Gluten-Free and It All Seems Normal!

Before we had to curtail the use of gluten in our household for my husband’s health, a favorite dinner would often be soup, salad, and two or three kinds of freshly-baked bread. I enjoyed baking and the preparation was part of the fun for me. As you can imagine, you take away the gluten, you take away the structure of bread and often the results are very un-bread-like! However, the last few years has gotten a lot of people interested in making gluten-free baking better and taking away the ‘poor me’ syndrome!

Last night, I happened upon three bread recipes that were easy and quickly accomplished. The bread had to cool until dinner so I was anxious to cut into the loaves and see if the texture was close enough to the real deal. As you can see from the picture, anyone would be hard put to realize they were eating a gluten-free product. My husband was happy to have the selection especially with the rye bread recipe. Nothing like a slice of rye slathered with butter.

In all, I made a Brioche bread, Rye bread, and plain, old white bread. I was hoping to have enough left to cube and make stuffing for a turkey breast I have in the freezer but it doesn’t look likely! I’ll take it as a compliment!

Gluten-Free Bread Baking – A Minor Revolution in Wheatless Bread!

 When we first went gluten-free ,I was baking ‘things’ that were supposed to be bread. They have tasted okay and were handy for bread puddings or crumbs for breading chicken, etc. I had yet, however, to produce a loaf of gluten-free bread that looked and tasted like the real deal . . . until I discovered THE book, Gluten-Free on a Shoestring – Quick and Easy.

I found the recipe in Gluten-Free on a Shoestring – Quick and Easy. As you can see the recipe worked well.  I highly recommend the book. It is nice for my family to enjoy ‘bread’ and butter once more. The packaged gluten-free breads in the stores are basically bricks that melt in one’s mouth in an unpleasant way.

The interesting aspect of this recipe was that it wasn’t as touchy as some have been where you have to either hurry or avoid working with the dough too much. You basically mixed the ingredients together, dumped it into a roomy container, and left it to sit in the refrigerator twelve hours to rise. It could also be left for up to a week. The bread had a great crust, good crumb, and a sour dough tang. I had better put another batch to rise as I’m afraid there might be some confrontations on the remaining half of the loaf.

Nicole Hunn has written more than one book on living gluten-free and, yes, I have all the copies and refer to them often.

Gluten-Free on a Shoestring, 125 easy recipes for eating well and cheap.

Gluten-Free on a Shoestring/Quick & Easy – 100 recipes for the food you love – FAST!

Gluten-Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread (my favorite!