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I'm not sure organic flours are any better than ones that aren't certified as organic.
My daughter-in-law had a problem with wheat that caused her to break out in rashes, but she can control it with medications. But when she's here I try to minimize cooking and baking with wheat flour. She doesn't have a problem with rye or barley.
Doctors used to label all the wheat allergies as Celiac disease, but there are at least five different types of allergies or reactions to wheat products, and wheat is also suspected as being a trigger food for children with ADHD.
My potassium has been at the low end of normal, but if I start eating a lot more fresh fruits and vegetables, it should be fine. (I've been having a banana as my afternoon snack.)
I'm not really fond of squash or pumpkin. I did make spaghetti squash with meatballs several times this fall, but I'll have to start making my own low-salt marinara, the canned/jarred stuff is way too high in salt. Even most canned tomatoes have a lot of added salt. I didn't see any no-salt tomatoes at the store, I'm sure I can find them but they'll almost certainly be in small cans at a high price.
I do have a number of quart containers of frozen tomato sauce I made last summer, no salt in it yet.
In the summertime I can make ratatouille, which uses eggplant, summer squash and zucchini, but that's not something I usually make in the winter and I'll need to change my recipe, because I usually start by sweating the moisture out of the vegetables by salting them after they've been peeled and sliced.
The only rice cooker I have experience with is my Zojirushi, which is a full-size rice maker that can make a LOT of rice, though I seldom make much more than a small batch, because my wife doesn't eat much rice because of the carbs.
This is one of those set-it-and-forget-it cookers, no dials, just a switch to start the cooking cycle. The way it determines cooking time is by measuring the temperature, until the water boils off or is absorbed into the rice there's a limit on how hot it can get.
Blanche, I'm a bit curious as to what it is in the white flour that you're reacting to that doesn't show up with whole wheat flour. What brand/type of flour were you using, was it bleached and brominated? Nearly all packaged flour is enriched, including whole wheat flours.
I think the concept of yeast getting 'exhausted' or using up all the sugars in the flour is more myth than reality. I once tried making a bread where I let it bulk rise for about an hour 5 times, it was still rising fine, and the bread was excellent, a very complex flavor.
I've also made breads where the dough sat in the refrigerator for several days, taking out just what you need to make bread that day. I thought that on day 2 it had the best flavor, by day 4 it started to take on some characteristics of a sourdough, with a bit of a sourdough tang to it.
Punching the dough down every day is probably a good idea.
There are some pizza parlors that age their dough for 48 hours before baking it.
According to researchers, what happens on a microscopic level with whole grain breads is that the sharp edges in the bran cut the forming gluten chains, so you don't get a big gluten net to hold in air.
Peter Reinhart's Whole Grains Breads book has a number of 100% whole grain breads, but also a number of transition breads with increasing amounts of whole grain flours. The Broom Bread recipe in that book is 100% whole grain, it is excellent and rises fairly well, but it takes a long rise.
With whole grain breads you have to knead longer and allow extra rising time.
Another possibility is to add extra gluten by adding some vital gluten.
If gluten isn't your problem, you could also try some rye or barley flour recipes, they have some gluten but not as much as wheat flour. I found a 100% rye flour recipe online a few years ago, it takes some practice to not get a brick but it is still fairly dense, like a firm pumpernickel.
Welcome to My Nebraska Kitchen.
Today I made a big pot of chicken noodle soup, the only salt I added was 1/8 teaspoon in the noodles. The stock was from my freezer, and may have had some salt in it, but not a lot.
I used pepper, thyme, sage, dill, parsley and basil.
I used some chicken breasts from the freezer, I think it would have been more flavorful if it had some dark meat. I'm going to try adding some mushrooms to half of it for tomorrow.
Dinner tonight was boneless pork chops, with an orange-cranberry raisin sauce.
Agreed, a very nice looking star bread.
I will certainly report anything interesting, but I've been substituting herbs and spices for years as a workaround for my wife's garlic allergy. I find marjoram is a good herb, it isn't an overpowering flavor and its unfamiliar enough to most people that it adds interest. It's a close cousin of oregano (but milder, imho), and is often paired with it.
I've been experimenting with savory, but in small quantities. (Winter savory is different from summer savory, too.)
I've been using a lot of dill weed with fish, I really like a dill/lemon/butter sauce on a mild fish, like cod or salmon. I have some more exotic spices that I plan to start playing with.
I like nutmeg on meat (and one of the original uses for nutmeg was as a meat preservative), but it can get overpowering and too much nutmeg can cause problems, nutmeg induced hallucinations have been reported. My wife doesn't care for nutmeg as much, so I use it very lightly.
My food tastes aren't really 'haute cuisine' either. I think many restaurant foods have too many ingredients in them and aren't properly sauced. (I'm not a big fan of balsamics.)
Restaurants, snacks and prepared foods are probably the biggest things I'll have to cut back on, plus things like sausages and cheeses. Cutting back on restaurants won't be that hard, we don't eat out much because of my wife's garlic allergy anyway. I don't think I use that much salt when cooking (certainly not as much as CIA recipes do), cutting back a little shouldn't be too hard. There's little or no salt in my stocks and soups, for example. Increasing some other herbs and spices will help take the place of salt as a flavoring.
I'm also looking at some variant on the Mediterranean diet, though neither of us like things cooked in/with olive oil and processed olives are high in sodium. But I'll be looking into using more whole grains in my baking.
I honestly think limiting myself to 48 ounces of fluids a day could be a bigger challenge.
Wow, you were busy, Luvpyrpom!
I haven't cooked or baked anything in over a week, because we were in Orlando for a Disney family Christmas. Instead, we sampled some of Orlando's great restaurants, including Morimoto's and the Brown Derby in Disney's Hollywood park. My waistline shows the results.
I also caught a cold that is trying to morph into a sinus infection, so I'm on antibiotics and the Chicken Soup diet for the next few days. Good thing we have no plans for New Year's Eve.
If space and money weren't a problem (which they always are), I'd look at a 12 quart mixer, but I doubt I'd use it very much, these days a full batch of Double Crusty Bread or Challah is about as much dough as I make at one time.
When I went to pastry school at SFBI, our instructor said that the most expensive ingredient we used all week was pistachio paste, even more expensive than the gold foil we decorated some pastries with.
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