Soft & Easy GF Bread

This is a fairly quick and easy bread to make, but the best part is how soft and delicious it is. 

This bread can be made with dairy and eggs, or can be made without for those who suffer from egg and dairy milk allergies.

When I use " " around ingredients, use what your diet allows.

I only use soy milk in my recipes as I'm allergic to almonds, rice milk is to thin to bake with and coconut milk tastes like well, coconut.  If you make this bread with almond milk and it came out great, please let me know!

Now, for the incredible and for some of us, inedible egg replacement.  I've tried them all and none of them have really made the cut.  I do like ground flax/chia seeds for their addition of a great fiber, but leave much to be desired as an egg replacement in loaf bread.  However, I have a new egg replacement and its name is aquafaba.  This odd sounding name is something that traditionally we toss right down the drain, the liquid drained from a can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans).  Yep, open a can of chickpeas, plunk a strainer over a bowl and drain the chickpeas, reserving the liquid.  For one egg use 3 tablespoons of aquafaba.  The aquafaba should be about the same density and viscosity of egg white.  Looks like whipped egg whites, doesn't it?  And don't worry, there is zero flavor of beans in finished product.

Use whatever off the shelf GF flour mix you like or use this:
1 cup teff
1 cup sorghum OR millet
1/2 cup potato STARCH
1/2 cup arrowroot or tapioca starch

If you are allergic to potatoes, use all arrowroot or tapioca starch

Soft & Easy GF Bread
1 cup "milk"
1/4 cup sugar, may use raw sugar
3 teaspoons yeast
2 1/2 cups GF flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup "butter"
2 "eggs"
1 teaspoon ground Psyllium husk * this is used to replace xantham gum*
1/2 teaspoon dough conditioner

Place "milk" and "butter" in a microwave safe bowl and heat until milk is just a mite over skin temp.  Stir in sugar and yeast, let sit until foamy.  Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat the "eggs" until foamy, stir in the milk/sugar/yeast mixture, psyllium husk, dough conditioner, salt, and flour.  Using hand or a stand mixer beat for no less than 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl.  Cover with towel or wrap and let rise until double.  Stir down, and pour into greased 8X4 loaf pan OR mini springform pans for buns.  Let rise until nearly doubled, and bake at 350 for 42-50 minutes for loaf pan or 25-30 minutes for buns.  The easiest method to determine if GF bread is done is if it has shrunk away from the sides of the pan. 

Place pan on rack and let sit 5-8 minutes, then turn out and cool completely on wire cooling rack before cutting.   Like all Gf breads, this one is best fresh.  Freezes well, slice before freezing, thaw on counter or in microwave.

If making buns, brush the tops with butter before baking and you can sprinkle a wide variety of items on top. Kosher salt, black pepper, sesame seeds, onion powder or garlic powder.  If I am making hamburger buns I used sesame seeds and kosher salt and pepper.

Welcome!

This is a blog for those who are celiacs and who also suffer from other food allergies, or those who are vegan or vegetarian.  It seems like both books and blogs cover only one or at the most two allergies to foods, something I'm trying to address with my blog.

What I'm hoping to accomplish to allow different foods to be plugged into recipes to accommodate as many allergies, and eating styles as possible.

Yes, there will be recipes that wont be open to everyone.  I do cook quite a bit with tofu, and as much as possible will offer alternatives to tofu.  If you don't like tofu, try it again, you just may like it!

If you are new to trying to eat around a food allergy or first baby steps into vegan eating, what you might want to try is to not eat any food that mimics your favorite food as it wont taste right and just might turn you off that item forever. 

There might be a few ingredients in each recipe that may not be able to be swopped with a like item, and for that, I'm quite sorry.   As of this time, I can't find any starch that gives gluten free baked goods the soft texture that potato starch does.  But will work a few recipes using arrowroot and mochi rice flour and see if that would work for those with nightshade allergies.

I am allergic to dairy, and eggs and for some stupid reason chicken, and have interment issues with nuts, and shellfish will straight up kill me, along with the joys of being a Celiac.

Because of my issues with nuts, I only use soy milk to cook with.  If you don't have an allergy to nuts, but do with soy, then by all means try it with the nut milk, or the oat milk or with actual milk if you can/will use it!  There are times and uses for coconut products, and am in the middle of trying my bread recipe with it rather than soy milk.

The reason I started this blog is that its hard to find GF baking without the crutch of egg.  And the vegan GF bread recipes I did find, were just not that good, at least to my taste buds.  I tend to look at things a mite different from the average Joe, as you will see as we go.

I'll try not to post recipes with a host of odd hard to find ingredients or kitchen ware, but to keep the pantry as simple as possible. 

To make the coming bun recipe, you will need a set of of Wilton Mini Springform Pans.

These are perfectly sized for burger buns (animal or veggie) are easy to wash and use.

A mixer, hand held is fine, no need to go out and splurge on a big expensive machine.  Yes, it IS boring to have to stand and hold the mixer for 4 minutes.  But my kitchen is small as is my budget and hey, its only 4 minutes!

I eat a ton of rice, and have a Japanese rice cooker, who make the very best electronic rice cookers.  These machines are honestly amazing, and are a huge time saver, if I'm in a hurry and need to squeeze a meal in before dashing off to parts unknown, I have a hot fresh starch waiting for me, with little to no effort to make.  Measure out the rice, each cooker comes with a specialized measuring cup.  Dump rice in the rice bowl, wash until the water is clear, it takes about 3-4 washes.  I dont use a colander due to wanting to conserve water.  Dump the washed rice into the cooker, add the water to the correct line on the bowl, choose the cooking method and walk away!  It keeps it warm for a few days, and I know that worries some people.  If it worries you as to food safety, let the rice cool down, package it into serving sizes and freeze.  Just a few minutes in the microwave to thaw and heat, and boom baby rice!  However, I've been eating rice kept warm in my cooker now for 6 years and haven't ever had one moment of tummy issues from this practice.

All of my recipes will be an ongoing experiment, tweaking here and there, trying out new milks, or starches, or sugars to see what difference it makes in the final product, both in taste and texture.  But as written they will all work with those listed ingredients.  I'm just trying to find the best ingredients to accomplish my goal of making great tasting GF breads, and to make the recipes as allergy friendly to as many people as possible.       

What you wont find on this blog is any form of gums!  Nada!  Ziltch!  NEVER!  Those danged gums rip up my insides to the point where I might as well have eaten gluten, yes it's that bad.

I'm also leery of modified food starches, and as of this point in time am steering clear of them as well. They might be safe for my delicate intestinal tract, they might not be.  Plus they are freaking expensive!  I also don't pre-mix my flours and just measure out the flours and starches as I need them.  Why?  Because not every recipe will have the same flour/starch ratio, nor use the same flours and starches.