Gluten-Free Bread

Soft Gluten-Free Bread 

The past several days have been filled with the excitement of a brand new grandbaby! We are also dealing with finals week and, of course, the hectic rush of the Holiday season.

Still, in amongst all of the crazy, I need to have real food to eat. So, today, we are baking up some bread. Just bread. 
  
Hoping for the best.*

*As luck would have it, we had to leave home just as this bread was due to be taken out of the oven. It baked for 35 minutes, with the last 5 being covered with aluminum foil to prevent over browning. 

The internal temperature reached 175 degrees. I would have liked to see it reach at least 200 degrees, but we did not have time to wait for that due to an unexpected family issue.

The taste is amazing. The almond milk gives it a slightly sweet, nutty flavor, but still keeps it in the sandwich bread zone. The texture, though, is very reminiscent of a banana bread. Extremely moist and dense.

I believe this is partially due to the use of 4 egg yolks in place of the normal two whole eggs. Because I like the flavor of the bread so much, I think I will try making it with two whole eggs and see what that does to the density.

Gluten-Free Bread 

INGREDIENTS:

3 Cups all purpose gluten-free flour

1½ teaspoons xanthan gum

1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons lemon juice

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

4 egg yolks 

1½ cups almond milk

¼ cup honey

1 packet dry active yeast

INSTRUCTIONS:

Makes 9" x 5" Loaf 

Using measuring cup, measure out almond milk and warm in microwave for approximately 45 seconds, less if milk is not refrigerated. Milk should be warm but not hot to the touch.Hot milk will kill yeast; cold milk will not activate it. 

Add honey to warmed almond milk and stir, then add yeast. Yeast last. Set aside and allow yeast to rise for about 10 minutes.

Mix all purpose gluten-free flour, baking powder and salt together in small bowl.

Separate egg yolks from egg whites and add yolks to bowl of stand mixer. Add lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Using the the paddle attachment, blend wet ingredients just until combined. 

Add yeast mix and blend, again.

While mixer runs on low, add flour. Once all of the flour is added, turn up to on medium-high and beat for another 3 to 5 minutes.

Prepare your bread pan while the dough mixes. Because this is gluten-free dough, it is hard to over beat this mixture.

We sprayed the 9x5 pan with olive oil spray because EASY, and then we floured the pan and dumped out the extra, obviously gluten-free, flour into the sink. 

This dough is sticky, but has that nice yeasty bread smell! Using a spatula, notice our cute Holiday design, scrape dough into the bread pan. We needed the spatula and a few fingers to convince this gooey sticky dough to go where we wanted it to go.

Now is the time to preheat your oven to 375 degrees. This allows your bread dough to rise on top of the stove while the oven heats up. We allowed 40 minutes for our bread to rise and it did not quite get to the top of the pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes.