Homemade Gluten-Free Bread

On my 101 in 1001 list, number 58 was to bake a loaf of bread that was gluten and dairy-free. My husband is gluten-intolerant and can’t have dairy (well, he shouldn’t anyways!) so eating with our family’s busy schedule can be a challenge. I’ve been on a bit of a health food kick lately, starting off with my Mom’s juicer. This week, I made two different kinds of juices ~ one was carrot/apple/ginger/beet and the other was apple/orange/lemon, essentially an apple lemonade. The first took a bit of convincing but the apple lemonade was delicious! Easily the best juice that I’ve ever had. I also made almond butter with the juicer using a different attachment and today I decided to make some bread.

I do like to bake, however, I can’t stand baking bread or pies or things that require some skill or work like kneading. There’s just something about getting my hands all doughy and sticky that I don’t really like. So I generally look for recipes that are simple, that I can just mix and throw into a pan and bake. Most of my bread attempts have been epic fails, actually all of them, so this is why I don’t really make it. I usually get my own bread from the local bakery, Breka, while Josh gets his gluten-free variety from Safeway. But after today’s foray into the bread-baking world, I think I’ll be making my own more often.

It was actually quite simple. My Mom had bought us a few boxes of flour mixes and I followed the recipe on the back of the box which only consisted of the flour mix, eggs, oil, salt, honey and milk (I substituted rice milk instead). It worked out perfectly! We ate some sandwiches for dinner and it worked out great. The problem with rice-based breads a lot of the time is the texture is really crumbly or dry because of the lack of “glue” holding it together. While the texture for sure is different, the taste was nice and was something that I could see myself eating on a regular basis.

We are hoping to go gluten-free as a family in the fall of 2012 sometime. We’ve done it before (well, not 100% gluten-free for me, but for Josh, yes) and have been slacking on it for quite some time. I’ve been reading a couple articles in the Vancouver Sun lately regarding wheat and how much it has changed from its original form in the past 40 years, which is why we are seeing a large rise in gluten intolerance. You can see an article sample here. I definitely saw a marked improvement in my husband when he stopped eating gluten and now I am looking at my son and wondering if that bowl of Cream of Wheat I’m trying to feed him makes him feel badly. He rubbed his tummy the other day and turned his head when I tried to give him a bite. Which is kind of inspiring me to change our eating habits.

I am creating quite a collection of gluten-free recipes, but could always use more. Anyone out there with food allergies willing to share some baking love on the blog? Leave your recipe below!

Happy baking (and eating)!