In general, I do not bake my own gluten and dairy free bread. I have the good fortune to live ten minutes from Chicagoland’s best gluten-free bakery, Rose’s Wheatfree Cafe and I do my part to keep them in business.
That said, every so often I want to make my own bread. Usually this happens when we are planning a picnic. I like to make a monster 2 foot long, 8 inch wide loaf of bread that I can cut in half lengthwise and make into a monster sandwich. Also I like my burger buns to be browner and flatter than hers are. So I have been playing around with bread mixes.
I don’t yet have a recipe where I can say “here it is and I really trust this one”. They all have their eccentric qualities. What I can say for certain is keep everything warm, double the yeast, and double the final rise time.
It started when I read the back of a bread mix package and it said to use the same 9 x 5 loaf pan I use for meatloaf and to expect “one two-pound loaf”. What struck me about that comment is that my meatloaf only uses two pounds of meat. I mean really, bread that is similar in density to meatloaf? Fluffy store loaves in that size would weigh half that much. So the bread needed more air. And that meant yeast.
So I doubled the yeast, baked the bread and learned the hard way that bread can overflow a pan. I also learned that overflowing bread makes a lot of smoke.
Now I always warm the wet ingredients, add the yeast. let it bloom for a minute, follow the rest of the instructions and then siphon off the extra bread before the final rise to make burger buns. Then I just let it sit in a warm place and rise and rise and rise. I let it rise for at least twice as long as the package instructs me to. I then smooth the top with a wet hand and bake per the instructions and voila! I get more bread and its softer and fluffier.
Someday I will figure out an awesome bread recipe, but for those of you who need SOMETHING sooner, try adding an extra packet of yeast and giving the bread time to develop.
Just make sure it rises a lot BEFORE you put it into the stove.
