Norfolk Street Bakery Cambridge Gluten Free Bread!

I can barely contain my excitement from eating this bread - it truly is superb!

The Norfolk Street bakery is situated towards the east of Cambridge city centre, in a quiet terraced road scattered with little shops and cafes such as this. I have walked past it many times assuming I wouldn't be able to eat anything at it - but how wrong was I!

I bought a GF loaf for £3.10 (I think) which is fairly standard for GF fare, and no more expensive than the average loaf you get from a supermarket. I left happily cuddling my loaf and excited to cut into it and give it ago.

This is what it looked like- bread! It was soft but with a decent crust on it as well. The texture was light and fluffy and the taste was very good. It tasted like bread - slightly sweet with a very slightly bitter aftertaste. But still very very tasty. I was over the moon - a loaf of bread that actually tastes like bread, that is enjoyable to eat and not a chore! So often bread is just a means to an end - something I can toast and spread something on so I don't go to work without breakfast or something to hold the sandwich filling in (often very half-heartedly!). This is a loaf of bread that I can actually imagine sitting in the garden with a glass of wine and dipping in some olive oil and just eating as a nibble - because it tastes good and is pleasant to eat! I could definitely tell it was fresh as well - I was assured that it was made in the early hours of that morning!

Another slice in and I discovered a bit of a hole near the top - goes through quite a long way but not too big. I think this might be to do with proving for too long. It's not a big problem though. It looks like the loaf was baked in quite a small (width and height) but long tin and has mushroomed over the top. I quite like that though - makes it look rustic.

Anyone who lives anywhere near Cambridge and requires gluten free bread HAS to go hear ASAP! I can't believe this place is only a six minute walk from my front door!

P.S. Sorry the photos aren't great - only have my pc webcam to take photos at the moment.

Adapting to the gluten free lifestyle

This post is designed to lead on from 'Diagnosis of coeliac disease' so you should read that first.

Having received the results of my Coeliac test, the news slowly began to sink in. I gave up gluten more or less straight away, before I went to the follow up appointment or saw the dietician. At first I didn’t take it all that seriously, which was a bit of a mistake. I used the same toaster for my gluten free bread as for normal bread, and shared jars of spread with gluten crumbs. I did check ingredients lists for gluten but sometimes I bent the rules somewhat. For example, I was on a journey somewhere and I wanted one of those little packs of sushi for lunch, it said it had wheat in it from the soy sauce. I bought it anyway and just didn’t use the soy sauce, when really the sushi itself could have had soy sauce in it.

Dirty gluten crumbs

The hardest thing to give up were bread and beer. Bread was difficult because my mum was just starting to get good at baking and I couldn’t eat her bread anymore. We went on a gluten free artisan baking course to try and learn how to make nice gluten free bread. However, the course seemed to be more focused on avoiding additives and using natural ingredients than producing decent bread. If you remove gluten from bread, which normally relies on this for structure, texture and is essentially what makes bread bread, you’ve got to replace it with something. Usually this is xanthan gum, guar gum, chia seeds or egg. Some of the bread we made tasted quite nice, but they didn’t really hang together.

Giving up beer was hard because I was an ale drinker. I used to drink cider but I would often end up coughing with an itchy throat and being sick, I realised this was because I was allergic to apples and so I was left with alcoholic ginger beer as my thirst quenching beer-like drink. However, I don’t think alcoholic ginger beer is a session drink. For a long time I mainly drank wine in pubs, or wine spritzers in the summer. In summer 2014, I decided that my quality of life would increase a lot of I were able to drink cider. I take anti histamines everyday anyway, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad, and it wasn’t. It did make my mouth a bit itchy at first, and I started off by just drinking half pints, and trying out perrys first, because I’ve always been less affected by pears than apples. Now I can drink cider with no problems at all.

I think having started being a bit slack made it more difficult to adjust to being gluten free. I visited the dietician who emphasised how important it is to be properly 100% gluten free if I want my insides to get better, even when I’m not having symptoms.

Now I have my own toaster, which I’ve written on with a sharpie:

I’ve also used toastabags when I’ve been on holiday, but at home it’s easiest just to have my own toaster since they’re only £5 from a supermarket. I also have put ‘GF’ labels on my jars of things that might end up being contaminated:

My lovely flatmate at uni was so understanding that he even put this label on one of his jars when we both had the same pesto:

I always clean up crumbs before I cook now. I do feel better than I did when I was eating gluten- the main thing is that I get ill a lot less often and when I do get ill I get better a lot quicker. My advice to newly diagnosed coeliacs would be to take the gluten free diet seriously from the offset. Try to learn how to explain the disease and answer questions that you will inevitably get:

So what is coeliac disease, is it an allergy or something? It’s not an allergy or intolerance, but an autoimmune disease where the presence of gluten in the diet triggers the immune system to attack healthy tissues in the body. This causes damage to the digestive system, which can cause diarrhoea and vomiting.

If you eat this (holds up piece of bread, for example), will you have to go to a and e? No, but I will feel pretty ill for the next couple of days and it will effect me for several months.

If it’s not that serious, why don’t you just try a sip of my beer? Or a corner of this biscuit? Because even a little bit will still make me ill!

Oh my (friend/aunt/brother) is gluten free, but they know their threshold so they can eat like one sandwich a week or a pint every other day or something… Some people with intolerances are able to tolerate a certain amount of gluten without any ill effects, it’s different for Coeliacs, even a small amount of gluten will damage my insides.

Good luck!

Gluten Free Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Ok, not quite! Not even that close but it’s that time of year again when the shops are starting to get full of Christmas cards and decorations, soon we will be digging out our Christmas jumpers and Christmas songs will be on the radio. I thought I would do a post about how I survived Christmas gluten free. My family isn’t very religious, for me Christmas is about family, being with people you don’t see much at other times of the year, exchanging presents, having fun and eating and drinking together.

Last Christmas was particularly good for gluten free – we had gluten free beer on tap:

This was Hambletons GFA- my personal favourite of the gluten free beers available. It tasted just like normal beer but with a slightly sweet after taste. Really nice to be able to have beer! You used to be able to buy this in Tesco but I haven't seen it for a long time. You can get it delivered directly from the brewery, with free delivery, as I have recently discovered. 

For some reason, traditionally we always have lasagne on Christmas eve, this was made with gluten free lasagne and gluten free garlic bread:

I find gluten free lasagne works just the same as normal lasagne, and I made the garlic bread using a shop bought gf roll with garlic butter on it.

Made a loaf of bread for turkey sandwiches, this was the large white oven loaf:

 

Deliciously juicy turkey:

We made gf bread sauce as well, which I didn’t take a photo of, but we just followed the normal technique but used gluten free bread instead- it worked well. We also tried making it with milk and polenta, but this just ended up being polenta so you couldn’t really call it bread sauce. We make gluten free gravy using gluten free flour instead of normal flour, and it works just as well, sometimes it’s a bit thinner but it’s usually ok.

We also had gluten free Christmas pudding, I can’t remember where it was from - I think it was probably Waitrose. I soaked it in rum and set it on fire which was fun. It tasted good although I don’t really like rich fruity things that much:

There were all sorts of non-gluten free things knocking about (bread, bread sauce, biscuits etc.) but we just made sure to keep these separate. Had separate sections of the boxing day buffet for gluten free stuff so we didn’t get mixed up. I had plenty to eat and it was a very Merry Christmas indeed!

Gluten Free eating in Spain

Since my diagnosis I've been very anxious about going abroad and having to face the same issues of trying to explain what I can and cannot eat somewhere where I have only a very basic grasp of the language. I was overwhelmingly surprised by how easy it was for me to follow a gluten free diet in Spain, the main response being that of course they had heard about a gluten free diet and were able to cater for my needs, and a slight look of confusion in response to how worried I looked about this issue. I didn't come across anywhere I wasn't able to eat, so if you're planning a trip to Spain- don't worry, you'll get along just fine!

What you need to say:

Sin gluten= without gluten, both gluten and sin are pronounced exactly as they are in English. It really is that simple!

Useful resources:

List of gluten containing ingredients- I found this page from a Spain gluten free blog really useful because of the list of foods which contain gluten, which I printed and took around supermarkets when looking at ingredients lists. However, many products in Spain are labelled 'sin gluten' to make life even easier!

Directory of gluten free restaurants- This website was amazing, to begin with it looks like it lists only chains like McDonalds, but on closer inspection it has several independent restaurants on it too.

Gluten Free Passport- I didn't actually take this along with me this time, I made my own. When someone is not aware of the diet I find it is helpful also to have a list of foods you can eat, milk, eggs, corn, potatoes etc. because sometimes people assume you can't eat anything that people are sometimes allergic to, leading to a very bland meal! Having said this, I never actually found occasion to have to use the gluten free restaurant card that I had made myself, because everyone was so well informed. 

Food Highlights:

       Clockwise from top left- bread at Rhonda parador, amuse-bouche at Rhonda parador
              (gluten containing version on left, gluten free version on right), message on menu, part of bread
at Malaga parador

Parador, a well known chain of hotels has an agreement with the coeliac society of Spain to provide gluten free food, including bread. We visited two paradores on our trip, one in Rhonda and one in Malaga. It was comforting knowing that this was an option to fall back on when you had run out of time to wonder around looking for somewhere to eat. The food was decent and the portion sizes were huge! in the malaga parador I got two huge gluten free baguettes that had been warmed in the oven, and my starter was scrambled egg and asparagus which must have been made with at least 4 eggs! I made myself a sandwich for the plane which was very handy.

Top panel clockwise from top left: fried fish at Restaurant Marymar- Marbella, mini burgers at La Trilla, Marbella (LTM), bread rolls at LTM. Bottom panel clockwise from left,: assorted croquette at LTM, Beiker Pan Tostado from supermarket, Kid chops at La Bodeguita de enmedio, Casares

My two favourite restaurants were Marymar, and La Trilla both in Marbella. Marymar was owned by a chef with a coeliac daughter, and specialised in fried fish, I had mixed marinated fish which was fried in a gluten free batter. It was very good, unfortunately the restaurant seems to have closed since I went.

La Trilla was an amazing tapas restaurant, almost their entire menu was gluten free. We visited at lunch and were the only table in there, but it didn't matter. I had gluten free bread rolls which were really tasty, buttery, fluffy and shaped in lovely little swirls, with hidden treats in the middle like a hazelnut or an olive. The mini burgers were delicious, the one I had was tuna and sea lettuce and tasted really good. The mixed croquettes were a little disappointing, the ham one didn't taste of much and the cheese one was very strong blue cheese. However, there was one which was 'chicken soup' flavoured and this was magnificent, really gooey and tasted like chicken soup which I've always been a big fan of! I've included a picture of Pan Tostado, which is basically little squares of toasted bread, I've not come across these in the UK, but I haven't looked very hard. They were really nice along side a salad and stay fresh better than a loaf of bread.

The most anxious experience I had was at La Bodeguita de enmedio, Casares, because the waiter didn't speak any English at all, at this lovely little restaurant in the square in Casares. It was fine though because he understood what I was talking about, and I was able to eat kid (goat) chops followed by a flan caramel. 

Our nearest supermarket was Mercadona, and we also tried Lidl, both of which had plenty of products that were gluten free.
If you do a little research before you travel and know what to say you will get on fine and be able to eat some amazing gluten free food in Spain.

Gluten Free Baking: GFOASS- lean crusty white sandwich bread

I got the recipe book ‘Gluten Free on a Shoestring (GFOAS) Bakes Bread’ for Christmas, it’s written by Nicole Hunn, author of the blog by the same name. The recipes are vastly different from those I’ve tried before, which were mainly using a batter. It took me a LONG time to compile the ingredients and cost A LOT of money! I had purchased almost all the ingredients, including whey protein isolate which cost around £13 (enough to make ~2 loaves), when I realised that one of the ingredients, expandex modified tapioca starch, is not available in Europe! I really thought that was the end of the road for a time, until I read here (number 6) about the replacement, Ultratex, which cost about £23 including delivery! However, I have only used a miniscule amount so far. So I mixed up my gluten free flours in a large tub, and headed back to Glasgow ready to bake my first loaf. I’d decided on the loaf ‘Lean Crusty White Sandwich Bread’, because it said that it was going to change my life! Reading through the recipe I encountered another problem- one of the stages requires a bowl of dough to be left in the fridge for 12 hours-5 days. Which means that I had to carefully coordinate everything to when my flatmate and I had an almost empty fridge!

So first I had to make a starter, which was basically the flour mix, yeast, sugar and warm water whisked up. This is what it looked like:

I left it in a warm place for about 40 minutes and it grew into this:

I mixed the remaining dry ingredients:

And added the starter to them:

This is where I met my next problem which, ultimately, lead to my downfall. I was supposed to knead the dough in a stand mixer with a dough hook. I don’t have a stand mixer, so I had to improvise. The book suggested using a wooden spoon. I put the ingredients for the dough into a bowl and attempted to mix them with a wooden spoon. It really wasn’t possible; it was like trying to stir play dough- something that is basically solid. I opted instead for kneading by hand; the mixture was so sticky I didn’t dare put it onto my work surface. I air kneaded the dough, which basically involved pulling it apart with my hands and pushing it back together again. I did this for a full 10 minutes! I could feel it drying on my hands, like a clay facemask, but I persisted because I felt like kneading by hand for 10 minutes was roughly equivalent to kneading on medium speed in a machine for 5 minutes. Of course, the problem was my hands were hot, whilst a dough hook would be fairly cold. I wasn’t really sure what the dough should feel like at this point, so I carried on, and put it into an oiled bowl in the fridge for about 36 hours:

When I was ready to bake, I greased my baking ‘tin’:

This is what my dough looked like before I got going:

I added a bit more flour and turned it over on itself a few times, as per the instructions, and managed to shape the dough fairly successfully:

I then set it aside for rising:

I left it for about 2 ½ hours, it hadn’t quite risen to the top of the tin, but I didn’t want to leave it any longer because the recipe said only around 1 ½ hours:

I made the slash and it was ready for the oven:

To cook it I had to put it in the cold oven and then turn the oven on, which I was a bit worried about but it turned out ok. Here it is just after cooking:

This is the loaf out of its tin:

It certainly looked the part, and smelt good. However, it’s when I tried to cut the loaf that my heart sank. It was hard, really hard, to cut through. This is what it looked like inside:

It had a very dense crumb and was pretty dry. The texture was pretty bad if I’m honest, really dry and stale-like. The crust was pretty good, and the flavour was very good. It tasted just like bread! The flavour was quite sweet and yeasty, with a slightly acidic tanginess. This is what a single slice looks like:

Overall, I’m very disappointed. The book is called gluten free on a shoestring, meaning cheap, and this is far from it! It’s hard to estimate the real cost per loaf because I used different amounts of each flour, but it can’t have been far off £10! I get gluten free food on prescription, and living in Scotland there’s no prescription charge, so a loaf has to be really special for it to be worth forking out on time and time again. It just didn’t live up to my expectation of it, as a lean crusty white tasty loaf. Now I’m left with around enough mix to make one more loaf from this book, and I don’t know what to do with it! I don’t want to be disappointed again, I want to bake something that’s going to work!