My First Attempt @ Baking Bread

[bluejeangirl]

I just got my first copy of "Living Without" magazine and in the very first article called Give Them Bread they have a recipe called The Ultimate Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Sandwich Bread. The picture shows the bread and two little boys eating it toasted and it looked so good. So I'm sure you've heard this story before but it turned out nothing like the picture. I followed the recipe to the tee and made it in a bread machine like the recipe said. I'm making the bread and I'm thinking this is so heavy how is it going to rise. It calls for 3 eggs and 1/4 cup of oil and a lot of milk 1 1/2 cups. The flours were 2 c. of brown rice, 1/3 tapioca, 3/4 sorghum flour. I used bread machine yeast from red star. Its still warm but I sliced it and it looks like a sponge with a lot of little holes, very moist and heavy. I'm afraid of eating it because of trouble digesting it. How do I get bread to have a rounded top??? Mine has a big dip. Did anyone go thru this and figure it out? Thanks.........I hate baking and this is why.

[mrsnj91]

OMG! I came in here for hope.....I did get a chuckle though!! I love baking but I can so see me doing that too!! Now I am scared!! LOL! Right now we are still at the "buy it ready made" or mixes stage. Wish I could help but I will interesting to see what others say. Sorry about your bread!

[lpellegr]

Sorry to say, but your experience is absolutely typical. I find recipes are hit or miss, so when I find one that works, I make sure to mark that page in the book! I have also learned that you will never have bread exactly like normal wheat bread. You might have to go through a period of mourning for the old bread before you finally accept that ready-made gluten-free bread is expensive, dry or rubbery, and hard to find, and homemade gluten-free bread is going to be holey, crumbly, soggy in the middle, dipped on top, and generally annoying. That said, there is hope. If you are really determined to bake your own bread, go to the Clan Thompson web site, then go to "Ask the Cook" and read what Connie Sarros has to say. Find the Rebecca Reilly gluten-free baking book and see what she has to say. Get the Bette Hagman books and see what she has to say, and search this forum for what we have to say! Try baking your bread in muffin cups, small loaf pans, or in lumps to make buns or in 4" round cookie cutters or greased tuna cans minus top and bottom to make hamburger buns. Be prepared to laugh at your results, eat what you can, freeze what you can't eat at first, and make bread crumbs of what's left. But keep trying because there are recipes that work if you get the right pans, the exact ingredients, the temperature just right, and all the zodiac signs aligned perfectly. Don't give up yet!

[megsylvan2]

You might have to go through a period of mourning for the old bread before you finally accept that ready-made gluten-free bread is expensive, dry or rubbery, and hard to find, and homemade gluten-free bread is going to be holey, crumbly, soggy in the middle, dipped on top, and generally annoying.

I'm new to this whole scene, and although I haven't yet tried making my own gluten-free breads yet, I did find a ready made gluten-free bread that is really quite good. I found Millet Bread from FoodForLife (Open Original Shared Link). Although it does not taste like your standard white or wheat bread, it is both moist and delicious, which is more than can be said for most of the other ready-made gluten-free breads I have tried. I found it in the frozen section of a Whole Foods market.

Not only is it wheat free and gluten free, but also egg free and honey free! (It does have yeast however, and it is expensive, like everything else gluten-free, I've found.)

[wolfie]

My first attempt sounds like that too and I used a mix! LOL! It was very spongy and was horrible unless it was thinly sliced and well toasted. Then it was pretty good.

I hope to experiment some more and get it better next time.