I am not a gluten free eater, nor am I an egg free eater. What I have realized though in trying to lower my cholesterol intake is that there aren’t many things I eat that requires egg yolks to be in them. Some things call for eggs and I can always do the 2 egg whites for 1 egg substitute. It works perfectly. I’ve even become quite good at making egg white omelettes.

Okay, so why am I doing gluten free and egg free? The simple answer is that it’s trendy and I’m doing it just to do it. The more intelligent answer is that I want to challenge myself to cook something that I know would benefit a lot of my friends and the growing number of people that are realizing they have gluten and egg allergies.

So here we go…

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup brown rice flour
• 3/4 cup corn starch
• 2 tbsp xanthan gum
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup of flax mill gel (4tbsp of milled flax seed and 12 tbsp of water or 3/4 cup of WARM water)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Make the Flax Gel first. 1tbsp of flax and 3tbsp of water = 1 egg or something like that. There are a lot of opinions on this and varieties. So I basically quadrupled it. I think I loosely based my recipe on one I found online, but don’t recall. I may have combined a few. What you do is grind your flaxseed down if it isn’t already. Then add it to a bowl and then add the warm water to it. Mix it up thoroughly and let it sit.
   

   Milled Flax Seed

2. Next combine the flour, corn starch, xanthan gum and salt in a food processor or bowl. (food processor is better) At this point you’re basically just mixing up dry ingredients, no big deal. I still had the dough blade in at this point also.
3. Then, check on your flax gel. It should become a consistency similar to that of an egg. It really works. I was surprised too. 😀
   

   Flax Gel

4. Add the flax gel and olive oil to the food processor and blend according to your machine’s dough specifications. I think our Braun Combimax is set at 8 for dough.
   

   Everything in the processor

5. Let the dough spin and spin until it becomes a ball and all the dough is picked up by the blade. You might need to hold onto the processor while it’s working to keep it in place. It can get a bit rowdy. (if you’re using a bowl and your hands, then after you mix the dough well, I think you can turn it out onto a gluten free floured surface and kneed it for awhile).
   

   Dough Ball

6. When the dough is thoroughly mixed up, wrap it in plastic and let it sit for about 20 minutes. This process is one that I follow when I’m making regular dough with Bob’s Red Mill Semolina flour, and I went ahead and copied it for this.
7. After 20 minutes pull off a large chunk of dough and wrap the rest back up.
8. Roll the dough out with a rolling pin or using a pasta roller like us. Here is our other post about using the pasta roller.
9. Then when your dough is the right thickness(or thin-ness), lay out on a ravioli press or on the table and spoon in your filling. You can see the link I posted above for more detailed information about using the ravioli press and some recipes for butternut filling and pesto fillings.
10. Freeze the ones you don’t want to eat now and boil the ones you do for about 5-8 minutes. Sprinkle some parmesan on top of them and some olive oil or your favorite pasta sauce. You really can’t mess it up.

Gluten Free, Egg Free Raviolis

This was a bit of a quick blog, because I did this recipe the same night as the other big ravioli night we had in that link above and there wasn’t much more to it.

My review of the dough from this recipe is that it was somewhat hard to work with. We made one batch pretty effectively, but once we pulled out another chunk to roll and begin making raviolis with, things got a bit difficult. It wasn’t that elastic and broke quite a bit. So much that I gave up and we only made something like 14 raviolis of this type.

I think for the next attempt at making a gluten free and possibly egg free ravioli, I will use a combination of flours, or some other flour like quinoa flour. Some people recommend using tapioca flour and another flour like potato flour or something as a combination. I think using egg whites would have dramatically improved the elasticity of the dough.

BUT, please note, that the flavor and taste of these were FANTASTIC. Seriously. The flax seed added a great nutty flavor to the dough that I really liked. Maybe a minimal amount of flax gel and egg whites would work to add the nutty flavor and more elastic to the dough.

Let us know if you try this out, or have tried out another variety of gluten free ravioli dough, or egg free also, we’d love to hear your stories.