#gluten free challah bread

[may-be-spoiled]

Alright I’m pretty proud of myself for this one

[kick-a-long]

So I’ve been celebrating Shabbat for a few months (it’s unbelievably amazing btw, I rest, light candles, I limp through Hebrew but I can feel it getting easier to say and understand, have wine, feel like a winner because no one has killed me this week.) but I don’t always want/make bread. I love bread, I love making it, having bread all week, and braiding it but my husband can’t eat it so one loaf is a lot of bread. But I sometimes wonder if challah is the only option. Putting eggs, honey, and butter in a bread reads as a kind of cake to me. It also makes sense to me that cake is fitting for celebration and contemplation about the good in life.

My question is: does jumblr know if I can make babka or rugula instead for Shabbat? Can I make gluten free cookies as long as it has over 1/8th oat flour? Maybe even Cinnamon buns fit a lot of the same ingredients as challah? Not to get all rabbinical, but does the Hebrew for what bread you have on Shabbat specify bread as opposed to cakes (which I don’t think was a separate category of food from bread 3000 years ago? The internet says challah started in 15th century Eastern Europe.

The truth is I’m not following a lot of rules for Shabbat anyway, although I try to get close each Friday. I want it to be Jewish, not just a jew making a type of Shabbat type thing on Fridays. so is this: “in for a penny in for a pound” challah is traditional, it must be bread not cake, or is it: as long as you usually do challah you can make cake and treats every once in a while?

[official-bread-posts]

Which type do you have?

It depends on what is your favourite bread

here is a Bread Guide to help:

White bread

Brown bread

Rye bread

Wholewheat bread

Multigrain bread

Banana bread

Sourdough bread

Potato bread

Gluten free bread

Soda bread

Pumpernickel bread

Corn bread

Ciabatta bread

Baguette bread

Croissant bread (and other pastries)

Pita bread

Milk bread

Challah bread

Bagel bread

Naan bread

Cloud bread

Focaccia bread

Canned bread

Paratha bread

Raisin bread

Toasted bread

Raw uncooked bread

Fry bread

Cinnamon roll bread

Fairy bread

there are many more but these are 30 to start you off

I hope this helps with you bread needs :)

[shadowweaver06]

I successfully recipe tested a gluten free challah tonight (working on finalizing my rosh hashanah menu), so that will be happening later this week again. Gluten free enriched breads can be challenging!

It's not *technically* hamotzi (I have not successfully made a GF challah that is mostly oat flour because the texture becomes gummy or crumbly and the flavor is meh) but I've managed to get it to about 30% of total flour volume by weight. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that since it has oat flour in it, I'm gonna call it "good enough" - the enemy of good is perfection, sometimes. I've bought Orly's mixes before (which *are* hamotzi) but the texture was dense and dry, and the mix is way too salty.

So far, it'll just be me, Cat, our kid (maybe), and maybe my best friend and her family for Shabbat dinner this week after shul on Friday. (We'll be at a friend's home for lunch/dinner on 1st day of Rosh Hashanah). So I'm making a Pomegranate chicken dish, a herb salad with apples, challah, a scalloped butternut squash, fennel, and sweet potato dish (sorta reminiscent of ratatouille), a rice pilaf, and turkey kitzitzot with Swiss chard, and a fruit salad (probably consisting of watermelon, apples, strawberries, and black berries). I also am making an apple cake for dessert.

Everything leans a bit more savory than what is normally served for the holiday by our friends but my family (except me) doesn't like sweet and savory dishes so I am limited by their dislikes and have to find a way to make dishes that they will eat.

Does anyone else have extremely picky eaters that they have to try to navigate creating menus for to accommodate for holiday/shabbat meals?

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Reviewing my challah:

This is how the inside of it looks after I tore it! There's something so exciting about seeing the inside of it, like I did that!

It's got a decent mouth feel, and I think next time, I'd like it to be a little saltier - I think I can fix this by using an egg wash.

If the sheer size of the challah isn't obvious, here's a picture I took before I threw it in the freezer:

If it isn't obvious... I'm not sure I can finish this all on shabbos. I wish my dad wasn't gluten-free, I need someone to eat this with me!

Otherwise, it's unremarkable, as far as bread goes. It is significantly better than my last attempt, of which there will be no pictures because it's embarrassing. Overall a 7/10 attempt, I have much to learn!

Good shabbos!!!

[jmtorres]

adventures in gluten-free baking cont'd

so I'm attempting to make a gluten-free challah  from a cookbook that uses as it base flour a 2 –1–1 brown rice/sweet white rice/tapioca starch mix.

 I measured everything out with a very nice scale that did tenths of a gram. they had me start out with 130 g of base flour mix +75 more of sweet white rice flour +60 more of tapioca starch so approximately 265 g of flour at the outset.  plus itty-bitty amounts of assorted thickeners.

I was about 3% over on my egg grammage, but eggs aren't exact and I figured better over 3% than under like 20% which is what an egg less would've been.

so I knew I was slightly over on egg and was prepared to add a little more flour. except. It needed. A lot more flour.

I was supposed to have 40 g of flour for my hands and the kneading surface; I prepped 60 instead to counterbalance the eggs and it was an incredible gooey mess

so, my hands covered in "dough," I had @stariceling make me up another 60 g. And then another 100. And then another 100. and on the last batch, it finally started to behave like dough.

 so I essentially had to double the amount of flour and I didn't double the amount of thickeners because I didn't realize as we were going how much we were adding and at the end it was a little late to add in a quarter teaspoon of pectin xanthan, guar, etc.

 so I'm really fucking curious how it's gonna rise and if it's going to hold together when it bakes  how much I need to adjust the cook time for the fact that it's probably something like 160% of its original intended mass? 

And I'm wondering – like I reread the recipe in detail I did not screw up my original measurements, is it possible the book author had originally made a larger batch, and downsized the recipe incompletely?  like thinking about it I think they used about twice as many eggs as I usually use for wheat-based challah?

but I'm feeling so paranoid about this, because I had almost the exact same thing happen with a spelt bread recipe last month that was not even gluten-free spelt has gluten! Like how are my flour to liquid ratios so off? Is there something I'm supposed to be doing in the kneading process that would make everything thicken up right? this book said, use a dough hook, I stuck it in the KitchenAid with the dough hook.  and it got shiny and elastic, but it did not get ungooey. 

pictures and taste test later 

eta: found this link that talks about adjusting baking time for different size loaves. by my estimate we're nearly at 3lbs so I'm gonna try an hour (and the original recipe called for 45 min so that tracks).

[mariacallous]

When the Russian Jewish immigrant Isadore Gottlieb opened Gottlieb’s Bakery in 1884 on Bull Street in downtown Savannah, he began a baking dynasty. For generations, his cinnamon rolls, rye and challah breads and these chocolate meringue cookies were an important part of being Jewish in Savannah.

The cookies have an intense chocolaty-ness and an irresistible chewiness that seems to amplify if you freeze them briefly. The pecans toast magically as the cookies bake. The cookies can be gluten-free if you bake them with cornstarch or a gluten-free flour blend, and they may have been baked and sold during Passover. At the Central Markets grocery stores in Texas, cookies like these are known as “forgotten” cookies, because after baking, they were left in a turned-off oven to crisp (thus forgotten). Gottlieb’s closed in 1994, but now you can bake the cookies at home. 

Note: Store in an airtight container at room temperature for one week. Freeze for up to three months.

[sunflowerbloomss]

reblog for a bigger sample size amen

[murphyoftheendless]

Jewish food kvetches ahead

CW: Food discussion

Just got back from the US (I'm typically UK based) and having to adapt to food and water changes has been rocky. Jewish genes don't help either, bro. We are very susceptible to food intolerance and allergies to certain food groups. Dairy? I can forget it in like a few years. Of course Dairy free and lactose pills are an option but it still sucks.

Don't get me started on Gluten allergies/celiac disease. There is of course a gluten free option for challah, our bread. But it's very egg heavy cause it's literal egg bread. This feels like G-d's many jokes. It's not funny, HaShem–/j

Like "Ah yes let's give the chosen people a gluten intolerance to LITERAL. HOLY. BREAD." Which again, work arounds and such exist, but STILL.

[certifiedceliac]

Gluten Free Challah Bread (via Let Them Eat GF Cake)

[glutenfreeandme]

I made the challah into bread pudding, I just wasn't giving with it that hard. A little sweet for me maybe? Maybe I'll revisit it at some point and try again.

[vaspider]

Hi Spider Mom. It’s been confirmed I’m allergic to casein and a gluten allergy is also suspected. I was wondering if you have any tips for how to proceed, since this means giving up some staples for me. And please, no obligation to answer. I can ask my doc, I just immediately thought of you because you have to eat gluten-free.

The first thing is: don't just try to replicate how you're living now but with gluten free substitution.

I tried that. It's expensive as fuck (more expensive than anything else I'm about to say) and it isn't very good for you. Gluten free flours have a higher glycemic index, so it can really play havoc with your blood sugar like a fucking lot.

You'll be best off if you just say "okay, I have to completely rethink the way I eat" and go from there.

I don't mean you're never going to have a corn dog again (and yes, they do make frozen gf corn dogs and they're a great treat). I mean that I have challah on Fridays and we might have sandwiches for dinner once every couple weeks, but I don't really otherwise eat bread anymore. It's expensive and not as good.

I don't have a lot of advice on eating casein-free, because I basically live on milk and cheese, unfortunately. I'm diabetic and celiac so that's like... my go-to short list of emergency foods. But what I can say is:

Hard boiled eggs in the fridge for immediate "the hunger is killing me" snacks.

In fact, use this as an excuse to get yourself in the habit of eating as many whole foods as you can. I get snack trays of pre-chopped crunchy veggies for snacks.

Get used to carrying emergency food with you everywhere. I like Kind granola bars and fruit leather; I always have a "safe" granola bar in my pocket. You never know when you'll get stranded somewhere without safe food.

Get yourself a reusable set of silverware that includes a straw and get used to carrying it. Compostable/paper silverware is becoming more popular with fast food places or delivery and is not regulated as far as needing to announce what they put in there - surprise, a lot of them use wheat waste! I bought these guys and stuck them in the pocket of my coat.

Learn the "safe brands" and "safe chains" early. Red Robin does a lot of their business based on allergy-friendly food. Schär, Enjoy Life, Canyon Bakehouse, Red Plate, Partake, Katz - all of these companies are centered on providing the kind of food we can eat.

If you're not buying from a "safe" brand, always check the labels, even if you've bought it a million times. Formulations and factories change.

Budget yourself some really good treats. That's the best way to not feel "deprived." I look forward to Purim all year bc it means I can order hamentaschen from Katz! I buy one bar of really good chocolate every few weeks and eat it slowly - like... a square a day slowly. It's easy to focus on all the things you can't eat, so make sure you treat yourself so that feeling doesn't take over - that's how you get depressed or sloppy.

Find another way to focus your food energy if you can. For me, when I refocused my energy from "I have to eat gluten free for the rest of my life, and I'm TRAPPED by that" to "I'm eating as kosher as I can and my food is an expression of my relationship with HaShem," my mindset improved immediately and radically.

All of this is just what I could think of off the top of my head. Do what works for you. Good luck. 💗

[somewhatdelicious]

Gluten free Challah (In breadmaker)

I recently bought a book called the New Jiddish Kitchen. It has some pretty good recipes, and it’s quite funny too. This is an adapted recipe from that book.

25 gr fresh yeast (1/2 cube) 60 ml warm water (40C) 3 tbsp honey

4 eggs 75 gr butter, melted 1 tsp salt

75 gr almond flour 100 gr potato starch 100 gr corn starch 2 tbsp psyllium husk

Add the yeast, water and honey and let sit while you measure the rest of the ingredients Add the eggs, butter and salt Add the rest Run on gluten free or quick program

If you happen to swing by just before the baking, add some poppy seeds to the top :)

The result is a bit like a cake, but in a good way. We really like it!

[mariacallous]

Our family’s approach to Yom Kippur break fast is a Southern one. Many North Americans associate this feast with an array of sweet kugels, bagels with all of the accoutrements, rugelach in every flavor, blintzes and maybe a special cake or two. Chances are you have never seen a spread filled with egg casserole, cream cheese grits and homemade biscuits. 

Before the early 1900s, my family had not either. How did this menu come to be for a half-Sephardi, half-Ashkenazi Jewish family? It’s a funny story.

I recently recovered my great-grandpa’s autobiography that had been stowed away in storage. He detailed the lengths that it would take to acquire kosher food in Georgia in the early 20th century. Quick synopsis: It required special connections and effort to secure the holiday food necessities from the certified grocer. The “good stuff” was reserved for the residents of Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah, while little was set aside for small town Jewish families. My family was one of the latter so we had no choice but to incorporate ingredients that were more accessible into our meal planning. Eggs, grits and flour were much easier to secure than specialty meats. Thus, Southern-style cuisine became intertwined with our family meals and traditions.

All of this to say that I’ve grown accustomed to this style of break fast. I prefer it to the regretful annual reminder that my stomach is not meant to digest mounds of mayonnaise-laden proteins or seconds of sugar immediately after 24 hours without. Simple, flavorful and easily digestible foods are the strength and strategy in our Southern-inspired menu.  

The hearty pièce de résistance of our table is my mom’s egg casserole. It’s silky, cheesy and smells amazing coming out of the oven. Egg casserole can be made in advance; refrigerate overnight and forget it until an hour before sunset.

When going in for the bake, know that the egg mixture will be settled so the ratio of bread to egg mixture will look skewed. It’s not. The “casserole” bakes like a souffle, so the egg mixture will rise and create a pillowy texture to complement the crusty bits of challah that are exposed at the top.

Feel free to modify this recipe to use any kind of bread (i.e. wholewheat, gluten-free, sourdough, etc.), milk instead of half-and-half or a different sharp cheese (Gruyere or Manchego would be nice). That’s the essence of my mom’s style of Southern Jewish cooking — make it tasty, but creatively configure the ingredients to work for the specific group you’re hosting. Serve her egg casserole alongside cream cheese grits, thick-cut biscuits plus a little bit of fruit and not only will you be covered for the holiday, you’ll get a taste of the lesser known tradition that we hold so dear.

Notes: 

The casserole needs to chill in the fridge for a couple of hours, or overnight, before baking.

 Egg casserole can be made in advance; refrigerate overnight and forget it until an hour before sunset.

[sinaisukkot]

i made pumpkin challah :D i’ve made gluten free bread before, but this was my first time using normal flour! i’m really happy with how it turned out, even though my braiding needs some work. shana tova 💛💜💛