Tag Archives: bread

The Box Bakery

Leave a reply

At the end of April, we enjoyed a great evening joining in the virtual awards ceremony for the FreeFrom Food Awards 2020 (#FFFA20). It’s always great fun to go to the evening as not only do I finally get to share with the rest of the family the gold winners from the categories I’ve judged, but it’s also a fantastic opportunity to discover some of the other great products that might prove to be safe for M and something new we can introduce to his food repertoire.

This year was no exception, despite lockdown meaning that the Awards could only be held via Zoom and there were a couple of products I made note of to search out as soon as the celebrations were done. Thanks to the power of shopping on the internet, at least one of these new discoveries has already arrived with us, gone through quarantine and been used. Winning a gold in the innovation category, the Gluten free Wholegrain bread mix by The Box Bakery fascinated us all. The idea that we (by which I of course actually mean G and M) could whip up a safe loaf with nothing more than the box, the oven and some water obviously meant that it was something that had to be tried as soon as I could get my hands on it.

In almost no time at all, the boxes arrived at our house and with VE day celebrations looming, it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to get M started on his first loaf of bread, especially during lockdown. I left him to it, with some minimal supervision from Mike, and the end result was absolutely brilliant. It really was as easy as it…well…as it says on the box. He measured and added the water, gave it a good shake and popped it into the oven. The final loaf needed a few minutes more than was recommended, but it was worth the wait. Both M and G were delighted with the loaf and it’s nice to be able to add another safe bread to M’s diet. The flavour, texture and ease of baking all scored highly in M’s books and he was especially delighted by the crust. He also much preferred it fresh from the oven, but was happy to finish it off in sandwiches the following day.

M’s marks: 9.5 (he deducted the half point as it wasn’t as good once it was “cold”!)

#FFFA17 – Biscuits, cakes and breads

1 Reply

You might have noticed that I’ve taken a small break from blogging over the last couple of weeks and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that Mike and I have spent some time away in New York as an early birthday celebration. There is so much to share from our week away, but you’ll have to wait patiently for those posts to come as I still have lots to tell you about the rest of our time at this year’s FreeFrom Food Awards. As well as the wonderful “Meaty and Fishy Ready Meals” category, we were lucky enough to judge a further 4 categories too and those revealed some more great freefrom options for those with allergies to choose from.

The Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning sessions were spent tasting some fantastic teatime treats and allergy-friendly breads. Just as I experienced last year, the teatime treats offered a good selection of biscuits and cakes, and whereas last year there was a huge number of biscotti to taste, this year was all about shortbread. Now I absolutely love shortbread, it is my favourite Christmas dessert, especially when enjoyed with lashings of rich brandy butter and I was excited to taste the freefrom options that were entered in the awards. img_13741Unfortunately, as great as some of them were, none was both gluten- and dairy-free, which is always a disappointment when I’m looking for something new to add to G’s diet. By the time we reached the end of the shortbread and other similar cookies, I have to confess I was looking for something refreshingly different and new.

The following, however, were absolutely amazing and whilst not all of them were gluten- and dairy-free, there was a good variety of treats that would be a great freefrom offering for any special occasion or teatime. The first came from Sponge Cakes Ltd, who make mail order gluten-free cakes. We were lucky enough to try both the Victoria sponge and the Apple crumble sponge and my run-away favourite was the apple crumble one. Both had a great texture, looked tempting and tasted delicious with the only downside being that they were just gluten-free and so not suitable for G. img_13721However, since returning from our trip, a quick perusal of their website has shown that they do in fact make a gluten- and dairy-free cake as well, which we may well have to try at some point in the future.

My next favourite was a delicious treacle tart from Mummy Bakes, which was impressively gluten-, dairy- and egg-free. Sadly I failed to snap a shot of this treat during the afternoon, probably because I was waxing lyrical about the taste of the tart itself. I am not usually a treacle tart fan; in fact, I usually steer clear of this sweet treat as just being too sweet for me to enjoy. However, there was an amazing lemon flavour that cut perfectly through the treacle and balanced it so that it had just the right sweetness for an indulgent pudding.

img_13751The next product scored highly with me because it was delightfully simple in its ingredients and looks like being an addition we can introduce to M. When we visited the Allergy and Free From Show in the summer, I discovered some delicious chocolate and rice crispbreads from Le Pain des Fleurs, which sadly just missed the mark because M is unable to have cocoa. Safe snacks are always hard to find, so I was thrilled to see another crispbread from this company entered into the awards. The coconut rice crispbread may not have been a favourite with everyone, but the prospect of finding another snack for M was truly exciting for me. It seems somewhat ironic that last year I stumbled across the amazing Borough 22 doughnuts, which the owner, Ryan, has kindly adapted to be 100% safe for M, during the Teatime category and this year the coconut crispbreads seem to have ticked the box again. We will need to trial them as M is currently only able to tolerate coconut oil and not cream or milk, but I’m hoping that the low percentage of coconut in them (just 15%), will make them a viable option for my young foodie.

img_13771As for the breads on Wednesday morning, there were some great products and it was fantastic to see several entries from the big supermarkets as well as the more specialised brands we’ve come to known. The Bfree pitta breads were great and impressively had the perfect pocket to cram with your filling of choice, and I also loved the Tesco petit pain rolls and sandwich thins, either of which would be ideal for G’s lunchbox. However, my absolute favourite was the impressive Tesco Ancient Grain Cob, which looked amazing and tasted just as good. In my opinion it would be difficult to distinguish this bread as gluten- and dairy-free when compared to its “normal” counterparts and I’ll be looking out for a loaf in my local store to buy for G to try.

Meeting a knead

Leave a reply

With so much of my time and energy focused on NEAW16 throughout May as well as coping with the aftermath of M’s broken leg, I unusually spent very little time in the kitchen for most of the month, other than to whip up the regular offerings for each meal. Having taken a much-needed short break to recover, it has been time to revisit some of the recipes I’ve spotted and saved over the last few weeks to see if they could be adapted to suit M’s current dietary needs. One of the foods he really misses having is bread and barely a month goes by without him requesting a sandwich made of “real bread”Kneading-dough-007 and not just rice cakes. A couple of years ago I took a Doves Farm recipe and adapted it to suit our then requirements, and it worked. It wasn’t brilliant, but M loved it despite its foibles because it met his needs. Over the last 18 months, I’ve mastered bread-like equivalents such as pancakes and flatbreads, but hadn’t ventured back into the world of bread-making…until now.

The biggest challenge for my current bread-making attempt was the yeast. We haven’t trialled yeast with M as yet and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t imagine we’ll be doing so for quite some time as the nutritional benefit to be gained by adding it to his diet right now is negligible. We will, without a doubt, get there some day, probably round about the time M wants to start drinking beer – though obviously my baby will never be old enough for that milestone to pass! – but it doesn’t feel like a priority for the time being. Instead, I switched on my trusty laptop and started looking for yeast alternatives or, even better, recipes for yeast-free bread and found this fantastic one by FussyFoodie.co.uk, which I was able to tweak further for M. I am, as ever, extremely grateful to those other allergy-aware cooks IMG_0458[1]out there, who take their time to share their recipes via blogs and other websites as their hard work helps make my efforts a little easier as I strive to create appetising dishes for M.

I baked my final recipe twice to try out both my bread-maker and my free form bread-making skills, as well as adding different flavours to see how the end results compared. The machine mixed loaf looked great, but I found that the ingredients hadn’t really been combined enough in the pan and ended up having to remove a good centimetre or so of rice flour from the bottom of the loaf before it could be enjoyed. The centre of the loaf also failed to cook thoroughly, though toasting slices of the bread before serving did go some way to resolving that particular crisis. Both M and G were suitably impressed by my efforts, which encouraged me to give it a go a second time. This time round I hand-mixed the dough, added some herbs for a different flavour and formed small bread rolls instead of a single loaf. IMG_0491[1]These worked much better in my opinion and M certainly enjoyed the crusty outside, reminiscent of a “real” bread roll, almost as much as the warm centre that had been spread with some coconut oil to replace the butter. I will definitely be baking this bread recipe again and may even try to co-ordinate my cooking so that M can enjoy his chicken burgers in a bap!

M’s Daily Bread

Leave a reply

When our journey to reaching a diagnosis for M started at GOSH 3 years ago, we never could have imagined how radically his life, or ours, would be changed.  It was incredibly difficult to remove so many things from his diet and I will never know how our amazing 5 year-old accepted this new way of life with so little resistance.  Over the past 3 years I’ve spent a lot of time developing recipes to allow both G and M to enjoy the same sort of treats as their friends, be it traybakes, cakes or biscuits, all with varying success; but the one thing I’m yet to perfect is bread.

G is able to eat the wonderful Genius bread, which we discovered back in 2009 when she had the most difficult diet in the family, being wheat-, dairy- and oats-free.  That discovery made a big difference to her life at the time and we were once again able to easily enjoy picnics and packed lunches without G feeling like the odd one out.  Unfortunately, M has not been so lucky.  Genius bread contains egg, which is still a no-go for M despite 3 attempts to re-introduce it into his diet, and also potato starch.  Instead, he is left with the dubious pleasure of Ener-G brown rice bread, which really is only just about edible when toasted and, I suspect, only then because there isn’t a good alternative.

I have attempted a couple of bread recipes, but have never really ended up with a loaf that M has enjoyed enough for me to make again.  As I unexpectedly have him at home from school due to his tummy bug and the resultant flare, I thought we’d spend some time in the kitchen and attempt this most recent bread recipe which I discovered on the Doves Farm website.  I had all the ingredients in the cupboard, so we found everything we needed, washed our hands and started baking.  M enjoyed weighing and measuring the ingredients out and it was a great opportunity for him to practice his reading skills without really realising it.  Everything looked good when it went into the baking tin, though M was not impressed by the 90 minutes proving it needed or the fact that it would then take a further hour to bake.

The best rice flour bread!

The best rice flour bread!

The end result was simply spectacular.  The loaf had an amazing crust, the dough was cooked through and the grainy nature I’ve come to fear in anything baked with rice flour was not overly apparent.  The smell of fresh bread baking has been missing from our house for a while and it’s fab to know it will be making a reappearance on a regular basis.  G and M had a warm piece of bread each, straight from the oven and covered with a generous lashing of their free-from spread.  Their verdict?  Delicious!

 

Today saw a small return to M’s depleted appetite, so hopefully he’s on the mend and will back to his bubbly self soon enough:

M

Me

Mike
Breakfast
  • Smoothie (1/2 banana, 5 strawberries, 200mls rice milk)
  •  Orange
 Bowl of:

  • Free-from cornflakes
  • Rice milk
Lunch
  • Sakata rice crackers (4)
  • Free-from spread
  • Fruit string

 
  • Sakata rice crackers (6)
  • Cucumber
  • Celery
  • Peanut butter
  • Sliced pear

 
  •  Left-over chicken casserole and rice
Dinner
  • 4x sweet potato wedges
  • Pork belly slice (1/2)
  • Cucumber
  • Apple (1/3)

 
  •  Sweet potato wedges
  • Pork belly slices (2)
  • Courgettes
  • Mushrooms
  •   Sweet potato wedges
  • Pork belly slices (2)
  • Courgettes
  • Mushrooms
Snacks
  • Fruit buttons (blackcurrant)
  • Capri sun orange drink
  • Brazil & Sultana bar (1/2)
  • Rice bread (1 slice)
  

And that’s a wrap

1 Reply

cookery

I don’t know about you, but I frequently find that mealtimes can get a bit repetitive, especially when we’ve had to cut yet another staple from M’s diet.  Much as I love to cook and bake, sometimes I really, really hate having to decide what to prepare for dinner.  Add into the mix the need for packed lunches on a daily basis, which are generally formed of the same key ingredients due to a restricted diet and I end up pulling my hair out in desperation.  M’s recent longing for a prawn mayonnaise sandwich meant that I had to seek inspiration and work out whether it was possible to create something even vaguely similar or not.

prawnsThe easy bit, believe it or not, was the prawn mayonnaise.  Using a squirt of some Really Not Dairy original mayonnaise, a dash of Heinz tomato ketchup and a generous serving of prawns, I was able to whip up a reasonable prawn cocktail. I diced a chunk of cucumber, grated some carrot and threw a handful of sweetcorn in to add a couple of portions of vegetables to the filling too.  This mayonnaise is egg-, dairy- and soya-free and tastes more like salad cream than traditional mayonnaise, but it does the job and has been a great find for M.

Next came the more challenging aspect, the bread.  G is able to enjoy Genius bread, which is the best gluten- and wheat-free bread we’ve tried, but unfortunately it contains both egg white and potato starch which are now excluded from M’s diet. 20140317_171113 M’s sandwiches are usually made from Sakata rice crackers as his bread is really only edible when toasted, but these are small and don’t lend themselves to being a critical part of a prawn mayonnaise sandwich!  Mike and I both enjoy eating wraps, either for lunch or filled and baked for a Mexican inspired dinner and at last year’s Allergy and Free From show we stumbled across the amazing Bfree gluten-free wraps.  These taste delicious and both children enjoyed them whilst we had some.  Unfortunately, they are incredibly difficult to source in the UK, though most larger Asda stores do stock them now and I headed to our nearest shop with my fingers tightly crossed to see if they were available.

Part of my regular shopping routine, even when buying foods that I’ve bought before, is to scan quickly through the ingredients list for anything that isn’t M-friendly.  Recipes do change, even on tried and tested products, so it’s worth those few extra minutes to avoid days or even weeks of pain because of a missed offending food.  To my dismay, I noted that the wraps contained potato starch, which is now a forbidden food for M and I thought my chances of buying a good alternative to satisfy M’s cravings were over.  I went home and even attempted to make some M-friendly wraps, but the rice flour didn’t lend itself to the recipe and the kids understandably turned their noses up at the finished product that was presented to them.

20140317_170320It was a couple of weeks later when I was in our local Waitrose, that I spied a new-to-me package on their free-from shelves, Newburn Bakehouse gluten-free wraps.  I picked it up to cast my eye over the ingredients, fully expecting to find either egg or potato flour or both lurking there, but to my delight, this new product contained nothing that wasn’t M-friendly and I quickly snapped up the remaining pack to take home and try.

I prepared M’s lunch using one of the Newburn Bakehouse wraps and a generous spoonful of my home-made prawn mayonnaise and called him to the table.  He was overwhelmed to see his much longed-for sandwich waiting for him and made short work of devouring it all.  He relished every bite and, what’s more, requested a second wrap, something that doesn’t happen all that often in our household.  The wraps looked and tasted good and, with 3 to a pack, there was enough left for his school lunchbox on Monday.  Both M and I award them with a much-deserved 10 out of 10 – a great product, delicious to eat and suitable for a MEWS-diet, what more could a Mum ask for?

20140317_170719