The Miscellaneous Blog: Gluten-Free Bread

This post is for you, Erin Threadgill! Those of you who know and love Erin know that she was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease. That means that she has a severe allergy to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. The good news is that there is still a lot of things she can eat. The bummer is that she can't eat any bread products made with wheat. There are gluten-free breads and bakeries out there but they can be pretty expensive.

I am determined to find a good home made bread recipe for her but I am kind of scared to make bread. I made some non-gluten-free bread one day that turned out pretty good, but it was way too dense for sandwiches. Some of the gluten-free bread recipes I've found call for up to four different types of flour so I thought I'd start off small with a semi-home made bread mix I found at the grocery store.

One good thing about making this gluten-free bread is that it was super easy! No letting yeast sit for x number of minutes. Just grease a loaf pan . . . .

and mix together the baking mix, yeast, milk and eggs and mix for a few minutes.

At this point I was worried because the dough was unlike any bread dough I had ever seen. But after doing some research on gluten-free bread, apparently this is normal.

Scrape the dough into your bread loaf pan.

Cover with Saran Wrap.

Whoops, Saran Wrap will not cling to a non-stick pan. Cover with Glad Press N' Seal!

Let the dough rise in a "warm" place for 30 minutes. This is the part I think I could have improved on. I couldn't find a warm place to let this dough rise. My oven won't heat to 90 degrees--the minimum is 170. So I decided to put it in my turned off oven. I don't think it was warm enough. If anyone has a suggestion for a warm place to let bread rise I am all ears.

This is the bread post-rising. I feel like it really didn't rise at all.

Pop in the oven and bake for 30 minutes (or so). I have to say, this bread smelled SO good while it was baking. It smelled exactly like baking bread is supposed to smell. We were salivating over it so it was really tough not to slice into it when I got it out of the oven. But I didn't want to present Erin with a loaf of bread that had been sliced in half.

Knowing what I know now, I would have tried to smooth out the top so it looked prettier.