New Mum’s Food Adventures

I didn’t have anything nicer for underneath. It’s sitting on some heatproof things I bought for teapots. I forget what they’re called. I made gluten free pie pastry to make a chicken pie.

I had to add orgran plain flour to my Woolworths branded plain gluten free flour. It was about a 1:1 ratio. I forgot the xanthum gum. What I ended up with was a layered short crust but it had strength. Shrunk a small amount. Not much. Today I am repeating the pastry with xanthum gum to see if that gives me they layered puff pastry I was aiming for. Orgran has been terrible for pastry so far. It just doesn’t want to play nice but mixed with a better flour it turned out alright.

So far it’s been a roller coaster ride of extreme failures and wonderful success. Mostly failures.

Tonight I am trying a standard minced meat pie. I’ll season it however seems nicest. But I remembered the xanthum gum this time. I don’t particularly want a crumbly flakey short crust. I want more like a puff pastry. If the xanthum gum remedies that the. I will be really happy and try harder to remember to add it next time. I added the xanthum into the dry flour and mixed it in thoroughly first before adding anything else. This pie tonight will be different. The above was last nights. As baby’s teeth are still coming in a bit they have made him food fussy again. He didn’t even try the pie or filling just the hot potato chips. He used to hate potato and now he loves them. He might try tonight’s pie as it is beef and he loves beef. He loves lamb even more. But that’s for another night. I would love to make a lovely lamb pie.

I have not been worried about the presentation of my pie pastry but rather the flavour. The butter I used last night was not right so tonight I am trying Westgold Butter. It already feels nicer to work with. I will use an off cut and cook it to test for layers and how long to cook it for. I will also cool the pie filling before putting it into the pie pastry and chill the pastry to. then I’ll post my updates either tonight or tomorrow morning.