Gluten free bread

I thought it would be interesting to make some gluten free bread. It turned out to be very edible and it might be interesting to experiment with the flavour and opening up the texture.

I used a packet of Dove’s Farm gluten & wheat free bread flour blend and followed the instructions on the side of the packet. The flour blend is rice, potato and tapioca flours with xanthan gum. The recipe asks for salt, quick yeast, sugar, milk, vinegar, eggs and oil.

Gluten free dough has a very different texture and handling characteristics compared to normal bread dough. I was astonished at how much liquid goes in – something like half as much liquid again as even the wettest wheat based doughs. On mixing I got a nice thick paste – it needs thorough mixing but can’t b kneaded – which I scraped into a loaf tin.

The dough rose nicely in the tin and after baking looked like this:

The flavour is good – unsuprisingly the rice, potato and tapioca figure strongly. The texture is not at all bad either. It certainly wasn’t a brick.

I think it would be worth experimenting with leaving the dough to prove for as long as possible. I think this loaf was a little under-proved. In a wheat based dough the oven spring will often make up for this, but this dough showed no spring at all. Some recipes make up for this by adding more yeast but this recipe used a standard amount which helped avoid an unpleasant yeasty taste.

It would also be interesting to try increasing the hydration, which really helps to open up wheat based doughs.

I’m thinking about what flavours would go well with tapioca or potato. Maybe leek and rosemary bread?