It is a blessing not to have an allergy. You can eat anything edible, follow any diet.  When you’re celiac it’s not so beautiful any longer.

To błogosławieństwo nie mieć alergii. Możesz jeść wszystko wszystko, co jadalne, pójść na dowolną dietę. Kiedy masz celiakię, nie jest już tak pięknie.

You know I enjoy my verbal diarrhoea, but this time I’ll keep it short. I’ll only write a little. Teeny weeny. Nothing long.

Back in the old days there where hardly any allergies. No one had problems, maybe some rare cases that survived to the age when they could tell about it. I treated eliminating gluten in baking as a sport. In general, I bake bread not because I eat three loaves a day (the daily average for 2016 is slightly lower), but because I can rest, relax, run away and get fascinated. Gluten Shmuten. This makes me a bit of an ignorant in the area of allergies, appart from the “don’t feed peyote with what can kill them rule”.

Technically speaking it is a big challenge – with gluten free flours the gas escapes as nothing can stop it. Without gluten water goes to the surface and you get a residue on the bottom – that’s why there needs to be something to replace this protein. Xantan gum is the most common, linseed is also used (creates a mucus), and I use it together with psyllium husks, which creates a gel. It is an interesting ingredient. 7 grams of psyllium husks with 2 grams of linseed can absorb 75 grams of water and become a thick gel. Then I work flours into it. Just a warning: psyllium husks are common in supplements supporting your intestines work and stopping diarrhoea. If you do not want to defecate concrete, drink plenty water and don’t eat too much of it. I don’t know how much is too much, ask Uncle Google.

I am a member of a Polish digg equivalent, http://wykop.pl, where I am mainly active in bread baking discussions. Hannahalla, another user, cooks a lot for her partner, but she doesn’t eat it, as she is celiac. When she was planning a homemade version of a dish from a big restaurant chain, I started wondering if one could make a gluten free version of that. I focused on the bun, obviously.

On Saturday I made the first version, on Sunday I removed some water and added butter. It improved significantly, in taste with butter. The buns are very tasty, no strange flavor, soft.

Planning

None. You finish 2.5 hours after start.

Ingredients

This amount is to make two medium or one big bun. I have a scale weighing by 0.1 g, so I can easily make such small portions. If you don’t have one like this and can’t get one, you’ll need to multiply the amounts. You can try freezing, but I don’t know if it will work. Let me know if you do. I ate mine quite quickly.

• 7 g psyllium husks
• 2 g ground linseed
• 1 g fast action yeast
• 2 g salt
• 75 g water
• 15 g corn flour
• 15 g millet flour
• 15 g potato flout
• 10 g soft butter
• an egg white and sesame for sprinkling

Preparation

1. Mix psyllium husks, linseed, yeast and salt in a bowl

2. Add water and mix, after 3-4 minutes it will form a gel

   The gel from psyllium husks

3. Add flour and mix it in to get a dough. It will be slightly humid when touching, it will not stick to the fingers, but a little bit will remain on your finger (just like wet fine sand leaves a couple grains on your skin when touched)

4. Add butter and mix it in. This will take some time to get a uniform mixture

   Mixed dough

5. Put in a warm place for an hour. It will double its volume

   The dough after first proofing

6. Divide the dough in two (or not) and form a circular shape, then flatten quite well, to 15-20 mm thickness. Put on a dusted surface so that it doesn’t stick. I use rice flour for this purpose. Cover with cling film so that it doesn’t get dry and leave in a warm place for an hour. It will rise a little (it didn’t double in my case)

   Shaped buns

   

   Shape buns after proofing

7. Set the oven to 200C. It can use the fan, but make sure the buns aren’t directly exposed to the heating element in the top section of your oven (you can use a cover made from kitchen foil for this)

8. Before you bake brush the surface with egg white and sprinkle with sesame. Poppy seeds can be good as well

   Buns sprinkled with sesame

9. Put the buns into the oven for 20 minutes. After 15 minutes I brushed them with egg white again for a better shiny finish.

   A bun in the oven

10. Leave to cool down on a cooling rack

    Finished burger buns

That’s it. I’ll just add that I used a cast iron baking stone for the first time and noticed that it transfers the heat from the bottom very nicely.

Finished burger buns – the crumb

Serving suggestion

Burger ingredients

Gluten free food is often considered to be a hipster’s wet dream, so I decided to do a hipster fridge cleanup. I found some old dry smoked pork sausage, I used the egg from brushing, kale, spinach, very old chilli, passata with spices, parmigiano reggiano and Majonez Kielecki. My wife made sweet potato chips.

Fried egg and kale

Here comes an eggburger. I fried kale a little, and the egg, sausage and chilli were fried in a stainless still cookie cutter (I don’t have any fancy egg frying stencils).

Preparing the eggburger (I forgot to take a picture with spinach)

Eggburger