Dede, as soon as baking powder (or bicarb) gets wet, it is activated. It starts to dissolve and produce carbon dioxide bubbles. It's those bubbles that we try to capture in baking to work particularly with the gluten that's created in a lot of our flours when they get wet. We get air pockets and stretchy glutenous walls. Additionally a hot oven excites gaseous molecules very rapidly which results in some expansion of those air pockets/bubbles. If we leave batter too long then the bubbles will peak before we can use them.

I use my batters quickly! But I sometimes have cupcakes leaning over too. I have thought it might be a batter that is too runny. I don't seem to have the problem when I turn the fan off, which I prefer to do for baking.

I buy a half lamb leg and ask the butcher to de-bone it, then the dog gets the bone. I go home and dice the meat as I wish.

I usually halve the chilli powder in this as my children are 10 and 6, love curry, but not the heat. It is definitely spicy, as in tasty, but it doesn't need to be hot because it's only chilli powder. Just start small with the powder and stir a bit more through at the end if you want it hotter :-) I sometimes serve the children and then stir more powder through the remainder for DH and I.

It IS flavoursome/spicy, but that's not the same as hot. Definitely a good a medium with this amount of chilli but just add it to order.

Yep Twitterpated, makes a big difference. You can see what gluten is doing in all of those stringy elasticated fibres that you can see when you stretch a good dough. When you cook buns close together, and tear them apart after baking, it's the result of cooked gluten 'fibres' that you can see. It adds strength to bread dough, and that's why high protein (high gluten-potential) flour is called 'strong flour' in the UK, or baker's flour. I think 12% is the magic gluten number for baker's flour. Yeast may form the air pockets in your dough when it respires, but you need gluten fibres all around it to hold the ceiling up. Free-form bread dough in the shape of rolls, or Vienna or cob loaves really benefit from extra gluten or they grow in the width more than height. If you can get hold of gluten flour (not often found in an Aussie supermarket) then your free-form doughs (no bread tins) will definitely benefit.

Cashew and craisin museli bars
Ingredients:
140g butter
30g golden syrup
120g plain flour
70g brown sugar
100g oats
20g rice bubbles
60g cashew pieces (or cashews)
40g craisins or plain cranberries


Preparation:
Place butter and golden syrup in  Melt on 60 degrees speed 1 for 1 minute, then turn up to speed 3 for 1 minute more.

Add dry ingredients to  and combine on  + speed 1 for 20 seconds, then turn up to speed 3 for 20 seconds more.

Empty bowl into slice tin and press down with the back of a spoon. Bake for 20-30 minutes in a moderate oven, approximately 180-190 degrees Celsius, until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and cut roughly into pieces as museli mix will still be soft. Allow to cool completely in slice pan, then cut through once more and remove from pan.

Photos:



Tips/Hints:
I buy raw cashew pieces from a Go Vita store as they're much cheaper than whole cashews. If you have whole cashews then it would be worth pulsing them a couple of times before setting them aside as slicing the museli bars up can be difficult with big firm pieces like cashews in the way.

Supplement other nuts, fruit, coconut and the rice bubbles if you wish, but do so by volume rather than weight.

Try sprinkling some choc chips over the mix before pressing in to place, or drizzling melted chocolate over the top when it has cooled to room temp. Sometimes the chocolate facade is enough to hide the fruit and nuts from the children!

We're not massive gluten eaters really, not because I'm diverse with my grain mix, but rather because we don't eat tonnes of complex carbs. My children and DH take sandwiches with them each day, and that's fine for Miss 5, but if she has toast for/with breakfast, or a cupcake during the day, or pasta/pizza at night, she has stomach pains and dodgy stools. It seems to be related to quantity, which certainly implies intolerance, but then changing exposure when allergic to gluten also causes the intestine to heal and become damaged in a cycle.

It's not too hard to accommodate GF at the moment because I make a lot from scratch so I'm in control. Cereal is a little challenging, but then we only have it 3-4 times per week. I made GF pikelets for us all this morning (not worth making two batches) and we had pizza last night, but this time I made each DD their own pizza, and Miss 5 had a GF base made from GF White Wings flour. So that was no real drama either - our base went in the breadmaker, Miss 5's went in TMX. Going back to school will be another matter I guess as the only GF bread that I've made for her so far was hated  I don't particularly blame her - it's just SO different. She's never been big on bread though, and I gather there is often a natural avoidance of glutenous foods when one has the allergy. We have plenty of rice cakes around and that's the only real supplement I think, unless I get in to the habit of making rice paper rolls daily - doubtful  She's never responded well to porridge which is a bit of an odd one since it's technically GF, but always compromised/impure. There can only be traces of gluten in oats really... but perhaps there's another food chemical in there that I don't know about...

It's going to be quite a journey, I'm sure. I'll give it a couple more weeks, then give her glutenous grains again and avoid wheat to see what happens. We can cope fine on a spelt/rye bread that I used to make, and that will certainly be easier than making glutenous white bread several times per week, and trying to find a GF bread for Miss 5. I ran out of eggs, but now that I have more I intend to make Cyndi O'Meara's GF bread. I'm actually missing our chooks more than I am gluten, since their eggs seem to play a substantial role in binding GF foods, not to mention they're a fabulous breakfast.

It's certainly an interesting idea, hey? Once I've established if Miss 5 is Coeliac or just wheat intolerant I might finally get around to making sourdough and then testing that article's thesis.

I've just found Cyndi's recipe on here and I will have a go at that, at some point. But I'm interested in making a more basic GF flour, one that mimmicks the commercial versions. I have two commercial brands here at the moment, and both list maize, tapioca, brown rice and guar gum in that order. I'm wondering if anybody has played with these ingredients and found a good ratio to replicate the commercial GF flours. At around $7.50 p/kg for White Wings, and $6 p/kg for Orgran there is no way that I'm going to be buying them regularly  And I'm thinking that since it is only Miss 5 who seems to have gluten OR wheat issues (undecided currently) we can really only afford to to provide HER with GF alternatives: it will likely be too expensive to bake GF for the whole family. UNLESS making my own turns out to be quite affordable...!

Has anyone else read this article, called Bread Dread? It's quite intriguing... http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/bread-dread-are-you-really-gluten-intolerant