“It is more difficult to give rules for making bread than for anything else; it depends so much on judgment and experience…wisdom must be gained by a few mistakes.” Lydia Marie Francis Child in The American Frugal Housewife c. 1832
The above quote gave me much comfort as I was developing this class. For it’s not just gluten free bread baking that can be difficult, but bread baking in general. Baking is a science, but it is also an art. And success in art comes with practice and living life. So that’s how you have to approach bread baking. You bake and you bake and you bake, and in the process you get better at it, you gain new insights, you become at ease.
But, you have to start somewhere, so let’s start with a basic gluten free loaf – an everyday sort of loaf that can be used for sandwiches and bread crumbs and toast and bread pudding. This is the starting point on your journey of gluten free bread; a chance to get the basics down cold before you really start playing and having fun. Improvisation, variation, conversions, and perfection are all ideas for another more advanced class.
Basic Components of Bread:
Bread is essentially flour and water that have been leavened with yeast and flavored with salt. Gluten free bread utilizes gluten free flours and, in addition to the basic ingredients, needs some sort of additional binding ingredient to give the bread enough structure to rise. Sugar, milk, oil and eggs are all optional ingredients that may be added to bring out certain characteristics in the bread.
Flour & Water
The choice of gluten free flours for your bread is important in two regards. The first and most obvious is the taste of the bread. Bread made from white rice flour and tapioca starch will have very little flavor, while bread made with teff flour, buckwheat, or quinoa flour will have a very distinct flavor.
Less obviously, the choice of flours governs the amounts of liquids that you need for a recipe. A standard loaf of wheat bread is made from 5 parts flour and 3 parts water. This is the “bread ratio” for wheat flour. Since gluten free bakers have a wealth of flour choices, we also have a wide range of potential gluten free bread ratios. One of the recipes that I’ll share with you is 2 parts flour to 3 parts water. The other is 3 parts flour to 2 parts water.
Discovering the ratios of various flour mixes and using those ratios to develop and convert recipes is a topic for another class. However, now that you understand that the choice of flours governs the amount of liquid needed in the recipe, you’ll understand why flour substitutions should be approached cautiously.
One flour mix used in this course includes brown rice flour, corn starch, sorghum flour (or garfava or soy flour), and masa harina. The other mix is made of brown rice flour, tapioca starch, sorghum flour and almond flour. If both of these mixes contain an ingredient that you cannot use, then first check the Ingredient Substitutions article for this lesson. If an alternative ingredient is not listed there you can email me or leave a comment on that post asking for a suggestion of a suitable substitution.
Yeast and Salt
The amount of yeast needed to rise a loaf of bread is very variable. A recipe using less yeast will take longer to rise than a recipe with more yeast, but it will still rise. If you’re baking in a bread machine, then the amount of yeast in the recipe is very important, as the bread needs to rise to a certain height before the baking cycle starts. If you bake bread in an oven, then the amount of yeast is not so important since you will let your yeast rise until it reaches the proper height (however long that takes) and then pop it into the oven.
Active dry yeast contains less viable yeast than instant yeast (also called RapidRise or Breadmachine yeast). Active dry yeast does need to be rehydrated before it’s added to the water. This is traditionally done by proofing the yeast – adding it to warm water (and usually a bit of sugar). Instant yeast does not have to be rehydrated, so you can skip the proofing step if you’re in a hurry and know that you have good yeast.
If you are baking at a higher altitude, you’ll need to decrease the amount of yeast in the recipe. The lower air pressure at altitude allows the bread to rise more quickly, so less yeast is needed. Your goal should be to decrease the yeast to the point where it takes at least one hour for the dough to rise.
Bread without salt is very bland. If you bake a loaf of bread and find it to be bland, just increase the salt the next time you bake it. Never add salt directly to the yeast though as it inhibits the yeast activity.
Gums & Gels:
Without gluten to provide the framework for the bread’s structure, gluten free bakers rely on a variety of gums and gels. The recipes in this chapter use xanthan gum and guar gum, which are the two most commonly used gums in gluten free baking. Other options that you may want to explore at a later date are gelatin, flaxseed and chia seed (and I’m sure many others).
Optional Ingredients
Sugar, oil, butter, and eggs are all technically optional ingredients for bread. The recipes that we’ll use contain some or all of these ingredients. The important thing to know is that the amount of these ingredients can and will differ greatly between different recipes. Knowing that the flour and water are the essential ingredients, and that the sugar, oil, butter and eggs are the extras gives me additional insight into what sort of bread the recipe will create.
For example, the Pascha Bread recipe in my other bread class calls for quite a bit of butter and sugar (it also uses milk instead of water). If I didn’t know which ingredients are essential to bread and which are optional, then I might think that the milk, butter and eggs were essential to getting a well risen, nicely texture loaf of bread. They’re not – that’s what the flour, water, and yeast are for. Instead, I can read the recipe and see that the bread is going to be richer (more butter) and sweeter (more sugar) than a more everyday sort of bread that just uses less (or none) of these ingredients.
Of course, leaving these “optional” ingredients out, or substituting for them, will change the bread, but I think that it’s helpful to know that you can still have good bread without these ingredients, which are problematic for many people.
Gluten Free Bread Dough
Those of you who’ve baked bread with wheat dough will be surprised at the consistency of gluten free bread dough. It’s very wet (or “slack”) and it’s not something that you’ll ever have to knead. Gluten free bread dough also doesn’t have to have several rises or a punchdown. There are no windowpane tests and no shaping of the dough. In this way, gluten free bread baking is simpler than baking bread with wheat flour.
The most important knowledge to gain is the proper consistency of gluten free bread dough. If it’s too dry you will get a loaf of bread that is more akin to a brick than to any edible substance. If it’s too wet, then the dough will rise too quickly and collapse while baking.
I think gluten free bread dough also benefits greatly from a good 3 – 4 minute mixing of all of the ingredients with a hand or standmixer. When you start mixing the wet and dry ingredients together the dough is a bit lumpy. After a few minutes of mixing, it develops a gloss and sort of stretchy quality that is characteristic of a good gluten free bread dough.
When Is Gluten Free Bread Done
One of the challenges that gluten free bread bakers often complain of is a loaf of bread that looks beautiful when you take it out of the oven, but falls as it cools. Often this caused by taking the bread out of the oven before it is truly done. The surest method for determining when bread is done is to measure the internal temperature of the loaf of bread. When the internal temperature reaches 210 F (at sea level, then it is done). If you’re baking at altitude, then your bread will be done at a lower temperature – here are a few guidelines to help you determine the temperature at which your bread will be done.
2000′ – 205F
5000′ – 200F
7000′ – 195F
This is all very new to me, even baking bread period, but your article gives me good advice and instruction, Wish me luck
My girls insist that you should say “have to knead” instead of “need to knead”. 🙂
When I lived in Colorado, I made beautiful bread, people often told me I could sell it. Now I live in Illnois and I have no idea what I’m doing but I throw it out. It flops. I am starting over. I never took a reading on the bread when I take it out of oven. Maybe it rises to fast. Anyway I’m not giving up but I’m stumped!