Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Gluten free Karelian pies


Today I felt like doing some healthy (or fancy, or necessity, depends who you ask) stuff.
I decided to make gluten and lactose free Karelian pies, and not only, but have them for lunch with a cup of coconut milk, in the half shade of the patio.
They were good, they had a bit stronger taste and more rich color than rye, and they were sooo much more meticulous to make :(. The gluten in the white flour from "normal" pies is more forgiving and elastic, and the end result looks so much better than with gluten free flour...
However for those who can't eat gluten it is a fair deal.
However, the filling made with both almond and coconut milk were absolute gorgeous! I will seriously consider changing for coconut milk for our regular porridge.
Next, I will also experiment with other gluten free flour mixes for easier-to-work-with dough, milder taste and lighter color.

Ingredients
380 ml (1 1/2 cup) buckwheat flour
130 ml (1/2 cup) sweet white sorghum flour
200 ml water
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp sunflower oil

Porridge
0.4 l sushi or short grain rice (it should stick together not like the Basmati rice for example)
0.5 litre (2 cups) almond or coconut milk (head for them to Costco for a good price)
1 litre (4 cups) water
1/5 tsp salt


For brushing
1 dl sunflower oil
1 dl almond oil

Cook the rice in the water for ~10 min, then add the almond milk, season with salt and cook under lid over very low heat for additional ~25 min, until the rice is soft enough but not over boiled. It should be a quite soft, easy to spread. Stir occasionally.
Let it cool under the lid, meanwhile prepare the dough. It can be made the day before, to shorten your preparation time.

In a bowl mix the buckwheat flour with the salt, sorghum flour, and water. It should be a rather soft though, barely dry enough to separate from the walls of the bowl.
Knead them together, roll it in a ~5 cm (2 in) rod, and cut ~1 cm slices from the rod.
Roll the slices into small balls.
Half of the dough is enough to cut and roll at a time, or it will dry, and leave the dough you are not working with under a cloth all the time.
Now roll the small balls into circle-oval shapes (~10-12cm), quite thin, using a lot of buckwheat flour on and under not to stick to the table.
Place an oval shaped, flat scoop of rice in the middle (~7mm thick), leaving about 2 cm of though around the rice.
On the sides fold the dough on top of the rice, and start lifting with your finger the rest of the dough and kinda folding it on top of the rice towards the top. Turn and repeat with the other side until it looks BETTER like the ones on the picture. :D
Mix some oil with almond milk, about 2/3 oil - 1/3 almond milk.
Place the piirakka-s in the tray. Spread some oil-almond milk mixture on the piirakka, sides as well.
Bake them at 300 C, (550 F), for ~10 min on the top most rack, (or second top most), until bits on the top get a little golden-brown shade.
Meanwhile mix some more oil with almond milk, approximately half-half.
Remove the piirakka from the oven and spread the oil-almond milk mixture ALL OVER the piirakka, bottom, sides, top.
Place them under a cloth and let the piirakka soften.

Serve with chopped hard boiled eggs mixed with butter, scrambled eggs and many more...
We also placed a slice of ham & cheese on top, and let it in the oven for couple of minutes for the cheese to melt..
Enjoy!

OBS. Cut the dough slices depending how big pirrakka you want. I cut about 22-25 g / piece dough and got a generous half-palm sized piirakka, one, with topping, would definitely be enough for breakfast for the kids.

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