Gluten-Free Bread That Doesn’t Suck!

By Alqualonde

Ingredients

• Basic Flour mix (next 4 ingredients)
• 1 1/3 cups brown rice flour
• 1 1/3 cups tapioca flour/starch
• 1 1/3 cups cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon potato flour
• 4 cups Brown Rice Flour Blend (see above recipe)
• 1 tablespoon xanthan gum
• 1 tablespoon gluten-free egg replacer
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup powdered milk
• 3 large eggs at room temperature
• 1/4 cup butter at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast (not INSTANT dry yeast)
• 2 cups warm water

Details

Adapted from onegoodthingbyjillee.com

Preparation

Step 1

Spray cooking spray into two 8-inch bread pans.

Add the yeast to the 2 cups of warm water and stir until mixed. Set this aside to activate while you mix the rest of the ingredients.

Mix the flour blend, xanthum gum, gluten-free egg replacer, salt, and powdered milk together in a medium-size bowl and set aside.

Put eggs, butter, vinegar, and honey in the bowl of your mixer. With the paddle attachment, mix together for about 30 seconds. The butter will be chunky, that’s OK.

Add half the dry ingredients to the wet mixture in the mixer. Mix just until blended, and then add the remaining dry ingredients and mix for another 30 seconds, until blended.

With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the warm water and yeast mixture, then turn the mixer to medium-high speed and beat for 4 minutes.

After the 4 minutes your bread dough should resemble thick cake batter.
Spoon the dough into your greased bread pans. Dip your fingers in water to smooth the top of the dough, if desired. Set aside in a warm place to rise for approximately about 50 to 60 minutes. While dough rises, preheat oven to 375 degrees.

When the dough has risen to about an inch above the top of the pans, place the pans in your preheated oven on the middle rack and bake for 45 to 55 minutes or until the bread’s internal temperature reaches 200 degrees with an instant-read thermometer. (This is very helpful! It’s hard to tell when gluten-free bread is done. But if you don’t have an instant read thermometer you’re going to have to use your best guess based on your particular oven.)

Remove the bread from the oven and let cool in pans for 10 minutes. Then remove loaves from pans and place on a rack to cool. (As you can see, I brushed the top of mine with butter when they came out of the oven.)

The anticipation at this point in the bread-making process was killing me! So far everything had gone SO well, but I was deathly afraid once I cut into this bread it was going to be the same bitter disappointment I’d felt so many times before. But I was still hopeful!

After allowing it to cool COMPLETELY (this is important! Don’t rush it and cut into it while it’s still warm or you will flatten it.) I very, VERY carefully started cutting it into slices. This is ALSO very important…let your bread knife do the cutting for you! You provide the “sawing” action, but let the knife blade do the work. Don’t press down, just keep “sawing” across the top until you get all the way to the bottom of the loaf and hit the cutting board. The bread slices will keep their shape much better this way!