Praise for Against All Grain's "grain free sandwich bread"...

Before I start gabbing...just take a look at this brown, glistening crust...the crack, the rise...oh my...

 

This is Danielle Walker's recipe from Against All Grain, and I love it.  Of course, I wanted to soak and dehydrate my own cashews to make cashew butter instead of buying the jarred kind, so that added days onto this process, but it was worth it.  It's a beautiful piece of culinary science...the reaction of baking soda with apple cider vinegar...the technique of whipping egg whites to peaks...giving it moisture while baking, and patience blended with a quiet environment...no peeking, no shocking with cold air and slamming the oven door!!  Of course my oven has the worst bit of old dirty glass in the front, so I had no idea what was going on in that oven...until the end.  

What a pleasant surprise.  So many recipes I've tried with mediocre results, so much money in materials squandered.  But this one was fantastic.  I followed it to the letter, except (there's always an except, right?!)  I used organic raw milk instead of almond milk. Unless almonds are organic, it's a law in this country that they are to be pasteurized by fumigation with carcinogenic chemicals.  No thanks.  Plus, I'm not sure how they milk an almond...(just kidding).

After it emerged from the oven, we set a timer because it's supposed to cool for one, torturous hour.  Many times I tried to storm the gates (or the heel, rather...) but I waited.  When I sliced it open, I was very surpised that it was done all the way through.  I'm used to spongy, wet doughs now that are goo inside, and this was not the case.  Air pockets!  And then we toasted it in the broiler...

And slathered on Kerry Gold butter!  It was delicious, everything I'd hoped for.  It didn't turn into a nasty ball of glutenous dough in your mouth like wheat bread, and it didn't turn all squishy with quiggy bits like rice flour bread...it's a bit "spongy" when you poke it, but toasting fixes that right up.  Now we have to wrap it up and it's supposed to get better as it sits.  I'm not sure how long this is going to SIT?!  I've already had seconds...I reproduced yet another bready favorite, cinnamon toast.  With a little honey and cinnamon...it was just oh so delightful.

What prompted me to take on a big job like this on a Sunday besides desiring the satisfying aromas of freshly baked bread wafting through the house?  It was...Whole Foods.

Last week, we were at Whole Foods looking for something to eat for dinner.  I've had some bad runs there between "vegan enchiladas" and "paleo stir fry" among all the other seemingly healthy things they serve in their prepared food area.  The enchiladas made me plain sick, and the paleo stir fry was OK except the only dressing that did not contain a bunch of sugar was a tomato basil sauce, and it was just not tasty.  I ended up dumping tamari on it, and when it mixed with the tomato flavor...yuk! 

Don't get me started on their soups and salads.  Most of them contain a wheat product as a thickener plus canola oil which is not a healthy oil.  Canola means "Canadian oil, low acid"...and it comes from the rapeseed which was banned by the FDA back in the 50's because it was too toxic for human consumption.  If the FDA bothers saying that something is bad...it's BAD.  In the 70's, they bred a new variety of rapeseed, renamed it "canola" and voila!  Better living through science prevails once again!  Cheap and dirty.  Plus, word on the street is it makes a fantastic pesticide.  No wonder the mosquitoes come after me and leave everyone else alone...

Sooo...the next time we ended up at Whole Foods looking for food, I decided to try their gluten free deli sandwich.  The bread they use only contains one substance that I don't care for, agave nectar.  It's highly processed and is heavy on the fructose side...as in, almost completely fructose. Fructose goes straight to the liver, but it's a lot better if it goes skipping happily down the lane hand-in-hand with fiber, that's why it's perfectly fine to get it via whole fruits...it's not good in an isolated, processed state like agave.  Plus it's just sickening sweet.

ANYWAY, the sandwich...made my day.  I hadn't had a sandwich in a very long time.  One of my favorite things in the world is an Italian sub sandwich.  They're the best in Philly, but even D'Bronx here in Kansas City makes a pretty darn good one.  I salivate over them and miss them dearly.  And the bread on this gluten free sandwich...was nothing like a hoagie roll, nothing!  The goal is to make them at home. But alas, if I was going to buy and consume a $4-$5 loaf gluten free bread that wasn't bad...I knew I could make something with my own ingredients that was much better.  And this recipe will be our new "go to" sandwich bread from now on. And I think I might have to now own her cookbook!

BTW, no one has paid me to say any of these things...I rant and rave on my own accord, for free!