Baking gluten-free bread

Half our household is on a hardly-ever-have-gluten diet. It probably should be a gluten-free diet, but once in a while it’s a treat to have “normal” fish and chips, or have a bowl of breakfast cereal that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

While it’s possible to buy all sorts of gluten-free breads these days, it is expensive, and other (more severe) allergies make many breads unsuitable. We often bake our own, and have tried a number of different recipes and pre-mixes. Recently I’ve been experimenting, and have come up with a recipe that my son describes as “weird, but really nice”. It is a moist loaf with pretty good (for gluten-free bread) keeping qualities and a mildly nutty taste. (My son is anaphylactic to several types of nut, so never gets to taste them. That’s probably why this bread tastes odd to him.)

Here’s how I make it:

Dissolve 1 tablespoon of sugar in 1½ cups of warm water. Add 2-3 teaspoons of yeast and leave until fermentation starts (that is, until it starts going frothy).

Mix together:

  • 1 cup tapioca flour (potato flour would also be OK)
  • 1 cup rice flour
  • 1 cup chickpea flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon milk powder
  • 3 teaspoons xanthan gum

To the dry mixture add the water/yeast mix, ⅓ cup oil (something light like canola or rice bran oil works well) and 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar.

Mix well and place in a loaf tin lined with baking paper. Leave in a warm place until it has risen.

Bake at 180°C (350°F) until golden brown.

Allow to rest for a few minutes after taking it out of the oven, then allow to cool on a baking rack. Like most gluten-free breads this stores well in the fridge. Makes excellent toast.

Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 10:45 pmand is filed under Allergies, Allergy-free food, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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