Monthly Archive for October, 2009

Gluten-Free Italy: Venice! Hotel L’Alboro

We spent two weeks in Italy and I took lots of notes about our trip and all the places we ate and stayed. The good news is that I’ve got loads of information on gluten-free eating in Italy! The bad news is that I’ve got loads of information on gluten-free eating in Italy! I’ve got this huge pile of backlogged entries to do so I’m going to power through them. Here goes:

Hotel L’Albroro

The first place we stayed in Italy was Venice. I loved Venice! Our hotel there was the Hotel L’Alboro. It is a three star hotel, which in Europe means that it’s nice, clean, and has some amenities, but isn’t going to be plush or have amazing service or anything. We thought that the L’Alboro was a little run down but clean. Our room was small by American standards. The bed was how we found almost all the beds in Italy: hard with foam pillows.

Hotel L'Alboro in Venice

The staff at L’Alboro is very nice and when they found that I was gluten-free, they got me three (three!) bags of gluten-free biscotti and also told me what I could and couldn’t eat in their breakfast area. This was a huge source of relief to me because I was worried about breakfasts there. It was also very kind of them and made me feel special in a good way instead of the usual “high-maintenance” way. There was some kind of altercation over the coffee that had to do with gluten, and I never found out what the deal was, but some Google searches are making me think I had caffè d’orzo, which is a kind of substitute coffee made with roasted barley. So make sure the serving people know that you’re gluten-free.

The location is awesome! The L’Alboro is in a kind of quiet out-of-the-way spot very near St. Mark’s Square. It is also a just walk to the Rialto Bridge (where all the night-life seems to be) and The Academy and Peggy Guggenheim Museums. There is a vaporetto (water bus) stop about 50 feet away.
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Some other notes: Almost all the staff speaks English. Franco and his wife were very kind and Franco showed us photos of his dog and his house. Sienna was having trouble figuring out whether or not to buy a pair of boots. She asked one of the staff and he reported back what his wife thought the next day. The locks at Hotel L’Alboro are the old fashioned kind that use what look like skeleton keys. Very cool!

Venice - Gluten Free!

About Venice

We had a little trouble getting good food in Venice. I think that tourism is to blame more than anything else. When there are lots of tourists around to support bad restaurants, quality suffers. After a few unsatisfying and overly-expensive meals, we decided to stick with recommendations from the staff at our hotel and from our Rick Steves guide. We also started looking very closely at the people eating at restaurants. If the people at a restaurant are just chewing in stunned silence and/or seem unhappy, steer clear! If the people at a restaurant are eating and talking loudly and look like they’re having a good time, go for it.

Almost every waiter we encountered in Italy knew about gluten. In most cases all you have to say is “Niente glutine” and they’ll start pointing out what you can eat on the menu. In the rare instances that they don’t know what you’re talking about, you’ll need to pull out a list of offending items and then suggest things you can eat, which is basically what you have to do in the United States. I’ll post more about Italy and list some of the restaurants we visited soon.

Gluten-Free Safety Rating: Gluten-Free Friendly But Ask Questions.
Times we have visited: 1 (So your experience may vary.)
Overall rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: Same

Hotel L’Alboro
http://www.alborohotel.it
Sestiere San Marco, 3894
30124 Venezia, Venezia (Veneto), Italy
+35 041 5229454‎
e-mail: info@alborohotel.it

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Published on October 27, 2009 in Travel. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Gluten-Free Breadmaker Bake-Off!!!

In May I reviewed Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine by Annalise Roberts. Click here for the review. One of the things that came up in the review (and in the comments) was that the author basically says that the book was written with one bread machine in mind. That is the Zojirushi BBCCX20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine. We were kind of disappointed but decided to test out the recipes using our Breadman Pro bread machine.

Roberts details a specific program for the Zojirushi that she claims is the best for the recipes in her book. Fortunately for us, the Breadman that we have is a little bit programmable. You can specify what they call “courses.” Different courses have different preheat, kneading, rising, punching, and baking times. Sienna was able to figure out which Breadman “course” was the closest to Roberts’ Zojirushi program.

After baking some bread with our Breadman and being impressed with the taste of these recipes, we had an idea. We thought that it would be interesting to get our hands on a Zojirushi and test to see if there really was a big difference in quality between bread made in a Zojirushi and bread made in a Breadman. We wrote to Zojirushi with our idea and they very kindly agreed to send us a machine for testing. Thank you Zojirushi! (Please see here for our disclosure policy.)

Differences Between the Bread Machines

Right now would be a good time to talk about some of the differences between the two bread machines. The Zojirushi has two paddles instead of just one. As a result, there tends to be less of a need to babysit the mixing process. Having two paddles means that there are two holes in the bottom of the finished loaf instead of just one. At the same time, the holes are a lot smaller and don’t tend to cut so far into the slices, so there isn’t as much “spoilage” with huge dents into the slices.

As mentioned above, our Breadman has pre-programmed “courses,” which are more like sets of instructions that govern preheating, kneading, rising, punching down, and baking. One course might have a longer kneading cycle, or punch down more times than another, for example. Thus you are limited to choosing between these predetermined courses. On the Zojirushi, you can program just about everything, and even choose to skip forward to the next step in a program. In this regard the Zojirushi is far superior to the other machine.

Some smaller but notable differences include: the Zojirushi is much more quiet when mixing; the pan on the Zojirushi is wider by maybe a quarter inch; and we felt that the manual for the Breadman is more helpful than the one for the Zojirushi. See our Bread Machine info page for more information about differences between bread machines for gluten-free cooking.

The Bake-Off

For the bake-off, we made sure to keep things as even as possible. All the ingredients came from the same place and were as equal in temperature as we could get them. We also measured very carefully to make sure that any differences in the bread would come from variations in moisture or proportion. We ran both bread machines at the same time in the same place in the kitchen. Here were our results:

Gluten Free Bread Machine Bake-Off

Breadman Bread Sliced to Show Paddle Hole and Texture

Breadman Bread Sliced to Show Paddle Hole and Texture

Zojirushi Sliced to Show Paddle Hole and Texture

Zojirushi Sliced to Show Paddle Hole and Texture

As you can see, the resulting loaves are almost identical in the photos. The Zojirushi loaf, as could be expected, was a little wider and thus lost a little height to the Breadman loaf. The flavor and texture of the two loaves was basically identical. We were disappointed with how much both loaves rose, but that’s something we’re working on and are starting to have some success with.

The Results

Surrey Books, the publisher of Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine, will be happy to know that our testing didn’t reveal any great differences between loaves using any of the recipes we’ve tried (so far) when cooked with a Zojirushi vs. a Breadman. At the same time, the Zojirushi very quickly became more popular in our kitchen than the Breadman. It is programmable, quieter, and does a better job of mixing the ingredients.

We want to know: Do you have any opinions about different bread machines? Any tricks or suggestions for getting gluten-free bread to rise more? Would you buy a bread machine because of a book? Let us know in the comments!

The Zojirushi BBCCX20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine on Amazon

Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine on Amazon

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Published on October 22, 2009 in Product Review. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Product Review: Trader Joe’s Paneer Tikka Masala

I’m really happy that Trader Joe’s has gluten-free frozen Indian food. Lunch can be a pain to plan for and sometimes you need some packaged food intervention. As usual with Trader Joe’s the product has a longer name than our title bar can hold. This is really called Trader Joe’s Paneer Tikka Masala with Spinach Basmati Rice. It is gluten-free and vegetarian. Last week I reviewed Trader Joe’s gluten-free frozen Channa Masala and thought it was really good.

Paneer is a relatively soft Indian cheese. A tikka masala is generally a creamy red lightly spiced tomato sauce. Masala by itself simply denotes a mixture of spices, and often refers to something like a curry.

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Indian Food

The ingredient list is pretty long:

Paneer Tikka: Tomatoes (Tomatoes, Tomato Juice, Salt, Calcium Chloride, Citric Acid), Onions, Water, Cream, Paneer (Milk, Part Skim Milk, Vinegar, Salt), Canola Oil, Cashews, Spices, garlic, Salt, Ghee (Clarified Butter), Butter, Fenugreek leaves, Paprika Oleoresin, Turmeric, Cilantro, Milled Cane Sugar.
Spinach Pilaf: Water, Basmati Rice, Onions, Spinach, Carrots, Canola Oil, Spices, Garlic, Salt, Milled Cane Sugar, Turmeric.

The box contains one serving, which is 330 calories. 190 of those are from fat. The dish has an alarming 850 mg of salt. Luckily, I didn’t think it was so hot. I like Tikka Masala in general. There was an Indian pizza place in San Francisco and they would make a pizza that tastes a lit like the Trader Joe’s Tikka Masala, but was a lot better. What would I change? I would add less salt and more spices.

Like the Chana Masala, the Tikka Masala benefits from including something sweet like raisins or dried cranberries. It is vegetarian, gluten-free, and is easy to pack for work lunches. I just wish it was better. Click here for more gluten-free Trader Joe’s product reviews.

We want to know: Do you have a favorite Indian restaurant in Portland? We still haven’t found one! Have you tried other Trader Joe’s Indian dishes? Do you get upset (like we do) that most of the Trader Joe’s asian cooking sauces aren’t gluten-free? Let us know in the comments!

Times we have visited: 1 (So your mileage may vary.)
Overall rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: Same

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Published on October 6, 2009 in Product Review. 1 Comment Tags: , .