#then combine a little apple cider vinegar and sugar to taste (you'll want more sugar than you expect. keep it sharp though!) then pour over

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im going to make a carrot pickle would any of you like some

[spooniechef]

Gluten-Free Bread (1 spoon)

Things are a little depressing on the wet little island I currently call home. Okay, by "a little", I mean "this country's government is publicly struggling to find loopholes in human rights law". So as you can probably guess, the whole situation is significantly testing all the coping mechanisms for clinical depression that I learned in therapy.

Therefore, sublimation time - sublimation being where you take all that grief, rage, depression, whatever, and you stuff all that energy into doing something positive and constructive. Now, when I got my fibromyalgia diagnosis, gardening was my primary sublimation activity, but we're into mid-November now and the garden's kind of sleepy right now. That means baking is my primary option. I mean, I need gluten-free bread anyway because I need bread crumbs for various recipes I want to try, and gluten-free bread is expensive, so why not just make my own? Particularly when I might get bread that isn't about 35% air bubble if I make it myself?

I'll say this for those of you who can eat gluten - the consistency of the loaf I baked last night (recipe courtesy the Dish By Dish website) is not the same as your bog-standard supermarket loaf. The results of this recipe are softer, spongier, and somewhere on the texture scale between cornbread and cake. That's not to say it's bad, but if you've got issues with the texture of foods, it's a fair warning. Now, here's the thing that gluten-free bread has over regular bread for those of us with more physical disabilities - no kneading required. Hell, it wasn't even all that hard to mix by hand (though I probably still should have used the hand mixer; still, I was sublimating).

So! Here's what you'll need:

2 1/2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon xanthan gum (unless your flour blend already contains it)

1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder

2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup neutral-tasting oil (vegetable, sunflower, etc) or melted butter

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups warm milk or milk substitute (110 F / 40 C)

2 large eggs, room temperature, beaten

Having made regular bread with actual gluten in it, this is an unusual combination of ingredients, and is probably why the consistency is closer to cake / cornbread than actual bread. Still, I figure things like the egg and milk are helping to bind the bread dough in same way the gluten molecules ordinarily would.

Anyway, here's what you do:

Combine all dry ingredients, whisk until well-blended

Add oil, vinegar, and milk, mix for 1 minute or until fully combined

Add beaten eggs, mix for 1 minute or until fully combined (consistency should be close to cake batter)

Add dough to greased 8" by 4" loaf pan, cover with a cloth, let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes, or until it's about doubled in size

Once dough has risen, preheat oven to 350 F (175 C), then bake loaf for 50 minutes, until top is golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack and cooling the rest of the way.

No kneading, remarkably little aggravation, and the only real issue is the number of things to wash up. The result is the sort of bread that probably works best toasted, or as the base for French toast, or turned into bread crumbs for breading things. Then again, almost all gluten-free bread needs toasting or similar to be palatable, and this was nice with butter and jam (in a cakey sort of way) when it was just out of the oven. So all that to say that it was a reasonable sublimation activity that left me feeling a little more accomplished and less helpless in general.

Now I have to go out for the ingredients for cornbread.