Gluten Free Bread Bowl Soup

Soup belongs in a bread bowl.  Period.  Just because I am gluten free does not mean that my days of eating soup this delicious way is over!  I used one package of Bob's Red Mill's Gluten Free Homemade Wonderful Bread to form four tasty, you won't believe its gluten free, bread bowls.  After experimenting with their delicious thirteen bean soup mix, I found chorizo to be a great pairing for soup with a kick.

Check out my guest blog post on Bob's Red Mill's site for the recipe and more pictures of the delicious soup! http://www.bobsredmill.com/blog/2012/10/19/windy-city-cooking/  The recipe is gluten free, dairy free and packed with flavor!

Bob's Red Mill and I want you to try this recipe yourself at home!  So much so that WindyCityCooking.blogspot.com is having its first ever giveaway!  Three lucky winners will receive a package of the GF bread mix and the 13 bean soup mix just in time for warming up with a delicious fall soup.  Leave a comment on this entry before November 5, 2012 to be entered.  Let me know what your favorite bean is OR why you love to be gluten free!  Good luck!  And check back on November 6, 2012 for the winners!!

Sorghum Bread

The Engine 2 Healthy Eating challenge goes beyond just a plant-strong vegan diet. No carbonated beverages or oils. Two staples in my standard gluten and cow's milk free diet. With the hope of saving money and trying new bread recipes, I decided from the start that I was going to bake one vegan gluten free bread a week.

Quickly, I ran into two problems:

• Most recipes call for millet flour - which I do not have and the dreary Chicago weather was preventing me from wanting to leave my studio
• Almost everything contains oil

Where was I going to compromise my standards a little? The bread. Making gluten free vegan bread and trying new recipes that have the potential to become staples in my lifelong repertoire is much more important to me than bending the rules a smidge with 1/4 cup of oil during a 28 day challenge.

I found this sorghum bread recipe from Book of Yum - a gluten free vegetarian website and it had some of the most accessible list of flours (translation: I had everything but teff or buckwheat flour already, so easily substituted garbanzo bean flour.) Instead of hemp milk, I used rice milk.

Making it was pretty easy. I used my handheld mixer with great results. I never worked with ground flax and water as an egg substitute before and I'm glad to say that it was an easy hands-off process thanks to my 3-cup food processor!

How did it taste? I should have taken better before and after pictures. I ate about several large slices within the hour it came out of the oven. I miss homemade, fresh tasting bread. Tomorrow, I plan on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a spinach salad for lunch just so I can delight in the flavors again!

Battle of the Breads and PB&J

During the Gluten Intolerance Group meeting on Thursday (first Thursday of the month at the South Loop Whole Foods at 7pm), we did a battle of the breads! This was a fantastic event for gluten-free newbies like myself (I'm almost seven months off gluten) to try a bunch of breads...for FREE! We tried Rudi's, Udi's, and Katz's packaged breads. As a special treat, Rose from Rose's Wheat Free Bakery (where Eliot and I went in the fall) brought three of her breads...and made additional loaves for us on site! The owner of Cassava, a new cafe in Lakeview, made some fresh cheese and chocolate rolls on site as well! (Their rolls contain dairy, but they do have some dairy and gluten free options at their cafe. Eliot loves the cassava rolls - trust him and try them if you can!) I love bread - pita pockets, crunchy French bread, and herbed dinner rolls easily make my most missed gluten foods list. It was SO great to have so much bread again. I sampled bites of all the different slices. And when Rose's sandwich bread came out of the oven and I had a slice, I was in heaven. NOTHING beats good, warm, fresh bread. There was some Earth Balance (vegan "butter") so I tried that on my bread for the first time. When we were leaving with our bags of leftover bread (it was honestly a lot of bread), Rose offered us the extra bread to take home. You don't need to ask me twice.

When I got home, I realized that I needed to make a sandwich with that bread that will do its deliciousness justice. And the sandwich I wanted was pb&j. I haven't had a pb&j in years. In college, I had a meal plan so rarely made myself food outside of Ramen in my hot pot on the floor. After college, buying bread was often a waste since I could never finish the whole loaf by myself and I thought freezing bread was weird (I have since learned the errors of my ways and almost all of my gf breads have been frozen and defrosted with great results.) I updated my facebook status and mentioned I had so much gf bread and I was kind of wishing I could make a pb&j but was lacking the j. Last night, one of my friends came to the rescue with a Christmas present! She made her own jelly and marmalade this year and gave me and Eliot four different kinds. (She is awesome - she was double checking the ingredients with me earlier in the winter to make sure they were gluten free!!!) I was so grateful and made a pb&j with thick slices of Rose's bread, generous slabs of peanut butter, and wonderful homemade jelly. It was an amazing sandwich - better than any pb&j I had as a kid!