how to make bread
Want soft, delicious gluten-free sandwich bread, Then this recipe is for you! It’s easy to make and comes out perfectly every time. The Best Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread Recipe: Easy, Delicious, and Soft! Ah, gluten-free sandwich bread. It’s more than a bit of a pain, isn’t it, The pre-made loaves, while light and tender, are expensive and often filled with holes. Homemade recipes save you money but are often dense-and depending on the recipe dry or gummy. With these problems, what’s a gluten-free eater to do, My advice: don’t give up on sandwich bread! I’ve baked my own gluten-free sandwich bread for over a decade. In fact, there’s recipes for sandwich bread in both of my cookbooks. But while I love these recipes, I wanted to make a bread that was light and soft. Kind of like-dare I say it, Udi’s bread but without the holes and the high price tag! For about six months or so I’ve been working on this recipe.

To be honest, I ate way too much bread and butter during these months. That’s the sacrifice I had to make, I guess. Finally, FINE-AH-LEE, I have a gluten-free bread recipe that’s easy to make, soft in texture, doesn’t fall apart, and tastes great. Oh, and it’s dairy-free, corn-free, and rice-free to boot. I LOVE this bread. Let’s talk about how to make it. BTW, I have a lot to say about how to make gluten-free bread. If you just want the recipe, I suggest you scroll down. Way down. Yeah, way, way down. When I set out to make a soft gluten-free bread, I started by looking at the flours and starches I used in previous recipes. Unlike wheat-based bread, which can be made with only flour, water, salt and yeast, gluten-free bread requires a blend of flours and starches. My original bread recipes both use brown rice flour.

At the time (old timey gluten-free baker alert!), it was hard to find any gluten-free flours other than rice flour. Using brown rice flour made sense. Today we have lots of other options. After giving it some thought, I narrowed it down to two flours: millet flour and sorghum flour. Both are tasty and relatively inexpensive. I ended up using Bob’s Red Mill’s millet flour. Have you used millet, I’m in love with it. While brown rice flour can lend a somewhat gritty texture to recipes, millet reminds me of wheat flour. It’s soft. And it contains more fiber than rice flours! Cup for cup, millet offers twice as much fiber as brown rice flour. A soft texture and twice the fiber, Since I was rethinking the flour, I also wanted to rethink the starch. In “Easy Gluten-Free Baking“, my sandwich bread used corn starch. In “How to Cook Gluten-Free“, I used potato starch. For this recipe, it’s all about the tapioca starch. You might be wondering why you need starch at all. Wheat and other grains contain a starch called amylopectin. It’s part of their makeup. When combined with a liquid and heated, this starch gelatinizes.

It thickens and almost turns jelly-like. If you’ve ever made a stovetop pudding, you’ve seen this happen. One minute the pudding is thin, the next it thickens. This is good news for gluten-free bakers. Without the stretch of gluten, starch helps hold bread together. Even though grain contains starch, it’s not enough to make a soft sandwich bread. Enter: added starch. Without tapioca starch, this loaf turns out dense and heavy. In the future, we’ll made some rustic bread. Those don’t always need added starch. The reason I reached for tapioca starch for this recipe is because it adds an almost gluten-like stretch to recipes. Notice I said “almost”. There’s no 1:1 replacement for gluten. It bakes up lighter than both corn starch (which can get a little heavy) and potato starch (which is light but doesn’t add much stretch). Ah, xanthan gum. (deep breath) Usually the follow-up question to, “Elizabeth, how do I make bread, Why do I need to use xanthan gum, Simply put, you need xanthan gum because gluten isn’t present in the dough.