Gluten-free Bread

When you take on the task of giving up everything made with wheat flour, one of the first things you miss is bread. After all, if you go to your local grocery store market and start reading the ingredients, you will find out that EVERY SINGLE ONE of their loaves of bread have gluten in them. In order to buy gluten-free bread you have to go to a health-food store.

There are several brands available, some refrigerated and some not. But they all have one thing in common - they taste like sawdust. Oh, it is recommended that you toast them first, but frankly, the only thing they're good for is crumbled up and used as bread crumbs in recipes that call for that.

I can't eat a lot of bread anyway (because of my lap-band) so this deprivation wasn't that hard on me, but it was really tough on Bill who loves sandwiches - and toast. He wasn't willing to give up our new gluten-free lifestyle for an occasional sandwich, but he was a bit bummed about it.

So yesterday (Monday being my cook-up-a-lot-of-gluten-free-things-for-us-to-eat-during-the-week day), I tried my hand at making a made-from-scratch loaf of gluten-free bread. And it was GREAT! Bill is absolutely ecstatic because he says that now he can have sandwiches again. I was particularly pleased because this particular recipe (although it uses yeast) doesn't require that tedious kneading procedure to get the proper texture for the bread.

I thought perhaps I would share the recipe with you, as this is actually a very tasty bread - in fact it is called light graham bread. It requires 1 1/3 cups of the 'featherlight' flour mix which is as follow:
1 part white rice flour
1 part tapioca flour
1 part cornstarch
1 tsp. per cup of potato flour
Actually they recommend making a bunch of this mix up ahead of time as it is used in a lot of recipes, and its actually 3 cups each of the first three flours, and 3 tablespoons of the potato flour (NOT potato starch - it's easy to get them confused)

So on to the actual recipe:
DRY INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup dark teff flour
1 1/3 cups Featherlight Mix
1 1/2 tsp. Xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. dry unflavored gelatin
1 tsp. egg replacer (dry)
2 TB brown sugar
WET INGREDIENTS
1 cup lukewarm water (more or less)
pinch of sugar
1 TB yeast
1 egg plus 1 egg white
1 tsp. vinegar
3 TB vegetable oil
2 TB honey

Grease a 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.
To the cup of lukewarm water, add a pinch of sugar and the yeast. Set aside to proof until the foam is approximately 1/2" (don't use a 1 cup measuring cup or it will overflow!)
In the bowl of the mixer, break the eggs; add the vinegar, oil and honey. Blend on low. Add the yeast-water and blend. Slowly spoon in the dry ingredients. If the dought doesn't fall from the paddle in a thick waterfall, add more lukewarm water by the tablespoon until the dough has the right consistency (like thick cake batter). Beat 3 1/2 minutes on high.
Spoon into the prepared pan, cover and let rise for about 35 minutes for quick-rising yeast and 1 hour for regular. Bake at 400 for 1 hour, covering with aluminum foil after the first 10 minutes to avoid scorching. Removed from the pan immediately. Cool before slicing. (Well - I didn't - I had a nice hot slice slathered in butter, and it was good).
Nutrients per slice: Calories 110, Fat 3 gm, Cholesterol 15 mg
Sodium 80 mg, Carbohydrates; 19 gm, Protein 2gm, Fiber 1 gm
You can vary it by adding a couple of tablespoons of sesame seed to make sesame graham bread, or 3 tablespoons of almond meal to the dry ingredients, and 2 tablespooons of chopped nuts right before spooning it into the pan to make Nutty Graham bread.
I'm not going to bother giving you the recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies (actually quinoa raisin cookies) because they turned out weird. They taste OK (although not exceptional), but they are definitely weird.