Testimonials

If you have been on one of my baking courses and would like to write a testimonial, then please feel free to leave you comments here.  Thanks. 

pepperandsherry's picture
pepperandsherry wrote 13 years 24 weeks ago

Course at Leiths School of Food and Wine

I went to a Gluten Free Course lead by Adriana at Leiths School of Wine and Food. I am not a coeliac myself, nor is any of my family, but more and more of my friends had been diagnosed and I'd been taken aback by how much it affected what they ate. The course was a complete eye opener, we made bread that was actually soft and fluffy and pastry that cooked beautifully flaky and you could not tell the difference between it and gluten-full pastry. The pizza dough was better than many gluten-full ones! All the way through the course we got very helpful tips and advice and Adriana had time for everyone in the class. This is a subject that is clearly very important to her and it showed and I learnt more in those six hours than I might have expected to learn in a week or courses.

At first I thought maybe I would have difficulty recreating them at home when not under the watchful eye of someone in the know but, not even a week later, I have made two cakes, breadsticks, pizza and a quiche using her recipes and the tonnes of advice she had given us with total ease. Yeah - pastry with ease! A birthday party for a coeliac happened soon afterwards and no one even suspected when they ate the cakes and the breadsticks that they were gluten free.

The course was an absolute revelation. Thank you Adriana!

adriana's picture
adriana wrote 13 years 7 weeks ago

Leith's Course

Here's a link to Pepper And Sherry's blog and the truly magnificent write up she did on one of my previous Leith's Gluten Free Courses.  She really captured the spirit of the course beautifully.  Here's the link:

http://pepperandsherry.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/gluten-free-course-at-leiths-school-of-food-and-wine/

You will also find some cracking recipes and some damn fine writing too. 

I am scheduled to run some new courses at Leith's in the new year.  Please check theLeith's webstie for course dates and details. 

 

my goodness's picture
my goodness wrote 13 years 23 weeks ago

Bread & Pastry course at Miele in Abingdon

This course gave me the key to begin baking again!

After realising I had to avoid Gluten 8 years ago my cooking habits had developed serious gaps. Gone were quiches and freshly baked bread and all of the little extras that come with knowing your ingredients.

Adriana's course has changed all that. In the incredible surroundings of the Miele kitchen we learned all about how the different gluten free flours behave, and why and when you would want to include them in a recipe.

Adriana shared her own tried and tested recipes with us, so that by lunchtime we were sitting down to freshly baked gluten free pizzas and savoury tarts. (This in itself would have been enough) then the afternoon was spent exploring different bread recipes and using little heard of but wonderful gluten free ingredients, alongside the more well known gluten free flours.

Adriana's years of experience provided rich material for helpful "cheffy" tips, which helped to make gluten free baking much more fun and which guarantied great results.

So encouraged have I been by going on this course, that I have set up my own gluten free baking business, selling at local farmers markets and supplying local coffee shops and juice bars.

I can't wait to attend another course to continue improving my gluten free baking skills and to pick up some more fabulous top tips.

Good work Adriana!

aoifem's picture
aoifem wrote 13 years 18 weeks ago

Gluten Free baking course

I went on the Leith's Gluten Free baking course in June and thought it was excellent. I only recently became both gluten and dairy intollerant and due to my love of food, had started experimenting with cakes and biscuits etc. I had considered myself to be pretty good at it, on the basis that I could make GF cakes that weren't as solid as a brick, however I clearly still had a lot to learn. I was so impressed with the course and Adriana's recipes, they really teach you that food can be just as good if you approach GF cooking a bit more scientifically. I was worried the course wouldn't necessarily cater for dairy intolerances as well, but they did. There were DF alternatives for all the dairy based ingrediants. Not only do you go home with a mountain of great food, the recipes and advice on experimenting with different flours for different textures, is invaluable. I would highly recommend this course. Thanks Adriana : )

The amaretti biscuits are to die for!

Ita O'Sullivan's picture
Ita O'Sullivan wrote 13 years 16 weeks ago

Gluten free Baking course

I recently attended Adriana 's gluten free baking course at the Miele Centre in Abingdon and was pleasantly surprised at the ease in which we were shown how to bake with confidence using gluten free flours etc. I was setting up my own bakery business and left the course feeling I could bake gluten free cakes with authority and knowledge. The Miele Centre facilities and lunch were fab and Adriana was the best. She has continue to give me support in my fledging business with helpful advice and encouragements. I will definitely be doing the bread making course as I'm constantly asked for gluten free bread. Well done Adriana and many thanks for your kindness and support.

Ita O'Sullivan ( A Little Bit of Mischief)

adriana's picture
adriana wrote 13 years 10 weeks ago

A very moving story

I was sent this email by Natalie Pascoe a few days ago.  I was incredibly moved by what Natalie said and asked her if she would allow me to print some of her email on the website.  I wanted others to hear about her brave struggle with some big health issues and how she is slowly regaining her strength and confidence and hoping to start a career in food.  With her permission, here is a copy of her email:     Adriana,   I was on the Gluten Free course you ran at Leiths earlier this year despite neither being a coeliac nor living with one. I really wanted to thank you for everything you taught me in that class. Not only has it given me something new and exciting to explore (I have a stock of seventeen different flours!) and made me able to cater to the friends of mine that do suffer from Coeliac Disorder, it also gave me more confidence in myself.

Cooking has always been something I've done, enjoyed and, if I can say so, been relatively good at. I've always embraced the creativity and challenges of it and the fact that there is always something new to learn. I've have my issues in the past, I dropped out of education early due to suffering from Schizoaffective Disorder (co-morbid at the time with Bulimia, Self Harm and Drug Abuse). By the time I was nineteen I had spent years in psychiatric hospitals dosed up on medication, had had 16 sessions of ECT that backfired horribly and been told there was nothing more that could be done to help me, I was a lifer, I was going to be spend my life in these institutions.   Three years ago I decided I didn't want that anymore, I cut all ties with the NHS Mental Health and my CMHT Team and took myself off medication. It was incredibly rash in hindsight but in those three years I have brought myself to a state of acceptance and in that control and stability. I live away from my parents with my partner of two and a half years, something I was told I would never be capable of. My awareness of my illness and its place in my life, unmedicated and not in any therapy, has improved dramatically and I am more functioning than I ever have been.   And being on that course, that one day course, being exposed to another new thing that excited me, that interested me and then going home and working further with it made me realise that I may as well push for a future in something I enjoy rather than settling because regret is an awful thing. I have gone back to education and am doing a VRQ course at the local catering college. Its early days and the other students are a lot younger than I am but I'm feeling really driven in it and maybe I would not have had the confidence, or it would have taken a lot longer to develop it, if something hadn't clicked in me on that course. If it turns out that I am too unwell to make a life from it, so be it at least I tried. But I wanted to say thank you because I think you imparted more to me than you even realised.  

Emma Walker's picture
Emma Walker wrote 13 years 9 weeks ago

Gluten Free Baking Course

My Mum and I recently attended the GF baking workshop at the Miele Experience centre. Our reason for attending was because my son was diagnosed with coeliac disease earlier this year and I had found Adriana's cook book very useful, but still felt that I had much to learn.

It was a very professionally run and well organised day and it was great for me to talk to others with wheat intolerance/coeliac disease and lovely to meet another Mum who has been through the process of her daughter being diagnosed as a coeliac and how she, like me, adapts to the GF lifestyle. The day began with tea/coffee and a chat and some of Adriana's gorgeous goodies that she has prepared - the biscotti were to die for! Adriana demonstrated a number of recipes and then we had the opportunity to recreate them in the "first class" kitchen, with Miele staff to help us with the equipment (and even wash up!). We learnt far more than we would have done had we just followed a recipe as Adriana was on hand all the time to guide us and gave many useful tips. We ate some of the goodies that we had cooked for lunch, but we took the majority home. It was great to see my two children (especially my son) tuck in to the dough-balls and foccacia when I got home.

To my delight my son's school have asked for the recipe for the dough balls and his whole class will be making gluten free mini rolls for Harvest Festival later this week!

I hope to come to another class soon.

Annie_B's picture
Annie_B wrote 13 years 9 weeks ago

Gluten Free Pastry and Bread Workshop

I went on this one day workshop on 24 September at the Miele Experience Centre in Abingdon. Wow - what an eye opener! Thanks Adrianna for a really good day, for all the useful information and helpful tips that you gave at the workshop, for your enthusiasm for gluten-free cooking and your dedication to finding ways around the problems that avoiding gluten causes in the kitchen.

I've been GF now for 25 years. I love cooking and have had good results with main meals by adapting recipes. But all efforts to bake my own bread were useless! Making pastry was easier for me but still the results were not great and I'd never even tried pizza dough or other types of bread.

At the workshop after some info and demos from Adrianna we made bread, rolls, pastry cases with various fillings, pizza and focaccia. This all turned out well and not only did I think it tasted great, but we had loads of food to take home and the whole family ate everything with me that evening (none of them need to eat gluten free) and all really enjoyed it.

One week on at home I made bread that tasted great and had a lovely texture. On Monday it was still soft and light, not hard and inedible. How fantastic just to cut a slice, spread it with something and eat it - and most of all to enjoy it! I plan to make at least one loaf a week and my meal planning over the next couple of weeks will include everything that we made at the workshop so I can use the skills that I Iearnt that day.

Until the next time....

Anne

alexrhodes's picture
alexrhodes wrote 13 years 8 weeks ago

Bread and Pastry cooking course

I went on the Leith's course on September 29th and what a great course! Having struggled for 25 years to make gluten free pastry and largely given up, I came away from this course knowing how to make pastry that neither crumbles nor resembles papier mache paste! The real test though was my husband (not a Coeliac) said it didn't taste gluten free. In addition to pastry, we learned how to make pizza dough and three types of bread - my favourite being the Cashew nut bread - delicious. We covered a lot for a one day course which made the course, albeit expensive, good value, and meant we had lots of goodies to take home.

caryl.russell's picture
caryl.russell wrote 13 years 3 weeks ago

Gluten Free Christmas Baking workshop

My husband and I did the Gluten Free Christmas Baking workshop today. It was fantastic, we had a really enjoyable day and learnt loads. The tips and techniques, particularly for pastry, were brilliant. We came away with lots of top tips and lots of goodies. It was well worth it.

We look forward to the Baking and Pastry course.

Caryl & Bruce

elizabeth zentner's picture
elizabeth zentner wrote 13 years 3 weeks ago

Gluten free Christmas baking workshop

Had a fabulous experience on Adriana's course yesterday in Abingdon. I discovered a wonderful way of making gluten free pastry, which was made into quiches and mince pies, as well as very moreish cheese straws. My son and his fiancee have just joined me for supper and thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of our labour. Adriana's enthusiasm and expertise were very infectious and inspiring, and I can't wait for the next baking course in the new year.

Liz