Crazy Orange Turtle’s Gluten Free Kitchen

I recently discovered that El Peto factory, a company that claims to be the “Gluten-free specialists”, is less than a 10 minute drive from my house. Naturally I went to their factory outlet store (yes, the products ARE a LOT cheaper at this factory outlet compared to the same product in the grocery store) and I spent a hell of a lot of money.

One of the items I picked up was a big bag that contained 7 smaller bags of bread mix, enough to make 7 loaves in the bread machine. At the time I thought “All you have to do is add water? Great I’m game for doing less work!”. So, I took the bag home and immediately began to make a fresh loaf of bread. This is what came out of the machine :

Um. eww. The dough was gummy and heavy. Immediately I realized that the loaf of bread just did not rise. That was a waste of my money!

But being frugal, and having 6 bags of bread mix left I thought “What happens if you just add a tbsp of yeast to the mix?”. So, I proceeded to clean out my bread machine, and I started from scratch. This time I added 1 tbsp of bread machine yeast.

And voila! The result was a perfect moist and wonderful loaf of bread!

I’m not quite sure what happened with this mix. Perhaps they forgot to add yeast to the mix? Perhaps the bag was sitting too long at a high temperature (yeast doesn’t like that). Whatever the case may be, I did have trouble with this mix.

So in conclusion, El Peto Italian Bread Mix for Bread Machines is absolutely yummy! But only if you add your own yeast. Although I do like the taste of this loaf, I may not buy it again. Its a shame because I’ve had El Peto’s other products and they are fantabulous. Next time I won’t be lazy –  I’ll just make the bread from scratch!

Oh, and if you do live in Southern Ontario, the El Peto factory store is worth a drive to Cambridge — you can get flours and baking supplies there at exceptional prices. And they do have nice high quality flours. They also have gluten-free cereals, pasta sauces, pastas, pie shells, cookies, pizza crusts, lasagnas, sausages and more. Just stay away from the mixes.

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