Last winter I decided I wanted to try and bake bread. Since I cannot eat a lot of wheat bread, because I am wheat intolerant, and I miss eating bread from time to time, I thought it would make for some variation. So I bought myself some gluten free, wheat free bread mix and set to work.
I used my mother’s bread machine and the picture above shows you the best result I came up with. The bread that I came up with was dense but quite tasty but the top unfortunately collapsed the minute it came out of the machine. The crust also was a bit powdery and floury and thus not the best. And this was my best attempt. Let me tell you about attempts 1 and 2.
Because you’d think that if you buy gluten free flour, follow the instructions to a T and set the bread backing machine on the required setting as stipulated by the directions, that you should be fine. Well I was not. The first time I tried it, I had bought some gluten free flower from my local organic super market. It sounded good enough, but the bread didn’t rise as all and thus I was left with a bread that most resembled a medium boulder rather than actual bread.
So I went in for round two. I bought a different type of flour, from a different store and this one required you adding your own yeast. I bought some yeast, again, I followed the directions closely and this bread puffed up nicely. I was very happy with what it looked like when it came out of the bread machine, until I sliced it. The insides of the bread were all gooey and a bit dough like. The bread also had an awfully sweet taste, which made it taste like donuts.
For attempt three I went to another organice super market and again tried a different brand. It still wasn’t too succesful, but it was the closest I got to a real bread. It tasted like bread and it has a nice consistency. But as the bread cooled down more, is seemed to collapse more and more, like a lackluster ballon and thus after only having had 1 or 2 slices I had to throw it away as it had become too dense.
Now I think that part of the problem was the machine which I used to bake it. Since it didn’t come with a gluten free setting I had to go with different programs, which, according to the packaging I used for all three batches, should work. However it didn’t. By now the machine is gone and I haven’t tried it since.
I am still curious however, at how I could make it work. I think I would use the last brand of flour. I believe it was by a brand called Dover Farm, not quite sure. That bread turned out the most bread like and it came with instructions for doing this without a bread making machine. Because you can of course bake bread using a baking tin and an oven. I think I will be trying that next.
Please leave a comment below if you have any tips on what I can improve!
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