Gluten free bread

[Jack]

Gidday

Can anyone tell me about makinggluten free bread. Can I just change to one of the many gluten free flours or or are special reipes needed and if so have you got a good basic recipe for my bread maker?

[farmerdrea]

HI, Jack -- depends on whether what you want is close to wheat bread in texture (you'll never be able to match it exactly).

My children have been gluten-free for years, but I gave up trying to make "bread" a while back, because of a couple of the ingredients that are just too expensive to make it worthwhile (as opposed to buying shop GF bread, like Breadman, etc, which are actually pretty good).

For sandwiches, toasties, snacks, etc, I use a very simple recipe: 3 eggs, 1 cup milk, 1 cup organic brown rice flour (from BioGrains in Ashburton). Combine well, bake at 200F in the largest muffin tins you can find, or in small pie tins (ours end up about 4 inches across). Butter baking tins. Bake till golden at the edges. You can leave them plain like this, or you can sprinkle a light coating of your favourite topping (my childrene like dried fruit and cinnamon on top for a sweet treat). You can mulitply this recipe as many times as you want. They store well in the fridge or freezer. I happen to have a couple of muffin top tins, which my MIL sent me years ago, when muffin tops were all the rage in the states.

Another easy recipe:
1 cup rice flour (as above)
1cup corn/maize flour (NOT starch, but very fine-ground maize)
pinch salt
4 tsp aluminium-free baking powder
4 eggs
about 1.5 cups milk (depends on how thick you want this; I tend to make mine a VERY thick porridge consistency)

Combine all of above, put in buttered bread pan, bake on 180F for about 30-40 mins. Very plain, so you can add whatever you like to it. I usually stir in fruit and spices for a sweet bread, or veggies and spices for a savoury bread. The faves here are apricots, cinnamon and brown sugar for the sweet, and silver beet (chopped, stirred into bread batter), and courgettes (chopped and pressed into the top of the bread) seasoned with salt, pepper and cumin, brushed with slightly thinned tomato paste).

Hope that helps.

Andrea
NZ

[Jack]

Gidday

Hey thanks.

I know what you mean about the cost now. Just got home from town and we were a bit staggered at how much some of that stuff costs.

Will look very closely at those recipes of yours and will price out the ingredients tomorow.

[farmerdrea]

A sack of organic brown rice flour, 25kg, costs us about $60, and lasts about 4 months. I then buy the maize flour in small batches, 4kgs at a time, as it goes rancid and loses its nutritional value fairly quickly when ground, whereas the rice doesn't anywhere near as fast. The maize flour costs about $2.50/kg. One 2kg bag will make 4 recipes of the bread recipe above, so that's pretty good! The aluminium-free baking powder is abour $5/250 gms, but goes a long way. So it's a much cheaper altenative, and probably healthier, because it's so fresh, and has all the lovely things added to it.

Are you gluten-intolerant, Jack?

BTW, I'm going to be down your way next month (going down to Dunedin to collect a Jersey cow!)... may I call in?

Cheers
Andrea
NZ

[Jack]

Gidday

Thanks for the info there. No I am not gluten intolerant but we suspect my wife may be.

And as for coming down this way and calling in, sure why not. If I had known you were going to be in the area I would have been asking you to call in so let's know when.

Thanks again.