Corn-Less Bread (Gluten, corn, refined sugar free, dairy free option)

Before my son was diagnosed with his garlic allergy he'd eat chili like a champ.  Unfortunately as soon as he couldn't HAVE garlic anymore he suddenly would take a bite of chili (which honestly my garlic free chili is pretty DARN good if I do say so myself) and just get a look of disappointment on his face.  It was just sad. 

I finally came to the conclusion about a month ago in between trying to move, work on back to school stuff, getting kids to appointments and just generally losing my sanity, that I could at least try to make my food allergic kids watch my husband and I eat complete meals at dinner time.   So, I figured, if I could make the meals really allergy friendly for the kiddo's diets, maybe they'd get a hankering to try some new food that was one  the table.  But either way they had to sit at the table at dinnertime, preferably with the TV off.   If they ate something, great, if not...well there was always next meal.  I've since rethought some of those things (getting to that in a bit here *laugh*), but one night while having a real hankering for chili I ran into a sticking point. 

See, I love chili.  Unfortunately, I love chili WITH corn bread.  It's one of those side dishest that just GOES with chili.  But when you have two corn allergic kids, what do you do to make a bread that looks and tastes as much like corn bread as possible WITHOUT containing corn?

So, I came up with this recipe.  I was actually rather proud of it as when it comes out of the oven it even LOOKS like corn bread.  It doesn't taste exactly like corn bread, but once you put some honey on the top it still goes awesome with chili and tastes pretty darn good too. 

Just a couple of notes.  If you can't DO rice flours due to stomach upset issues...I'm not really sure what to suggest to replace it as the weights on flours is different and with gluten free flours that can get tricky.  If you do decide to try and do substitutions though be sure to stick to the light colored flours (although I'd try to avoid using millet flour unless you add some almond meal or something to counter act it a bit as millet flour leaves a bitter aftertaste to breads in my experience) or the bread won't look like corn bread when it comes out of the oven.  And that's important when you're trying to get your kids to eat something that ISN'T corn bread, but is close enough for those with a corn allergy.

Also, this recipe calls for millet grits, which you can find on Amazon.com and I'm sure other places (not sure if Natural Pantry carries them or not) and YES they are important to this recipe as it takes the place of corn meal in the bread.  The texture would be off without them in there and the look of the bread would be off too. 

And what?  You want the convenience of having corn bread mixes to mix up with little effort later like you can buy at the store?  Okay then do this.

Take the dry ingredients and blend together in  a bowl.  Place in a quart sized freezer bag and then write down your wet ingredients and instructions on a piece of paper (I just type them out, cut and paste said ingredients multiple times down a page and then print out all the copies I need) and place the piece of paper inside the bag with the dry ingredients.  Then either write on the front of the bag with a sharpie what mix it is and the date. 

If you are worried about rodents, Rubbermaid (or Rubbermaid-like) shoe boxes are cheap, hold a bunch of mixes and then you can buy some sticker paper for your printer (I got mine through Amazon.com and LOVE it :), print out some pretty labels (Google "free label templates" and it's amazing what you can find), stack your containers in a nice cold dark spot and use as needed.  If you are worried and want to freeze the mixes to be safe nix the Rubbermaid shoe box and place your smaller bags in a gallon sized freezer bag and try to freeze them as flat as possible and just remove a mix as needed.  Once again, be sure to label your freezer bag and date it.

Enjoy!

Sorry for the lighting quality here.  This was the best picture that turned out.

Corn-Less Bread (Gluten, corn, refined sugar free, dairy free option)

1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
3/4 cup millet grits
1 TBS honey
2 1/2 teaspoons Hain Featherweight baking powder
1/2 tsp. guar gum or Xanthum Gum (you can nix this if you need to.  The bread will be a bit crumblier, but still taste good)
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 beaten eggs (I used duck eggs, but large eggs would work)
3/4 cup milk (non-dairy milk would work fine here I'm sure)
1/4 cup melted butter or coconut oil (measure coconut oil then melt to liquid state)

1.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

2.  Hit your favorite 10" cast iron skillet with some good old fashioned non-stick cooking spray (I used olive oil in a Misto container) and then stick in oven while it is preheating for about 10 minutes or so to warm the skillet up.  You can also use a 8x8 pan if you don't have a cast iron skillet handy, but don't preheat it.

3.  In a small bowl, combine the eggs, milk, and 1/4 cup butter. Add this mixture all at once to the flour mixture and stir to combine. 

4.  Pour batter into skillet/baking pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm with some butter (or butter-like spread) and some honey drizzled on top.  Yum!