Pantries and Preparedness. Gluten free, Sour dough, tips.

Over the last week I have had some serious luck with finding all kinds of new tips.  Many of them are thanks to you all!
Firstly, thank you to Kallie who emailed me about a website called Cultures for Health.
They have endless sour dough recipes but also recipes, instructional videos and tips for things like fermented veggies,  yoghurt, cheese making, essential oils and more.  AND they have free ebooks including the most excellent Gluten Free Sour Dough bread making which I know several readers would love.
There is also a regular sour dough e book that I am enjoying and it has things like what to do with bread failures, how to make things like sour dough pie crust, pancakes and so much more. It is fantastic!
Just go to "free ebook library access" and you put in your email.  I have downloaded these e books and they are amazing.
I have gone from "what will I try to make next?" to a list of new things I really want to make and can't wait.  The starter is on the bench warming up as we speak!

Kallie's Marmite Sour Dough Scrolls.

Kallie also sent me this recipe Morning Glory Muffins which looks fantastic. This is a regular recipe but could be adapted to Gluten Free I think.

Cookie has also been so helpful with gluten free tips. Because I know that dietary restrictions can really mess with the budget I really hope these tips help some of you.
Over to Cookie:

Thankfully the internet is loaded with information and recipes.  I'm sending the link I've used as there's
just so much information it's easier to do that.  For the flour, I
found one on thewhoot.com. I like it because it's easy and doesn't
require a lot of exotic ingredients.  I also have used one from
theminimalistbaker.com/diy-gluten-free-flour-blend.  Lots of input
there and many questions asked and answered by her fans.  The next one
is americastestkitchen.com/recipe/7854-americas-test-kitchen-all-purpose-gluten-free-flour-blend.
Each and every one of these works very well.  I am blessed to have a
high speed blender and can grind my own flours with rice that I have
on hand so I don't need to purchase much.  Potato starch or cornstarch
is inexpensive as is tapioca flour that's needed.

One thing I found to cut the outrageous cost of this way of life is to
MOO. (Make Our Own) We don't buy any preprepared items ever.  

As for almond flour, this is very expensive here to buy.  The
cheapest I found it for was at Costco for $14 for 3 pounds.  On Amazon
it's $48 for $5 pounds.  The flour can be made in either the food
processor or  a blender but you must be extremely careful with the
time and speed as you could wind up with almond butter, which isn't a
bad thing, but not the goal.   I pour boiling water on the almonds to
remove the skins, but it's not necessary if you don't mind a darker
flour.   If you do the boiling water and remove skins then let these dry before the next step. 
Then I carefully grind it up in the blender.  Done.  For the
coconut flour, it can either be done by carefully grinding unsweetened
coconut flakes or by saving the residue and drying it when making
coconut milk.

As for the milks, I decided to MOO because there were so many
chemicals in the ones in the stores. Soak 1 c.up of almonds in 2 cups
for several hours or overnight.  Drain and put the soaked almonds in
the blender with 3 to 4 cups of fresh water and blend for about 4
minutes on high.  Strain through cheese cloth. It will keep in the
refrigerator for 3 days.Sweetner and vanilla can be added to it but
it's optional. It can be frozen, which is what I usually do. The
residue can be dried in the oven and used for baking.  I do the same
with unsweetened coconut flakes except they don't need the soaking
time.  I use one cup of boiling water in the blender then another cup of cold water 
is added after the first amount it blended. Of course the coconut must be gluten free.
  I also make other non-dairy milks this way using flax seeds or hemp seeds.

The quick and dirty way to make a cup of almond milk is to take a 2
teaspoons to a tablespoon of smooth almond butter and put it in the
blender and blend until smooth and strain.  Again, sweetener and
vanilla can be added but it's optional.
I even found a recipe similar to sunshine cake that completely uses
almond flour, two whole oranges and some eggs and honey.  It's
incredibly delicious.

Honestly, this is not as labor intense as it might look to some. I
would rather have the bags of rice, nuts and coconut in the freezer to
be made up as I need them than have bags and cartons on the shelf that
go out of date and become rancid.  This way my pantry is prepared.  By
keeping these supplies in the freezer I can make up whatever I want as
needed and there's no waste of not using something up.


Since almond milk and flour are expensive I hope these tips help someone a lot!

Cookie then added this recipe which she uses for sandwiches.

Flaxseed Bread

Preheat oven to 350F

Put oiled parchment paper on a 10x15 baking pan.

2 cups of flaxmeal

1 TBSP baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 to 2 tsp sugar

5 eggs beaten

1/2 cup water

1/3 oil

Mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and beat well but do not over beat. Let sit for about 2 minutes to thicken. Pour batter and spread into a rectangle in prepared pan leaving about an inch or two from edge. Bake 24-28 minutes. Makes 12 servings. 

I added some garlic and onion powder to the recipe.

Thanks so much Cookie for all your tips. Making flour and milks are really good things to know. 

I like King Arthur Flour for recipes, ideas and they also have a Gluten free section. Some of their recipes call for sour dough plus dry yeast, which I ignore. I have never needed to add yeast to sour dough.  Otherwise their site is excellent.

Finally, Gluten Free on a Shoestring blog has a recipe index of just about anything. For some reason my link won't work but it will be easy to find.

Given the price of specialty Gluten Free products and the number of people needing or wanting them some of these recipes and tips could make wonderful gifts.  A basket of gluten free cooking goodies or a box of Gluten Free cookies could be such a hit!

I notice that Aldi have quite a range of gluten free things from flours to snacks.  By contrast once I saw 6 Gluten free biscuits for $18 in a deli near us and they were tiny!

If you have gluten free recipes, tips and ideas please share them!
We all have to manage food budgets and special dietary needs just add to the challenge so I am hoping you find the ebooks helpful and that combined we can come up with some big money savers! xxx