High Altitude Gluten Free Bread Recipe

A really good gluten free loaf tested at high altitude!  Uses whatever kind of flour you have on hand.

I've tested this about ten times with a lot of different flour combinations.  It makes a nice, light, soft bread that keeps well and is good for sandwiches or toast.  It doesn't cave in much after baking like most of the other recipes I've tried, or the Cosco gluten free bread.  I use the flour ratio from this recipe as my all-purpose gluten free flour mix.   I get ideas for flour combinations by either looking at recipes online for gluten free bread or by what I have in my pantry that needs to be used up.  I've considered just trying to make the most cost efficient loaf my staple, but experimenting is just too much fun.  The inspiration for this recipe comes from here.  Notice from the pictures below that you can make a "white bread" by using rice, oats, amaranth, and millet.  You get a more "whole grain" flavor by using sorghum and brown teff.

In a small bowl mix:
1 cup really warm water
2 1/4 tsp SAF instant yeast
1 tsp sugar

In a large bowl mix:
*240g of whole grain flour, a combination of 3-4 flours (rice, brown rice, millet, brown or gold teff, quinoa, toasted quinoa, sorghum, sweet sorghum, amaranth, oat, etc.  If using a bean or garbanzo flour use 30-40g or less.  Bean flour is always a good idea for the protein and fiber, but you sacrifice a bit on texture.)
*125g of starch (tapioca, cornstarch, potato starch (15g or less), sweet rice flour, arrowroot starch, etc)
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbs sweetener (brown sugar, white sugar)
1 Tbs Bob's Redmill xanthan gum

*I highly recommend using a scale to measure flour, without a scale the flour/liquid ratio will vary.  However if you must use cups, fill your cup a spoonful at a time and gently level with a knife.  Assume 1 cup of the whole grain flour is 120g.  1/2 cup of starch is about 62g.

In stand mixer mix:
3 eggs lightly beaten (bring to room temperature by soaking in warm water)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup oil (light olive oil, coconut oil, butter, etc.  I usually use coconut oil)
1 Tbs sweetener (honey, agave, sugar, brown sugar)

add the yeast and flour mixture to mixer and mix for 4 minutes (I use a bosch mixer).

Scoop batter into a well greased pan with a spatula.  Then with wet fingers smooth and shape the loaf.  I like mine kind of rounded on top.  I tried it with an indentation down the middle once, but the finished loaf looked like it had caved in.  Put the loaf in the oven with the light on to rise until the loaf is about even with the top of the pan or "double" as most recipes say.  The bread sometimes does nothing for 30 minutes and then starts rising like crazy.  Sometimes it starts rising right away.  I haven't figured out exactly how it works yet.  Just watch close.  If it over rises and the air pockets get too big it can fall after baking.

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.  Cover the bread loosely with foil and then cook 45 more minutes.  Cool on a wire rack.  The bread is better if you wait an hour to slice, but my kids usually talk me into slicing before that.  When the bread is cool I slice the whole loaf at once so I can have convenient sliced bread the rest of the week.

I took some pictures of a batch I made of 12-grain bread.  My oven isn't level, so you'll notice all my loaves lean a bit:(
Below: 12-grain bread with sunflower seeds, flax seeds, millet, and pumpkin seed add-ins,

shaped

after about 40 minutes, ready to bake.

after 10 minutes of baking, the additional rise during baking is very good, time to add foil.

All done, house smells heavenly!

First slice, yum!

Below: Multi-grain with quinoa-sprout add-ins

Left below: amaranth, brown rice, millet, oat loaf 

Right below: quinoa, millet, brown rice, teff loaf

Below:  the loaf I shaped with an indentation down the middle.

Left: amaranth          Right:brown rice, teff

Sweet Sorghum Bread: 

(quantitities to use in template)

60g Bobs Redmill sweet sorghum flour

60g millet flour

80g brown rice flour

40g teff flour

60g tapioca flour

65g sweet rice flour

1/4 C sunflower seeds

3Tbs white sugar

Golden Amaranth Bread:

60g amaranth flour

60 g millet flour

80g brown rice flour

40g gf oat flour (make flour in blender or coffee bean grinder)

62g tapioca flour

64g cornstarch

3Tbs brown sugar

Multi-Grain Bread:

inspired by King Arthur's multi-grain flour blend

40g each of the following: sorghum flour, quinoa flour, millet flour, brown rice flour, teff flour, amaranth flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, and sweet rice flour.

white sugar

Quinoa-Millet Bread:

60 g quinoa flour

80 g millet flour

70g brown rice flour

30g teff flour

60g tapioca flour

66g cornstarch

brown sugar

I use a K-tec Kitchen Mill for my quinoa flour, millet flour, teff flour, and rice flours.

Daisy Tula Petal: Women of Courage Gallery

A Daisy Scout earns a daisy petal and learns about what it means to be courageous by making her own gallery of women of courage, here is ours, the first page is from The Friend "women of faith"!  We are going to color and cut them out and make a museum!

Gluten Free Flour-Weight Conversions and Measuring 101

I adore recipes written in grams, its so much easier to duplicate results time after time!  I've been using and loving this volume-weight chart for awhile and it recently occurred to me to test its accuracy.  I scooped the flours out of the bags with my measuring scoop and then leveled it off.  I was stunned by how much variation there was from the chart. 

Amaranth: 140g instead of 120g

Brown Rice: 148g instead of 158g

Cornmeal:150g instead of 128g

Millet: 172g instead of 120g

Oat flour: 88g instead of 120g

Pea protein powder: 144g (split pea flour is 160g)

Sorghum: 156g instead 127g

Sweet rice: 180g instead of 204g

Tapioca: 140g instead of 125g

Brown teff: 152g instead of 120g

(an average difference of about 30g per cup of flour from the standard!) 

Problems:

1) Measuring 101:  When a recipe calls for 1 cup of brown rice flour, it is asking for 158g.  The proper way to measure flour is to sift first or spoon it out of the bag into the cup. (Don't scoop it out of the bag with your cup or tap the cup after you fill it like me.)  Then level the flour with a straight edge.  Even if you do this, you probably won't get exactly 158 grams, just something close.  Volumetric measurement is really imprecise.  It works for general cooking, but for baking mass is better.

2) Your flour may my be too fine or too coarse making it more or less dense than typical.  I grind my own flour and it is superfine.

4) You don’t know the accuracy of the cups or flour texture the author of your recipe used, you can only guess based on their level of expertise as a baker.  A less expert baker probably scooped their flour with the cup and will have higher flour weights per cup, around 25g.  If you convert to mass you may be off by as much as 50g!  If you're not sure about the recipe author's measuring technique, use cups and do not convert to grams using a chart.

5) If you add 1/4 cup of four types of flour like we often do in gluten free baking, you have four chances to add slightly too much or slightly too little flour, you won’t notice like you would with 1 cup of one type of flour.  You could be off by as much as 1/4 cup of flour per cup in the end even if your flour was nicely sifted!

What to do:

1) Look for recipes written in grams!

2) Use measuring cups if the recipe is written in cups and developed by a regular person at home it is probably closer than the weight conversion.  Also, they most likely scooped their flour out of the container rather than spoon filling or sifting their flour, so do it that way.

3) Ask the recipe author about how they measure their flour and if their flour is a standard storebought flour (Bob's, King Arthur, etc), home ground, superfine, gritty, etc.  If they have superfine home ground flour instead of storebought flour, their flour might be denser per cup by 10-20g.

3) Expect that recipes from professionals will be the most likely to convert well from volume to weight because they measure more accurately and often use store bought flours.

4) If adding small amounts of lots of different flours, be extra careful to make sure each flour addition is measured accurately.  Look for recipes that have you blend the flour separately and then add one measurement of the blend, there is much less room for error.

Easy Gluten Free S'mores

Easiest gluten free s'more ever, plus it's yummier than the original.

Ingredients: raw almonds, butter, marshmallow, chocolate.

Chop up a handful of almonds as fine as you can get them.  For kids you might want to use a blender or food processor to get almond meal (see below), Adults probably won't mind a coarser, texture.  Melt a bit of butter (1/2 tsp to 1 tsp) in a custard cup, then stir in about 1oz of almond meal and press it flat to make a crust.  Add chocolate squares and marshmallow.  It looks and tastes like an open-face S'more.  Bake at 350 4-8 minutes.  Eat with a spoon.

S'more face

 Half an almond crusted s'more, (4-8 minutes at 350 in oven.)

 eating gluteny s'mores

more s'more eating

 Two kids didn't like their graham crackers

 I loved the almond crust

Could I do this in foil on a camping trip?  I'm totally gonna try!  I'll just bring my baggy of almond meal

 Almond Meal:  Put 2 cups of frozen/cold raw almonds in blendtec on  speed 9 until the meal sticks to the edges and isn't getting blended anymore, about 30 seconds.  Put it in a jar and refrigerate, try to use within a week.  Use it on hot cereal, pancakes, waffles, to make granola, cookies, brownies, as a salad topper, in yogurt, with rice, on a sandwich instead of peanut butter, as a crumb crust or topping, or plain with honey/agave and milk.

Happy Birthday!

Minecraft cake: water, sand, dirt, grass

Making her brother a cake

Birthday boy playing computer games

Lime sherbet for creeper floats (creepers are bad guys in the Minecraft game)

Yum!

 In Minecraft, you collect "resources",  J had his friends collect resources: TNT (twizzlers), sticks (pretzels), lava (cherry sours), dirt (rootbeer barrels), and gold (rolls) and then make "Steve" bags.  Then some minecraft food for snacks.  He had boxes to build forts with, but I think they built mostly with LEGO.  Eitherway, building is what minecraft is all about.

Baby Rice Party

Rice Party is a big family tradition at our house, almost bigger than first birthday.  At the rice party we celebrate our baby's first solid food meal which is rice.  This is also pretty much our staple food and therefore worth celebrating.  At the rice party we serve rice in at least three different ways for the family to sample.  Then the senior member of the family in attendance feeds the baby their first meal (unless they want mom to do it).  The highlight of the party is the future career path game.  Baby is presented with 3-4 items symbolic of possible career paths.  Then we let the baby pick one.  Our first child didn't get a rice party and wonders what she would have chosen.  She carried drumsticks around in both hands as a baby for months though, she would cry if there wasn't something in BOTH hands.  She wanted balance and symmetry.  It was also definitely a sign of things to come.  Our next two boys chose technology and our second daughter chose a baby doll.  Today our baby chose a wallet (business/finance) and after that got old he chose medicine (health occupations), he ignored science & technology(tinker toys) and government/military (a flag).

Our baby had his rice party very early.  He isn't even five months old, but he is a big little guy.  My last baby was seven months at his party.  Baby C has never even eyed food or grabbed for it.  However, he is so hungry all the time that I can't keep up with nursing.  The last few days were especially hard on him, so we made an emergency trip to the store late last night and decided to do Rice Party today on the spur of the moment.  Usually at Rice Party, baby eats last, but at this rice party baby was crying and crying for food and that was after I'd already nursed him twice in an hour.  He could hardly wait for the prayer and after eating a giant bowl of rice took a nice long happy nap.

Our rice dishes included Chex Mix, Pad Thai, and Peanut Butter Bars (ours are made with brown rice and sweet rice flour, yum!)  Oh, and to be honest the main course was really pork chops and bratwurst (I was happy with Pad Thai)!

Chex Mix

 Pad Thai

 Peanut Butter Bars

 A wallet/money (business/finance career path)

In other news...

D enjoying the multi-colored bandaids grandma gave him

AJ getting ready to teach LEGO art class

Edible Mother's Day Bouquet

My 5 year old daughter presented me with this bouquet after church.  She had a big grin.  "Here Mom!  It has lots of gluten so I'll eat it for you"  I had to beg, but she let me hold it for about 2 seconds in order to take this picture and then all my kids devoured it together.  Same daughter made me a diamond ring at school out of a Hershey Kiss.  She ate that too.  I don't mind, love my kids.