak chia seeds in half cup of water for 15 mins. Heat oven to 425F (218C). Line baking sheet.

2.  Mix dry ingredients excluding yeast in bowl

3.  In a separate bowl, mix yeast, water, 3tbsp oil and maple syrup. Wait for mixture to foam.

4.  Add dry ingredients and chia seeds into wet ingredients.

5. Mix with a  sturdy spoons and by hand until a dough is formed.

6. Turn out onto the baking sheets and shape into a large oval, press small dimples into the dough.

This is the completed dough before cooking:

7. Bake in oven for 25mins.

8. Sauté onions for 8 mins in the remaining olive oil until transparent and beginning to brown.

9.  Remove focaccia, cover with onions return and bake for an additional 25 mins.

This is the focaccia just after cooking:

The onions have gone a little black, even though it was only in for around 10 of the final 25 minutes. To my disappointment the focaccia hadn’t risen at all. The look of the bread was quite good, brown and a nice shape and the smell of the onions and herbs in the dough was really appetising. This is a slice of it cut open:

The dough was very dense because it hadn’t risen very much at all. The crust was thick and difficult to bite or cut through which made eating it a bit of a chore. The flavour was probably the best thing about the bread. It tasted herby and comforting but this was let down by the difficulty in eating it. I would also have preferred it to have the familiar greasy, oily texture but this was very dry and chewy in texture. In the end I ended up throwing quite a lot of it away. It was just too difficult to eat and got more so as it got older. I’m still on the look out for a decent gluten free focaccia!