Gluten free, noddles, pastas, wrappers and buns

Labels: , Posted by Yann_Chef on at 12:30 pm





Most of the pasta that we know are commonly made with wheat or durum flour. Their making is mainly made possible by the presence of gluten in the dough.


Since 7000 years Asians have been making pasta without the holding properties of gluten, only using starch and water. They’ve, also, been making wrappers and steamed bun dumplings in the same way. But, how do they do it?

Starch noodles are usually made of pure starch from mung beans or sweet potato in China or rice in Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Korea. The first step, for this type of noodles making, is to cook a small amount of pure dry starch with water to make a sticky paste that will bind the rest of the starch into a cohesive dough. Then the paste is mixed with the rest of the starch and more water to form a dough with a 35 to 45% moisture content. This dough is pressed through small holes, in a metal plate, to form the noodles.
They are immediately boiled to gelate all the starch and form a continuous network of starch molecules throughout. Then, they are drained and held at the ambient temperature for 12 to 48 hours before being air dried. During this holding period, the starch molecules will fall into a more orderly arrangement or retrograde*. The dry noodles are, therefore, firm and strong. Never the less, not all of the starch molecule will retrograde, allowing the noodles to absorb hot liquid and swell and become tender without the need for an active cooking.
Starch noodles are translucent because they are a uniform mixture of starch and water with no particles of protein or intact starch granules to scatter the light.

Rice noodles are made by soaking some high starch content rice in water, grinding it into a paste and cooking it for a short period of time only (to avoid the complete gelation* of the starch). This paste is, then knead to form a dough. It is then extruded through the small holes of a metal plate to form the noddles.
Here again, the noodles are cooked (by steaming) immediately to gelate the starch throughout, cooled and held for 12 hours at the ambient temperature to allow the retrogradation process. Finally, they are air-dried, excepted for the Chinese Chow fun type of noodles.
Because rice noodles contain some protein and cell-wall particles, inherited from the grain of rice, that scatter the light ; they are opaque rather than translucent.
Asian noodles come under various names depending on their origins. There are few of them : in China, lai fen or chow fun ; in Vietnam, banh pho ; Thailand, kway teow and in Japan, harusame which means “spring rain” ; a lovely name don’t you think?

Rice paper or Banh trang in Vietnamese, are thin paper like that are used as wrappers for the making of Nem ra or Cha gio. They are traditionally made by soaking and grinding rice, soaking it again, pounding it into a paste and spreading it into a thin layer, steaming it and then, drying it.
Rice papers are re-hydrated briefly in luke-warm water, then used immediately as wrappers that can be eaten either fresh or fried.



Bun dumpling is an Asian speciality that mainly comes from the Chinese traditional cooking. It is, also, made with rice or rice flour. Rice based bun dumplings are made by soaking, cooking and pounding sticky rice to form a paste that will be used the same day.
Then rice flour based buns are made by using sticky rice flour mixed with a little water. Then knead into a dough of soft consistency (it would remind you the texture of cake icing), and used quite quickly as it would dry out within the hour.
Such dough are used as a recipient for a meat or fruit stuffing, then fried or steamed. They can also be mixed with various spices such as aniseed or red bean paste then wrapped in lotus leaf to be steamed.


* Starch gelation and retrogradationprocess occurs when a starchy cereal is cooked. Under a microscope starch looks like compact and organized long chains of granules called amilopectine. When starch is cooked in a wet environment, water penetrates the granules and separates the chains from each other. At same time, the granules will swell and soften. This is the gelation process.
When the cooked cereal cools down, the starch chains slowly re-bond to each other in tighter, more organized associations, and the granules becomes firmer and harder. This is the retrogradation process.
There is quite easy experience to demonstrate this processes : mix some flour with some water you will get a “glue” kind of paste called a gel. Then, cook it. It will take a different shape and texture, it becomes thicker. Then, let it cool down, the mix becomes hard.
The same process happens when you bake a cake.

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Green Blueberries!

Labels: Posted by Yann_Chef on at 11:45 pm


Green blueberries ???


No, it is not an Irish specialty for the St Patrick’s celebrations. This may happen when you bake using blueberries.




Why would a deep, dark blue fruit turn green when baking it?



This could happen if the muffin mix contains too much baking soda or if the soda isn’t evenly mixed in the dough or batter. This would result in some alkaline pockets throughout the mix which could get in contact with the fruits.
Bilberries and blueberries are rich in anthocyanin pigments specially under their skin. These pigments are extremely sensitive to PH changes and are generally associated with acidic fruits. They are concentrated in cell vacuoles as in purple beans or sometimes, just in a superficial layer of cells under the fruit skin, as in grapes or blueberries.
In the fruit, these anthocyanins are surrounded by a acidic environment as the pulp of the berries is quite rich in hydrogen. When you add the berries into the muffin batter their skin may break allowing the soda in the alkaline pockets to get in contact with the pulp and the anthocyanin pigments. The result of this action will be the elevation of the PH therefore changing the pigmentation of the anthocyanin. Turning the dark blue of the blueberries into a greenish pigment.



This is not as mouth watery looking!



So, to avoid this to happen, make sure that all the dry ingredients are mixed well together before adding any liquid into your muffin or other type of cake mixes and batters.


“un homme averti, en vaut deux”
French saying

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Quinoa flour and gluten intolerance

Labels: , Posted by Yann_Chef on at 10:11 pm



During my search for alternatives to wheat flour, my girlfriend brought to my attention the plant quinoa . She is vegetarian and makes good use of its excellent nutritional values. I have to say that until then, I had never heard of this South American pseudo-cereal.

Quinoa is a plant from the Chinopodium family which includes beets and spinach. It is a native of South America and was domesticated about 5000BC near the Lake Titicaca in the Andes. Quinoa was the staple food of the Incas, second in importance only to the potato. It is still widely used in Peru and throughout the Andes. The Chinopodium Quinoa is extremely tolerant to drought and frost. It also has the ability to grow on poor soil and at high altitudes.

The quinoa plant produces a small grain of spherical shape sized between 1 and 3 mm across. The outer pericarp of many varieties contains a bitter defensive compound called saponin.
Saponin is a glycosidic compound which works like a natural anti-biotic for the plant. It is not only present in the outer shell of quinoa, it’s also present in the shell of plants like yuca, soya beans, soapberry or the skin of grape and olives. It has a very bitter taste. Dissolved in water, it forms a soapy froth. This quality is used in detergent and shampoo. In the diet phytochemical saponins have a wide spectrum of activities such as anti-fungal, anti-bacterial agents, lowering of the blood cholesterol and the inhibition of cancer cells. But some saponins can be toxic such as the ones originated in the quinoa outer shell.

So before cooking quinoa you must remove this compound either by roasting the seeds briefly in a hot oven or by a brief washing and rubbing in cold water (like this Peruvian woman on the picture). You should be careful not to submit the seed to a prolongued soaking as the saponin could deposit itself within the seed.


Quinoa seeds and its flour has a very high nutritional value. Quinoa is composed of 10 to 18% of protein, 69% of carbohydrates and 6% of oil for 374 calories. What makes quinoa a valuable asset in a healthy diet is its protein content. All of the 12 essential amino-acids are represented. The protein breakdown is as follow : 0.48g phenylalanin, 0.88g isoleucin, 0.91g lysin, 0.98 leucin, 0.33g methionin, 1.02g arginin, 0.63g theonin, 0.85g valin, 0.15g tryptophan, 0.37g histidin, 0.39g tyrosin and 0.33g cystein. It is gluten free. It is also rich in folate, zinc, potassium, calcium and iron.

Quinoa flour is the most interesting substitute to wheat flour. Besides its high nutritional value, the quinoa flour is used in a wide range of baking and panfried dishes. In a proportion 2/3 quinoa flour, 1/3 rice flour it is possible to bake cakes such as chocolate fudge cake, on its own quinoa flour is traditionally used to bake flatbreads, such as tortilla or nachos. It can also replace wheat flour in the batter for sweet pancakes or waffles. It can be used to make baked oven chips. Unfortunately, it is not possible to bake yeast breads as quinoa flour lacks of elasticity and plasticity qualities which are essential in bread making.
The quinoa seeds are cooked like rice. It can be used as a base for a salad, added to soups or an accompaniment for meat or fish. It, also, can be popped like popcorn or toasted and used for the base of a herb crust. Finally it is used in some breakfast cereals blends.

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