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When Jeff and I set off to write HBin5 we knew it would include gluten-free recipes. It was the #2 request from our readers of ABin5, more of a plea than a request. The options for buying gluten-free bread are both unsatisfying and expensive, two qualities we try to avoid. We wanted to create wonderful bread that anyone, celiac or not, would want to eat. Along the way we learned a lot about baking with flours that don’t have gluten, which is what gives wheat breads their desired texture and ability to rise. It took several failed attempts, some sleepless nights and ultimately the advice of experienced gluten-free chef Shauna from Gluten Free Girl before we landed what we think is a dynamite crusty loaf, that just happens to be gluten-free.
Several readers have asked about our olive oil dough on page 238. While the Crusty Boule has a chewy and toothsome texture, the bread made with the olive oil dough has a much lighter, almost fluffy interior. Replace the neutral flavored oil in the Crusty Boule recipe with olive oil if you prefer the texture of that loaf. They are both wonderful and give you fantastic options for free form loaves, sandwich breads, pizzas and even crackers. You will find all of these, plus many other gluten-free breads and awesome sticky buns in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
For those of you who are celiac or just baking for someone who is you will find all of the directions and tips for handling gluten-free dough below. It is just as easy as our other recipes, but requires slightly different techniques and a new list of ingredients.
Gluten-Free Crusty Boule
Makes enough dough for at least four 1-pound loaves
2 cups Brown Rice Flour
1 1/2 cups Sorghum Flour
3 cups Tapioca Flour (also called tapioca starch)
2 tablespoons yeast (can be reduced but you will have to increase the rise time)
1 tablespoon kosher salt (increase or decrease to taste)
2 tablespoons Xanthan Gum
2 2/3 cups lukewarm water
4 large eggs, whisked together
1/3 cup neutral-flavored oil or olive oil
2 tablespoons honey or sugar
click here to see the video of this recipe
Mixing and storing the dough: Whisk together the flours, yeast, salt and xanthan gum in a 5-quart lidded Round Food Storage Container. Combine the oil, honey and water, set aside.
Dump the eggs into the dry ingredients and then stir while you pour in about 1/3 of the oil and water. Unlike our wheat doughs we do not add all of the liquid at once and stir. If you do that it will result in a lumpy dough.
continue to stir while you pour in another 1/3 of the liquid.
The dough will start to come together in a thick dough. Add the final 1/3 of liquid and
stir until the dough is nice and smooth. Cover with the lid, but do not snap it shut. Allow it to rest on the counter for about 2 hours. Place the dough in the refrigerator and store for up to 7 days. (I have a piece in the freezer and I will report back about how that turns out once I defrost it and bake it up. Stay tuned.)
On baking day take the bucket from the refrigerator. The dough will be quite fluffy still and you want to try not to handle the dough too much. Just like our other doughs the trick is to keep as much of the air bubbles in tact as possible.
Use wet hands to remove 1-pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough from the bucket.
The dough will be quite scraggly when you take it out, just place it on a piece of parchment paper.
Use wet hands to smooth out the surface of the dough.
This may take dipping your hands in the water a few times…
to get a nice shape.
Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rest on the counter for about 90 minutes. If your kitchen is very warm you may only need about 75 minutes.
30 minutes before baking time preheat the oven with a 5 1/2 quart Dutch Oven
The dough will not have grown much while resting, but it will seem a little bit puffier. Use a serrated knife to cut slashes in the dough.
Remove the pot from the oven and take off the lid.
Lift the bread on the parchment and VERY CAREFULLY lower the parchment and bread into the pot, replace the lid onto the pot. Return to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes remove the lid, turn the heat down to 450 and bake for an additional 15 minutes.
Once the bread is done baking remove it from the pot using a spatula.
Allow the bread to cool completely before eating or the center may seem gummy.
The loaf is also wonderful toasted and served with butter and marmalade. Enjoy!
To read an interview Jeff and I did about the gluten-free chapter of HBin5 visit Wasabimon.
9/29/10 update: WEIGHT of GLUTEN-FREE FLOURS
Brown Rice Flour: 1 cup = 5 1/2 oz = 160 grams
Tapioca Flour (Starch): 1 cup = 4 1/4 oz = 120 grams
Sorghum Flour: 1 cup = 4 3/4 oz = 135 grams
Corn Starch: 1 cup = 4 1/2 oz = 130 grams
Hi there! I’m just starting GF. I have just mixed this in my bucket and it has the consistency of batter. I’ve gone over the recipe many times. I can’t think of anything, ingredient or measurement, that I have forgotten. Have you ever come across this?
Thank you!
Hi Stephanie,
As long as you didn’t substitute any of the flours, this is usually due to measuring the flour differently. We use a scoop and sweep method. If you spoon the flour into your measuring cup it will result in a wet dough.
Let me know if this makes sense for your dough.
Thanks, Zoë
Thanks for such a quick response. I actually weighed them out. I’ve weighed my final product and subtracted all the other ingredients and it’s coming out right. This is really weird. I don’t know what to do.
OK, so I added it up again and I was missing apx 125g. I thought I may have forgotten a “cup” of rice flour. So I added it and it’s still like a thick batter. I’m thinking I’ll try making some pizza crust so I don’t have to throw it away and try again another day. Thanks for your help!
Hi Stephanie,
Are you hoping to use the dough tonight? If not, try refrigerating it to chill completely and it may have a tighter texture, which will be easier to use.
Thanks, Zoë
I too have had some difficulty in making this bread. I have made it twice with the end result being very runny. I did make muffins but I am determined to make this into a loaf. I just made it again holding back at least a cup of water and found it to be still runny. So I fourthed the dry ingredients and added it to the original batch. Added maybe 1/4-1/2 c of water. Hopefully it will turn out.
No, I was gonna try it tomorrow. Thanks! I will keep my hopes up
!
Good Stephanie,
Please let me know how it goes! Zoë
I made a loaf a couple days ago, but I had to use a loaf pan b/c it couldn’t hold it’s shape. However, it turned out well. Tasted great! I’m excited to try it again. Oh, and I was wondering if you can sub some/all of the rice flour for sorghum.
Thank you!
Stephanie
Stephanie: You’re going to need to experiment; that sorghum absorbs water differently than rice. In general, our testing showed that combinations of GF flours worked better than using mostly one flour, so this may be risky.
If the dough’s too wet to hold a shape, try a little less liquid. 1/8 to 1/4 cup less for starters.
Thank you Jeff. Zoe was helping me with a problem I had with my dough being more of a batter. I just mixed another GF bread recipe from another site and had the same problem. I’m weighing all my ingredients very carefully and when I get to the end and I’m supposed to “form” a bread loaf, all I can do is POUR into a pan. Is there a secret to weighing liquids? I do it the same as the dry. I just put a bowl on my scale, zero it out set to grams and weigh away. How can I end up with that much excess in water?
Thank you!
Steph
Hi Stephanie,
It almost seems like it is something about your ingredients. Are you making any substitutions in the recipes that may have an effect?
Which recipe are you using from our book? What are you using for a gram equivalent to a cup of water?
Thanks, Zoë
Poo, I don’t remember how I measured my water :/. The only thing I subbed was chia/flax meal for the xantham. It’s a straight across sub but you add double the water to it and it makes a thick slurry. Maybe this is what did it. I didn’t think it would matter that much. Maybe I should decrease the liquid by the same amount that I put in the chia/flax? I used the above recipe. I will try this again. I am determined to see it work
. Thank you for all your replies and help!!!
Steph
Hi there! I’ve ordered this latest book (I have and love your first book) but it hasn’t arrived yet. I tried making this gluten free break on my baking stone and I don’t think that I cooked it enough. I made the mistake, perhaps, of letting it rise on parchment paper and then couldn’t get it off it
So I nervously put both in the oven, turned the heat down to 450degrees (fear of the parchment paper burning). Any suggestions for making this loaf on my baking stone? I have more of the master dough in my fridge and I don’t want it to go bad, waiting for the book to arrive! Many thanks!
Ros: You can use cornmeal (generously) on a pizza peel instead of parchment. But check your oven temp, I bet it’s off, with something like http://ow.ly/8CVPU
Thanks sooooo much, Jeff! I do know that my convection fan is broken, so I bet that my temps are off. Should I be reducing the heat, if cooking on a stone instead in the dutch oven?
Your (plural) original book completely transformed breadmaking for me. As I tell friends, don’t buy a breadmaker, buy Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a day instead. It costs significantly less, won’t take up value counterspace and is quiet (unlike the breadmakers that I’ve had in the past)
Ros: for the Dutch oven, we have you crank up the temp for the beginning, but turn it down to normal when you pop in the bread. Don’t need to do that for baking on a stone. Just use the temp as written in the book.
Thanks so much for putting out the word, much appreciated.
Hi Jeff!
I made a big loaf this time, and added in some crumbled extra old cheddar as well as some dry sundried tomatoes. I used the cornmeal as you suggested.
Not only is my stove most likely off, my second fridge is too (some of the dough was frozen), so I had to let it rise longer.
Given the size of the boule and the naughtiness of my oven, I cooked in on the pizza stone at 450 degrees for about 15 mins longer than recommended and it is DELICIOUS.
It is so tasty, especially when toasted, with peanut butter on it
The crust is excellent and crunchy.
Ros: glad it’s working out for you, Ros.
Thanks for the recipe! I’ve been too intimidated to bake gf bread for my hubby so far, but you make it look so easy so I’m excited to try this today!
I was just wondering… if you want to bake a loaf of this right away — without refrigerating at all, do you still let it rest a full 90 minutes after taking it out of the bucket?
Hi Lauren,
No, you don’t need to let it rest that long if it is being baked before refrigerating it. You can reduce the time by about half and I think you will still get a great loaf. It will much more difficult to handle, so use a gentle hand when shaping the loaf. You may want to check out our video on working with G-f dough. http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2010/10/25/gluten-free-crusty-boule-the-video
Thanks, Zoë
I just made this for a GF guest who is coming to our lodge later in the week, and it turned out great! Living in a small town in New Zealand, though, I had to substitute amaranth flour for the sorghum flour, and I was assured in the store that arrowroot flour is the same as tapioca flour, so I bought that, though I’m not so sure. Still, it came out really well, and I’d happily eat it myself!
Hi James,
Thank you so much for trying the bread and for letting me know about the substitutions! Arrowroot is not the same as tapioca, but I am happy to hear that it worked as a substitution.
Enjoy all the bread! Zoë
Hello, I have been making the crusty GF Boule and the Mock-Rye for our sons and some family friends. They have been great! I have a question about the Corn Starch in some of the gluten free recipes. Can Tapioca starch be substituted with cornstarch? The fact that you had it instead of tapioca flour in a recipe made me wonder if maybe you couldn’t….
Thanks, Deb
Deb: You will have to experiment; we found that these recipes are pretty temperamental to the particular mixture; took a lot of tweaking. But it should work.
Yes, gluten free flours are like that! I just don’t want to use corn starch from GMO corn when I could use tapioca starch!
Hi there!
Can I substitute EnerG egg replacer or a flax seed/water mixture for the eggs? Or will this totally throw the recipe off?
Hi Jennifer,
Here is a post about egg-free g-f bread: http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2010/06/01/gluten-free-baguettes-egg-free-and-a-king-arthur-gluten-free-flour-giveaway
Enjoy, Zoë
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve been Gluten Free since September 2011 and previously made all your breads from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes. Actually made bread about every other day, then discovered I was gluten intolerant and no more good bread. Then I happened upon your gluten free breads and am now so happy and absolutely cannot wait to make them. Every other type of GF bread I’ve made was almost awful or just downright awful and only the deer would eat it. Looks like now is the best time to go gluten free and happily you two are working on wonderful breads…Happy Day!
Hi Tiffany,
Enjoy the g-f breads, so glad you can have bread again.
Cheers, Zoë
I made this bread and it came out a bit sour. I like the texture and think I could have baked it a little longer to make it crustier. How can I take away the funny flavor? I’m wondering if I put in too much baking soda.
Thanks!
Rachel
Rachel: Which of our recipes are you using (which book, page number)? There’s no baking soda in any of our breads.
I don’t have a book, so I’m not sure. It’s the GF crusty boule. I was making another recipe at the same time which took baking soda, so I think I confused them. There is no bs in this recipe, so I didn’t use it. My mistake.
Hi Rachel,
I am confused, did you substitute baking soda for the yeast, or did you just add baking soda along with the yeast? How old was the dough before you baked it?
Thanks, Zoë
I have had a very difficult time making this bread. The first time I made it the dough was so runny that I had to put it into muffin tins. I just made another batch using half the amount of water and it still was to runny. I am using the scoop method in measuring the flour. The only change I made was i substituted flaxseed for the xantan gum. I hope there is an answer out there.
Hi Cherie,
The xanthan gum acts as the binder for the g-f dough and without it there is nothing that will keep these flours from just making paste. I have never experimented with substituting ground flax, but I have done a test with ground chia and was not happy with the result. I fear that substituting flax for the xanthan is the issue. Have you done this before with good results?
Thanks, Zoë