gluten free science experiment

[totient]

I've been making bread in a bread-bot lately, and thought I'd go find a recipe for making gluten-free bread. The net was pretty unuseful for this, but I eventually interpolated a recipe, as follows:

0.5 c some kind of flour that has actual fiber in it, such as millet or flaxseed
1.75-2 c random other kinds of non-wheat flour, such as sorghum, potato, rice, tapioca, or corn
2 t xanthan gum
0.5 c dry milk powder
3 eggs
1.66 c water
3 T oil
1 t apple cider vinegar
2 T honey or agave
1.5 t yeast

... and then attempted to acquire any of the ingredients for this at the local supermarket. But the only gluten-free anything they had was a 1-lb box of pancake mix. So I bought that, and substituted it for the flours and xanthan gum. I probably should also have decreased the water and sweetener and/or increased the yeast, but on "rapid bake" it made a passable loaf of something that might have been bread and might have been cake, and went nicely with chili in any event.

Further experimentation is clearly necessary.

Comments

[wren13.livejournal.com]

The Hodgeson Mill people do several interesting flours, usually available at Shaws and Hannaford. I use buckwheat flour as a thickener when I need to avoid gluten, don't know how it would work in bread.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

I didn't notice much left over, so I'd call it a successful experiment.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Shaws often carries GF flours, in their "Natural" food section.
Also Whole Foods.

An excellent book for GF breads that includes bread machine instructions, The Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread (http://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Gourmet-Bakes-Bread-Wheat-Free/dp/0805060782/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238326932&sr=8-1). It has all the basics about how to use the flours and in what quantities and how to use the xanthan gun or guar gum as the binders.

I have played with GF baking quite a bit and really like the Gluten-Free Gourmet series of books.

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

Harvest Food Co-Op offers a variety of gluten-free flours of various kinds. They might even be able to offer some useful advice, if you happened to find the right person.

[omly.livejournal.com]

I know you can get xantham gum at Whole Foods, having seen it there on several visits.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Control for this experiment is to mostly follow the above recipe, using 0.5c flaxseed meal, 0.5c corn flour and 1.5c buckwheat flour, and molasses instead of honey.