Recipe: Crusty All-Purpose Gluten-Free Bread

Before the recipe, I feel like I owe you all an apology for my intermittent blogging.  I’m here and I’m fine, plugging away at P90X3 (update coming on Friday) and continuing a little on Declutter 2014.  I’m also taking care of my family, cursing this darn snow (sideways snow blowing outside my window as I type this!), as well as planning for a little beach vacation which can’t come soon enough (see sideways snow reference).

I’ve written several blog posts over the last few weeks:  approximately five saved to my computer and another five saved in my head. They are simply not coherent enough to publish, and maybe never will be.  Partial thoughts.   Even this intro is painfully incoherent.

After 6 years of blogging, I’ve learned if I wait, the words flow eventually.  Sometimes they flow so rapidly, I can’t type quickly enough to capture them.  Other times, like now, I don’t have much to say.

And that’s okay.

I’d rather wait for “eventually” than publish mediocre blog posts.

So, until we are flowing again, I’ve got a recipe to share!

 

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Remember when I told you we were going gluten free?  Well, we still are and it’s going great.

Except for the bread part.

Oh, how I miss regular bread.

My family misses homemade bread as a side dish.

I miss the smell of it baking in the late afternoon as I finish up dinner prep.

The gluten-free store-bought bread is so highly processed, I can’t even get myself to taste it.  And it’s expensive–about $6 for a small loaf!  It also needs to be stored in the freezer, which makes it highly inconvenient for quick sandwich making.

 

But this….

 

This week, I tried my hand at my first-ever homemade gluten-free bread and it was delicious!  And pretty easy, too.

(I also tried my hand at my first-ever homemade gluten-free chocolate chip cookies.  I ate approximately all of them.  I have no pictures to show you.)

I was so excited to see that one of my cookbooks had several gluten-free recipes, so I didn’t need to look too far for a tried and true bread recipe.

 

You can order this awesome cookbook here.

This recipe is very versatile.  It can be formed into a crusty boule, baked in a loaf pan, used as pizza dough or rolled thin into crackers.  I used loaf pans, so the recipe here  will tell you how to make it that way, too.  As I experiment more with this recipe, I will update this post.

The dough takes about 5 minutes to make (thus, the title).  Allow yourself 2 extra hours to let the dough rise, though.  You can use the dough immediately or save and use within 7 days.  On baking day, allow yourself another 90 minutes to 2 1/2 hours for resting and baking time.

Makes enough dough for at least four 1-pound round loaves or three in a loaf pan.  This recipe is easily doubled or halved.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups brown rice flour

1 1/2 cups sorghum flour

3 cups tapioca starch (tapioca flour)

2 tablespoons granulated yeast

1 tablespoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons xanthan gum

2 2/3 cups lukewarm water

4 large eggs

1/3 cup neutral-flavored oil

2 tablespoons honey

 

DIRECTIONS:

1.  Mixing and storing dough:  Whisk together the flours, tapioca starch, yeast, salt and xanthan gum in a 5-quart bowl or a lidded (not airtight) food container.

2. Combine the liquid ingredients and gradually mix them with the dry ingredients, using a spoon, a 14-cup food processor (with dough attachment), or a heavy-duty stand mixer (with paddle), until all the dry ingredients are well incorporated.  You may have to use wet hands to get the last bit of flour to incorporate if you are not using a machine. (I used my Kitchen-Aid mixer and it worked great)

3.  Cover (not airtight) and allow dough to rest at room temperature until it rises, approximately 2 hours.

4.  The dough can be used immediately after the initial rise.  Refrigerate in a lidded (not airtight) container and use over the next 7 days.  The flavor will be best if you wait for at least 24 hours of refrigeration.

5.  On baking day:  heavily grease an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch nonstick loaf pan.  Use wet hands to break off about a 1 1/2 pound (cantaloup sized) piece of the refrigerated dough.  Quickly shape it into a ball.  The dough is not stretched because there is no gluten in it.  Just gently press it into shape.  You may need to wet your hand a little more to prevent the dough from sticking and to create a smooth surface, but don’t use so much water as to make the dough soggy.

6.  Elongate the ball into a narrow oval and put it in the loaf pan.  Allow the loaf to rest, loosely covered with plastic wrap for 90 minutes (40 minutes if you’re using fresh, unrefrigerated dough).

*My dough was too wet, I could barely transport it from the bowl to the loaf pan, and I could not smooth the top of it.  Next time, I will increase the flour in the recipe by 1/4 cup.

7.  Thirty minutes before baking time, preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  Place an empty metal broiler tray on any other rack that won’t interfere with the rising bread.

8.  Place  the loaf pan on a rack near the center of the oven. Pour 1 cup of hot tap water into the broiler tray, quickly close the oven door (to trap the steam).  Bake for about 40 minutes, until richly browned and firm.  Smaller and larger loaves will require adjustments in resting and baking time.

(I baked two loaves and they took about 50 minutes to bake.)

9.  Remove the bread from the pan and allow to cool on a rack before slicing.

*if bread does not easily slide out of pan, wait about 10 minutes and try again.  Don’t force the bread out of the pan.

 

(This post contains an affiliate link.  If you click on the picture of the cookbook and buy it through Amazon, I receive a small commission.)