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Where do I begin with making gluten-free bread?
There are many reasons why you may want to make gluten-free bread from scratch. Maybe you can’t find one you like, maybe you have several food sensitivities AND are celiac/coeliac (check out Isabelle and Peter’s stories), or maybe you’re dealing with food shortages and/or boredom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We’ve been making our own gluten-free bread for about a year and a half now (around when we started Celiac Press), and we’ve seen our bread go through a lot of changes. We’ve talked about this in a couple of posts (check out Part 1 and Part 2), but the gist is that we had to make our own gluten-free flour from scratch because of our combined food sensitivities.
Whether you’re using a pre-made flour mix (like this one that we used to use), or you’re doing everything completely from scratch like we started doing last year, there’s a lot that you need to consider along the way. You might want to think about what breadmaker you’re using, or if you need to alter the gluten-free bread recipe that you’re following.
We’re going to walk you through what we’ve learned about making gluten-free bread from scratch. It can take a lot of trial and error, but we have some tips and tricks that we hope will help you get a better end result faster – and with fewer headaches.
What do I need to know about making gluten-free bread?
As we talked about in our most recent post, gluten-free bread is one of the more challenging things to make. Even if a gluten-free flour can seemingly do it all, we’ve found that bread-making is a whole other ordeal. It’s the ultimate test to see whether your flour blend (whether homemade or premade) is as good as you think it is.
While there’s no comparing gluten-free bread to regular bread, you can still make something that tastes good, doesn’t fall apart, and is versatile.
Finding a good gluten-free bread recipe
We have almost always followed the same recipe when we make gluten-free bread. It’s a Zojirushi recipe (more on that company in a moment), and it’s easily the best we’ve seen so far.
Generally speaking, if you’re experimenting with making gluten-free bread it can be a good idea to follow the same recipe each time. When we used to use Pamela’s gluten-free flour (pre-sorghum allergy), we followed the Zojirushi recipe pretty strictly. Then when we started making our own flour from scratch, we decided to keep following that same recipe because we liked it so much.
That being said, you might still need to make adjustments. Maybe you find that the bread needs more liquid because it doesn’t mix right, or maybe you want to add a grain or some Italian seasoning. The biggest advice we have here is just to change one aspect of the recipe at a time to see what works, rather than making too many changes and being unsure of what it was that you needed to adjust in the recipe.
Using the right tools
We’ve been using this Zojirushi bread maker from the beginning and we still love it. However, we will say that it is relatively expensive. We got it on a crazy deal on sale (roughly 50% off), so for us it was worthwhile, but it was still an investment. If like us you plan on making your own gluten-free bread completely in place of buying it, then we’d say that this is a good one to go for. If not, then consider whether you might just want to use a mixer and bread pans.
If you are looking into bread makers for gluten-free bread, then you want to look out for one that has a “gluten-free” setting. The other thing to consider is that you’ll want a machine with two paddles inside (rather than just one). This is because gluten-free bread needs more mixing than regular bread, sort of like a cake batter.
Additional ingredients
There are a few things that we’ve realized we need to add to our gluten-free bread now that we make our own flour.
First, we add around 1/4 cup sugar. We realized pretty quickly into our flour-making process that our blend seemed like it had less flavor than the Pamela’s bread, and that our bread wasn’t rising the same way it used to. After we revisited the ingredients in the Pamela’s flour, we realized that it had a couple of types of sugar in it – which our homemade flour did not. Because yeast feeds off of sugar, a gluten-free flour without it doesn’t rise the same way.
That leads us to another leavening ingredient: baking soda. We usually add around 1/2 or 1 tsp. to our gluten-free bread in order for it to rise. If we add too much or none at all, then the bread usually sinks in on itself shortly after it’s done.
Another area where you might want to experiment is with your eggs and/or milk (we use almond milk). Some variations of our flour required more milk (like when we tried oat flour), while others actually became too soft if we used the 3 eggs that our recipe required (so we went down to 2 with that flour). The best we can suggest is to change one of these at a time until you get the right consistency.
After you’ve baked your bread
Something that is almost as important as what goes into your bread is what you do with it after it’s done baking. Some of our initial bread testing went awry because we didn’t realize just how fragile warm gluten-free bread can be.
The first tip here is to get the bread out of the pan and onto a cooling rack or plate as soon as you can. Bread can sink too much or absorb too much moisture if you leave it in too long, which can ruin the structural integrity of a gluten-free bread that might otherwise have been fine.
The next tip is to let the bread cool completely before slicing it. It’s totally fine to take a little off the end to eat it hot when it comes out (because it’s kind of amazing when it’s fresh), but we’ve ruined loaves of bread by slicing them too soon. What we’ve learned to do is to let the bread cool down to room temperature on the counter. We then wrap it in a paper towel and two reusable bread bags (like these) and stick it in the fridge overnight. Then we slice the bread the next day when it’s able to stay together.
When we eventually slice our bread, we use a bread slicer (like this) so that it’s consistent.
As for storing the bread, we tend to keep it in an airtight plastic container in the fridge, rather than the bread bags. The bags are great for taking out that extra moisture, but our sliced bread gets a little too dry in them. We also find that plastic bags can work, but taking them in and out of the fridge can sometimes leave us with some very broken bread.
Other considerations
One thing that we’ve found to be true for both homemade and store-bought gluten-free bread (including even bagels) is that it will taste far better if you toast it.
As we just mentioned, we keep our gluten-free bread in the fridge. Because it’s fresh baked and we don’t add any preservatives, it really needs to be stored there. It also lasts us easily a couple of weeks (or more) without going moldy, although it can dry out towards the end of that period.
Of course, cold gluten-free bread isn’t our favorite. However, even bread that’s been sitting in the fridge for a little while tastes fresh again when we toast it. It also helps it hold together better for sandwiches, since we find that gluten-free bread is more likely to break down if it gets wet than regular bread would.
Final thoughts
Like we said at the end of our last post, one of the most important parts of testing homemade gluten-free bread or flour is to write down what you did along the way. We kept a shared Google Doc and wrote down every little change along the way. This helped us remember what worked and what didn’t, and makes us feel a little less crazy.
Although the best gluten-free bread probably won’t taste quite the same as its regular counterpart, the tips and tricks that we’ve talked about should help you get at least as close as you can.