Gluten Free Bread

I finally made gluten free bread the other day, I hadn't expected it to go well at all. I did some research online to find various recipes and tips for making it so I had some help going in. The recipe I started from is from Easy Gluten Free Baking and then I went from there altering the recipe according to tips I had read or what was available in my cupboards.

Recipe I ended up using:

Mix together well in a large bowl (I used a whisk for this part)
2 (generous) cups brown rice flour
1 cup tapicoa flour
1/2 cup dry milk
1 tbsp xanthan gum
1 tsp salt

In a smaller bowl get the yeast going with
1 tbsp yeast
1 3/4 cups warm milk
1/2 tbsp sugar

Once the yeast is ready combine with the flour mixture then add in
2 eggs (beaten and at room temp)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp mayo

beat with a spoon (too wet to knead well with the hands) until it's well mixed, then beat a little bit more as if you were kneading it. Since I couldn't get my hands in there it's hard for me to describe the dough but you want it wet. It was still thick like regular bread dough and stuck together well but was very close to being a batter instead of dough.

The dough right after I put it into the pan

 

Scrap into a greased bread pan, lightly oil a piece of saran wrap and loosely cover the dough. Let rise for an hour or so (should rise to just over the edge of the pan) then uncover and bake at 350 for about 50 minutes. It'll shrink again while it bakes, which I had expected, what I hadn't expected is that it would shrink almost back to it's original size.

fresh out of the oven

It ended up being much more solid than expected and also more sweet than expected. That might be because I used milk instead of water. I went with the milk because I didn't have enough dry milk but I did have lots of regular milk that needed to be used up before it went bad. Plus I figured if what replaces the structure the gluten provides is protein, the more protein the better, so milk instead of water would be better.  My first thought for improving the recipe is to increase the ingredients by 50% so that I would end up with a bigger loaf. I'm not sure if I would use milk instead of water again, I might just use water next time to see what the difference would be. It's not a bread I plan to make often (gluten free flour is expensive!) but I have definitely been convinced that gluten free bread can be tasty and I'm glad it's in my repertoire of bread making skills now.

The breads from soup night

Saturday we had soup night, something we've done a few times in the past where people bring soup and we have a party and eat yummy soup. This time I made a ton of bread to go with all the soup. Mostly I made bread bowls, but a few loaves as well. It was also a good experience for getting ready for the farmer's market. I split the bread making up into two days and I think I'll do that for the farmer's market as well. The day before I made the sourdough bread bowls because I've noticed that sourdough bread tastes better the next day. I also made spicy bread bowls. The jalapeno bread I made last month went over really well but I don't have a whole lot of jalapenos so I wanted to come up with a way to make spicy bread that wouldn't be so expensive or time consuming (pickling jalapenos is a process all it's own). So I went to my local co-op and bought some cayenne powder. It worked really well. My roommate also gave me some dried ghost pepper to use, which I did use half of one crumbled up. I used my normal bread recipe but just added into the flour a few good healthy shakes of the cayenne powder and the ground up dried ghost pepper. The powder worked much nicer than the jalapenos because it made the spice more even throughout the bread. With the jalapenos you would get the occasional bite that was way spicier than the rest. It was a very delayed heat too, it was almost universal that when people tried it their immediate reaction was to say it wasn't very spicy at all, a beat later go "oh there it is, yeah this does have a lot of kick to it!" It amused me at least, mostly because I had the same reaction too when I first tried it. I thought I had failed at making spicy bread at first, then the spice hit me.



My other big bread hit of the night was my bacon cheddar beer bread. I used Fat Tire for the beer (I promise I'll try another kind of beer one of these days) and fried up six thick slices of bacon (roughly chopped up) used almost a whole pound of sharp cheddar cheese (grated) and made some incredibly unhealthy but delicious bread. I used the grease from the bacon as well in place of the olive oil. In general, bacon fat in bread is very tasty. Before baking it I did rub some olive oil onto the top and then sprinkled with the remaining cheddar cheese. I made it into two bread bowls and one loaf, based on how fast it disappeared it will definitely be one of the breads I make for the farmer's market.

Bacon-cheddar beer bread

My personal favorite from the night was my tomato basil bread. I used a vodka sauce instead (I had half a jar already open in the fridge, figured I'd use it up) of the tomato basil sauce and added four leaves of fresh basil finely chopped up. It was amazingly good. I think it was the cream in the vodka sauce that added a lot to it. I make a pretty descent homemade vodka sauce for my pasta dishes that I think I might need to make for my bread sometime soon. Although the jar stuff is much cheaper than when I make it myself.

 Tomato basil bread bowls and loaf

The picture above shows my other recent discovery, personal pot pie tins make great pans for baking bread bowls. 

And last but not least of the breads I wanted to talk about, I made my apple cinnamon bread again with one improvement and as promised measurements for what I put on the inside. The improvement was that one of the apples I grated with the biggest side of the grater so that I ended up with small chunks of apple, the other I grated finely like I normally do where by the time I'm done it looks more like applesauce then grated apple. 

I lied, two improvements, from my experience making the challah and brioche bread I tried a half stick of butter melted into 1.5 cups of milk in place of oil and water. Will definitely do that again.

For the inside I did 1.5 tbsp of white sugar, 2.5 of brown sugar and 1.5 tbsp of cinnamon for each loaf. I also sprinkled a little cinnamon on top of the dough before baking it as well that I really liked. Made great french toast for the morning after the party. 

Right before rolling up the dough

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The finished loaves of apple cinnamon bread

Challah and Brioche breads

Yesterday was a very fun bread making day, I made a total of five loaves, including one monster loaf that really should have been two.

A friend of mine requested that I make challah bread (a traditional, eggy kind of Jewish bread) so that he could experiment with making stuffed french toast. I was promised stuffed french toast as payment for the bread, it seemed like a good deal to me. I looked up several recipes for challah bread, like any kind of bread it seems nobody can agree on exactly how to make it. So I complied a couple different ones and came up with this list of ingredients:

Ingredients for challah bread:

4 cups white flour
1/4 cup brown sugar (very approximate, recipes ranged from 1 tbsp to 1/2 cup, I erred on the generous side)
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 egg yolks (save the whites for egg wash)
1 cup warm water
1.5 tbsp of yeast
3-4 tbsp of olive oil (also just guessing that this is about as much as I used, you want a lot basically. One recipe even called for a 1/2 cup, much as I love olive oil that seemed a bit excessive)

Because of all the eggs it was very interesting to work with the dough, it was almost more pastry like rather than bread like. Just before baking it I mixed a splash of milk in with the egg whites to make an egg wash and brushed it all over the top of the dough.
When I punched down the dough it shrank quite a bit and didn't rise a whole lot for the second time after I put it in the pan (since we were going to be making french toast out of it I didn't think the traditional braid would be a good idea). So I was incredibly surprised when I opened the oven to check on it 35 minutes later and discovered it that it had more than doubled in size while baking. Next time I will not be deceived by it's small prebaked size, it'll go in two pans!

 It wasn't even to the top of the pan when it went in the oven!

The stuffed french toast (cream cheese, yogurt and raspberries for the stuffing) turned out well, the bread was hard to handle because of it's size and shape and we decided the stuffing could have used some sugar but it was still a pretty tasty breakfast. There will be more attempts.

The brioche was unplanned but very fun to make. It's basically the same as challah bread except it's french. I was talking to my roommate's grandmother (an awesome cook/baker) about breads and asked if there was any kind of bread I could make to send home with her. She said she had always wanted to try brioche bread and that she knew it was similar to challah bread but wasn't quite sure how. Turns out the only real difference is butter instead of oil. So to make brioche follow the same recipe above only add 3/4 cup softened (very softened I discovered!) butter in place of the olive oil and only 3/4 cups warm water instead of a whole cup. This time I did braid the bread, because it seemed like it'd be fun and I had never braided dough before. I divided the dough into six equal parts so I could make two braids (I wanted a loaf too after all). The hard part was getting the ends to stick together, they kept trying to pull apart. Once dough is separated it really doesn't like sticking together again. I let the braids rise for about 30-45 minutes before baking them. I also brushed them with the egg wash before baking. Total baking time was around 40 minutes at 350 on a pizza stone (they did not turn into monster braids, they only grew a normal amount in the oven). One of the loaves I did a very loose braid because I was worried about pulling on the dough too much, the second one I did quite a bit tighter and after baking them I think the loose braid looks much better. They taste the same of course but aesthetics do matter sometimes.

I also made two more loaves of my garlic pesto bread, but I've posted about them before. The only difference I tried this time is I found a jar in with the spices at the grocery store that was chopped garlic in olive oil with basil. It was pretty slick to be able to just dump the jar in rather than peeling and pressing a whole bulb of garlic like I usually do. More expensive of course but not too bad, it was around a $1.50 for the jar.

My morning of bread making

Tomato Basil

I actually made four loaves of tomato basil bread in two days. Slightly different, and better the second day.

Second day Ingredients:

5 cups white flour
1 tsp salt
4 cloves of garlic
1 egg (slightly beaten)
1/2 jar of Classico Tomato & Basil sauce
1 cup warm water
2 tbsp yeast
3-4 tbsp of olive oil


The biggest difference from day one to day two was that the first day I used half whole wheat flour and didn't have garlic. The whole wheat tasted good (of course) but it wasn't as red as I wanted it to be so the second day I used only white flour (I was also out of whole wheat) with the hope that it would take to the color of the sauce more. And it did. The second attempt was much more red, and very popular when I brought it to work. I did get the suggestion that next time I should try adding a little bit of finely chopped fresh basil as well to make the basil more noticeable, I think I'm going to do that next time.

I forgot to take a picture the second day so this is one of the loaves from the first day with the half whole wheat flour. The second one was a bit more red, mostly on the inside but the crust was more noticeably red as well when I only used white flour.

My Trip to Sioux Falls

A bit more of a delay in getting this post up than I thought there would be, but here it is.

Traveling with the dough actually worked really well. I'm not sure it would have worked out as well if the drive had been much longer but the 3.5 hour drive to Sioux Falls worked very well. My car was nice and toasty and I kept it covered with my sweatshirt to keep the wind from getting at it too much. Periodically I would make sure it wasn't trying to escape from the large ziplock bag it was in. The yeast might have been a bit too happy in my warm car surrounded by flour, apples, and sugar, it rose a lot.

Because I was going to be traveling with the dough I kept my recipe simple this time for my apple cinnamon bread. No eggs, no milk, nothing that could potentially spoil in a warm car.

Ingredients:

3 cups white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 apples peeled and then grated
2 tbsp of yeast
2 cups warm water
2 tbsp of olive oil (I would probably use melted butter next time)
a few generous shakes of cinnamon

The grated apples with the flour

As usual I ended up having to add probably a cup or so at least of flour (I use the whole wheat for any extra flour I need), apples in particular add a lot of moisture to the dough, which I could have just used less water but I wanted enough dough for two loaves.

When the dough is ready to be shaped I roll it out to a little less than an inch thick and about as wide as my bread pan. Then I combine equal parts brown sugar and white sugar with a quite a bit of cinnamon. Combined it probably makes a 1/3 to 1/2 cup. Next time I'll try to remember to measure how much sugar I actually use. I spread the mixture all over the surface of the dough and then with my hands still covered in cinnamon and sugar I roll up the dough like a burrito and stick it in the bread pan and let it rise a second time before baking it. I like to do a little extra olive oil on top before baking to help it get a nice crust. Again I would probably try butter for this next time, I just like olive oil so much I don't usually even think about using anything else.

Bread turned out perfect and it was so great to be able to have fresh baked bread for my sister and her family without having to spend half my visit making it.