Other than breaded fried chicken fingers or chicken nuggets the one thing my CookieCookie misses the most is bread. Toasted, warm and slathered with almond or peanut butter and her favorite jelly (which is anything we have on hand at the time :-)). So right away I went to search if there was gluten free bread commercially available. I did find Udi’s, Rudi’s, Scharr and one other from Florida who’s name escapes me at the moment.
They were not easy to find until I ran into a guy at the local co-op store who fully informed me about where to find gluten free rolls, hot dog buns, bread sticks, and sandwich breads in our area. I talked to him for about 10 minutes on a GF bread run; needless to say he was passionate about the subject and could have talked on for much longer. He even yelled to me from across the store while I was at the checkout to not forget to toast the bread because that made it better.
My only “problem” with commercially available bread is it’s cost. For a loaf barely half the size of the gluten laden breads we buy the cost was almost double – ouch. Then there was the texture. It was dry, falling apart and the pieces were teeny (of the Scharr bread anyway). The bread from Florida was made primarily of millet and flax and had a good texture and a more reasonable cost but the taste of flax, which some may not mind, was almost overpowering. One upsetting part about this brand is that the bagels and hot dog buns did not come pre-sliced. A fact I did not realize until the moment I got it out of the freezer just before breakfast as I was preparing to make an egg and cheese bagel sandwich for Cookie. It was quite the pain to defrost, slice and then toast the bagel while a hungry 6 year old informs me she is dying of hunger. I put the rest of the bag in the fridge to defrost so I could slice them before putting them back in the freezer so they didn’t dry out anymore or go rancid before I could use them. For all the gluten free things I have now I am going to need a bigger freezer, LOL.
This revelation that commercially available GF bread is a little pricey led me to get over the intimidation I felt about GF recipes. I dove in headlong and searched for a GF bread recipe to make. By this point I already had an assortment of GF flours that I did not know what to do with and even some Xanthan Gum that I bought to have just-in-case.
Karina at Gluten Free Goddess is an expert in all things gluten free having had to manage her diet very carefully because of celiac disease. It was on her site where I found the recipe that led to this loaf of bread.
I would have taken photos of the finished product but my phone (my only camera :-() died before I could.
UPDATE: New Pics
Got the bread out of the freezer this morning because CookieCookie wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Granted the loaf was no longer whole and you can’t see the beautiful golden brown of the loaf as it came right out of the oven, but it still looks pretty good.
Karina had beautiful pictures and content to go with the recipe though. My loaf seems to have poofed up a little more than hers though her’s looks like it might have other seeds, maybe caraway, that I didn’t add because I didn’t have them.
A few small modifications or extra steps I had to take to make this bread was to grind grits into cornmeal because I thought I didn’t have any. I mistook a bag of cornmeal for a sack of flour :-(. I felt like a total goober afterward but at least I know that the equipment I have will do the job to grind the flour(s) I need. Another thing I had to do was grind millet into flour. This was super easy in my old coffee grinder. The bread had a nice chew to it from the little bits of grits and teeny pieces of millet that were only partially ground. Actually, this did improve the mouthfeel. I was amazed at how easy it was to make this bread – from proofing the yeast to letting it rise and even mixing the batter (not dough) by hand. I told my DH if the bread tastes as good as it was easy to make I don’t think I ‘ll be buying commercially available bread again unless I have no other alternative.
For this recipe please visit: Gluten-Free Multi-Grain Sandwich Bread
Firstly, I’m a mom and wife. Professionally, IT consulting is my job and blogging is the outlet for my passions. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way.
