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.