Thursday, March 19, 2009

Experimenting with gluten free yeast breads

As I mentioned before, I've been experimenting with bread recipes. I wanted to show you my latest successful loaf, which still needs tweaking. I've combined ideas from a few different breads published on the web, specifically Julie's White Bean Flour Bread, Karina's Sorghum and Millet Bread and Ginger Lemon Girl's Favorite Sandwich Bread.

Don't get me wrong, all of those are very good gluten free breads; Karina's tastes amazingly like whole wheat, but it crumbles badly after just a day or so.

I wanted a soft, flexible bread that tasted like Karina's but that held together and lasted like Julie's and GLG's.

The bread I finally came up with was soft and flexible and tasted pretty darn good!


I left it out on the counter for four days. I used it to make a sandwich to take to work on the third day....it was still moist and flexible. I used it to make toast on the fourth day; still good. There were only 3 slices left after that and they were getting a little battered and crumble-y at that point so I froze them to make bread crumbs later.

There are two problems with my bread though: I'm using too many different flours and starches (not user friendly), and I think I need to sweeten it a little because I used GLG's trick of putting Sure Jell in the dough to make it hold together better. Sure Jell is not flavorless....I think it has some sort of acid (citric?) in it. So my bread was a tad too tangy. Some extra honey or brown sugar should take care of that, though.

So I'm still trying to perfect my bread; if I do, I'll definitely post the recipe. My husband REALLY liked the taste of the sorghum and millet flour bread (Karina's) so I want to try to duplicate that for him.

3 comments:

RissaRoo said...

Oh, wow...what a beautiful loaf of bread! Not an easy accomplishment...you should be proud of yourself! Especially a bread that can sit out on the counter for 3 days and still be moist.

I've used Sure-Gel before and it did work...it's good to hear that other people have tried it! It is sort of tangy, though. Plain gelatin also works and doesn't taste. I'll be looking for that recipe, a good loaf of gluten free bread is a real prize!

JoAnn said...

Thanks RissaRoo!

I hope I can come up with something good....gluten free breads are much more difficult than wheat breads.

Some people actually use both gelatin AND Sure Jell, I may try that!

Jientje said...

That bread looks delicious.
I don't think GF is an easy way of life. I took the liberty of browsing through your archives, and I think I understand why. I wish you the best of luck, you're a very courageous woman. A blog like yours is a great way to help other people as well.
You have my deepest sympathy.