Teff & Montina Pita (B&P26)

Baking & Pastry Project #26 - Teff & Montina Pita


With this recipe, I wanted to work with a flour I haven't used in a while - Montina. It's a type of perennial Indian ricegrass that grows wild from Southern Manitoba to the hills of Southern California. It's a wonderful flour that is high in protein and fiber.


It's a fabulous flour that goes in a wide variety of baked goods.  I enjoy using it in anything that has chocolate as it provides an additional layer of rich flavor. My children particularly enjoy chocolate chip cookies with Montina flour.


The flour blend for the pita rounds, is like a earthy whole wheat. It is a bit darker in color and tastes delicious. My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed these, but they were a bit too strong in flavor for our kids.


Recipe

Protein Content: 
Original Content: 29.64g
GF Content: 28.80 g

10 g Montina flour (0.7 g)
10 g brown rice flour (0.9 g)
20 g sweet rice flour (1.2 g)
20 g arrowroot starch (0.3 g)
48 g white bean flour (10.32 g)
6 g chia seed meal (1.26 g)
__________________________replaces the bread flour

12 g cocoa powder (3.23 g)
53 g ivory teff flour (5.83 g)
44 g millet flour (5.06 g)
__________________________replaces the wheat flour

20 g instant dry yeast
5 g sea salt
4 g sugar
4 g agar agar powder
190 ml water
12 g olive oil
25 ml agave syrup

1. Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and stir. Pour all the liquid ingredients into a medium sized bowl. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and blend thoroughly.

2. On a piece of parchment paper sprinkled with arrowroot starch, divide the dough into 6 pieces of equal size. Beginning with the first piece of dough, press it out into a round shape that are about 7 inches/18 cm in diameter. Continue with the other pieces of dough in the order that they were divided. Use arrowroot starch as needed to work the dough. Place the parchment paper on a cookie sheet, then relocate it to a warm location and allow the pita dough to rise for 30 minutes.

3. Place a baking stone into the oven and preheat the oven to 500 degrees F/260 degrees C. Slide the parchment paper with the pita rounds onto the baking stone. Bake for 3 to 4 minutes, so that the pita rounds are puffed, but not browned.  Cool before serving.

Other Posts in the Baking & Pastry Project

Index of Baking & Pastry Project Posts

Baking & Pastry Project #24 - Lavosh
Baking & Pastry Project #23 - Pizza
Baking & Pastry Project Week 12 - Pizza & Crackers
Baking & Pastry Project #22 - Soft Pretzels
Baking & Pastry Project #21 - Crescia al Formaggio
Baking & Pastry Project Week 11 - Parmesan & Pretzels
Baking & Pastry Project #20 - Craquelin

Baking & Pastry Project #19 - Brioche
Baking & Pastry Project Week 10 - Brioches

Baking & Pastry Project Week 13 - Flat Breads

Bread & Pastry Project Week 13 - Flat Breads

One of my favorite tweaks on gluten free baking is to use two sometimes three different types of binders. A binder is what holds your gluten free baked good together, such as xanthan or guar gum, flax seed meal, gelatin, pectin, agar agar or chia seed meal. There are other gums that are not as readily available and tend to cost a bit more, for example gum arabic, kuraya or tragacanth gum.

The idea is that each gum works in a particular way. Therefore, if you have more than one you will have the holding power of both types of gums. Look in your freezer case for your ice cream container. In the list of ingredients you will find things like xanthan gum and methylcellulose or xanthan and guar gum. Ice cream tends to travel a long way from the factory to the eater's house. In that journey the ice cream will be subjected to a variety of temperatures. The gums help the ice cream maintain it's fluffy texture and mouth feel. Otherwise, you would end up with a container of ice cream that has partially melted and refrozen while in transit.

A couple of other things to think about while your thinking about binders: taste and quantity. Each gum, meal or powder has it's own flavor. In small amounts it might not be that noticeable, but when used in larger quantities it can change the flavor of your baked good. For a bread like pita, you will need a lot of binding strength so that the bread holds together when you open the pocket and place your filling inside. If you use any one binder in sufficient quantity to hold it together, you maybe adding a competing flavor to your bread. This is the perfect bread for using more than one binder. Try out my choice of chia seed meal and agar agar powder or xanthan gum and pectin, perhaps another combination.

I hope you enjoy this week's breads. The naan has a warm and nutty flavor from sunflower seed meal and the pita bread is rich and earthy from ivory teff flour.

Schedule

Thursday, 10/1 - Naan

Saturday, 10/3 - Pita

Shopping List

Brown Rice Flour (Fine or Superfine Grind)
Sweet Rice Flour (also called glutinous rice flour)
Arrowroot Starch
Almond Meal
High Protein Flours, such as: Soybean, White Bean, Black Bean
Whole Grain Flour, such as: Buckwheat, Millet, Sorghum, Quinoa, Teff
Instant Dry Yeast
Binding Agents, such as: Xanthan or Guar Gum, Chia Seed Meal, Agar Agar Powder

Plain Yogurt
Clarified Butter
Sunflower Seed Meal

Resources

Flours & Binding Agents: Authentic Foods, Barry Farm, Bob's Red Mill
Instant Dry Yeast: Barry Farm
Agave Syrup: Wild Organics, Native Seeds

Equipment

Baking Stone


What's Going On?


I was a very lucky woman and received a copy of the Culinary Institute of America's Baking & Pastry book along with their culinary dvd's from my family for my birthday and our anniversary. After watching all the DVDs, I decided to work my way through the CIA's Baking and Pastry book - of course making it gluten free. There were so many skills that I wanted to develop and work on. I hope you will be interested in sharing my journey with me.

Want More?

You can also follow me on Twitter, where I'm glutenagogo.

Other Baking & Pastry Project Posts

Baking & Pastry Project #24 - Lavosh

Baking & Pastry Project #23 - Pizza
Baking & Pastry Project Week 12 -
Baking & Pastry Project #22 - Soft Pretzels
Baking & Pastry Project #21 - Crescia al Formaggio
Baking & Pastry Project Week 11 - Parmesan & Pretzels
Baking & Pastry Project #20 - Craquelin

Baking & Pastry Project #19 - Brioche
Baking & Pastry Project Week 10 - Brioches


Index of Baking & Pastry Project Posts

Roasted Sweet Potato Pita

I have been contemplating making Naomi's recipe, from Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried, for Sweet Potato Pita's for some time. Naomi has several versions of her pita bread recipe, first there is the roasted sweet potato, dark coconut and teff. Timing always seemed to be a challenge, but this weekend turned out to be the perfect for trying my hand at making pita bread.

The recipe is very easy to make and very versatile with the various types of flavors that you can use to make them. My first batch of pita, I used the white Jersey sweet potato. They had a light and delicate sweet potato flavor. For the second batch, I used the Garnet sweet potato and the bread had a delectable sweetness and a beautiful orange color.

My first batch made a fabulous flat bread, although none of them puffed up. I did better with my second batch, with about half of them puffing up. We filled these with a light salad of shredded collard greens, radishes, cucumber and celeriac with a light vinaigrette.

This is a fun and very versatile recipe and my family thoroughly enjoyed them. My children thought they made for great snack food. My husband's favorite version was filled with roasted chicken, swiss chard and tomatoes and some wasabi mayonnaise.

Naomi is my adopted gluten free blogger, for the Adopt A Gluten Free Blogger event created by Sea of the Book of Yum. This month Adopt a GF Blogger is being hosted by Rachel at Wheat-Free, Meat-Free.