My favorite Gluten Free Bread

"Brown and White Bread" I found this recipe over 10 years ago in a Red star yeast pamphlet I picked up in the aisle of Bob's Red Mill and have kept it close by ever since.  I also had the great fortune of my parents buying me an amazing bread machine when I graduated from grad school, it's a Zojirushi bread machine that has a "home made" setting that you can program yourself.

The most important suggestion I can make about a bread machine is to invest in a very good strong machine.  Gluten free flours tend to be heavy and dense and will tear up the motor on cheap machines.  I have used a cheap machine years ago and I found I had to mix all my ingredients in a stand mixer and then pour the batter into the bread machine, which then only saved me the trouble of kneading, rising, and baking the bread.  It seems like an okay process, but when you spend the money on a machine you want it to do the work for you.  Especially for me when I make a loaf of bread almost once a week, adding extra steps, and items to clean in the end, is not fun.  So if you can splurge on a machine, do so, it's worth the extra money now in what you will save, no longer buying pre-made bread from the market.

I have tried some of the other recipes in the pamphlet, but I keep going back to this one, it tastes the best to me.  I also like their "Favorite White Bread" recipe.  I find it's difficult to keep all the components on hand to make any bread I want, on the spur of the moment which is why I always fall back to the "Brown and White Rice Bread" recipe.  I prefer to use Bob's Red Mill Brown and White Rice flours when making the recipe I think the coarseness of the stone ground flours works well for this process and are not at all grainy in the end result.

Some of the problems with this and all gluten free bread recipes are that they contain little to no preservatives and are not at all shelf stable.  I prefer to store my finished loaves in the fridge, I let them dry out over the course of the day I made them and that evening I slice it up and put it back into it's loaf form and put it into a zip top bag.  This way I can just grab a slice or two when I need them without having to get out the cutting board and knife.  My other suggestion is that you toast the bread after taking it out of the fridge, if you go without toasting it, even lightly the bread will crumble the second you try to pick it up.

This is directly copied and pasted from the Red Star Yeast Web site.  If you would like other recipes, please click on the link at the beginning of this post and it will show you several of their bread recipes.

Brown and White Bread

Wet Ingredients
Water	1+2/3 cup
Egg	3
Vegetable Oil	1/4 cup
Cider Vinegar	1 tsp
Dry Ingredients
White Rice Flour	2+1/4 cup
Brown Rice Flour	1 cup
Xanthan Gum	2+1/2 tsp
Salt	1+1/2 tsp
Dry Milk Powder	1/2 cup
Sugar	3 TBSP
Active Dry Yeast	2+1/4 tsp

DIRECTIONS

BREAD MACHINE METHOD

Combine wet, room temperature ingredients; pour into baking pan. All dry ingredients, including the Active Dry Yeast, should be thoroughly blended together before adding on top of the wet ingredients. Mixing them together in a bowl with a wire whisk or shaking them together in a gallon size, self-sealing plastic bag is suggested. Gluten-free flours are very fine and need to be well blended before liquid is added to them.

Select a NORMAL or BASIC cycle; start machine. For bread machines with a BAKE ONLY cycle, select the DOUGH cycle for mixing and rising. Press STOP when the cycle is complete; then select the BAKE ONLY cycle to complete the bread. After the mixing action begins, help any unmixed ingredients into the dough with a rubber spatula, keeping to edges and top of batter to prevent interference with the kneading blade.

When the bake cycle is complete, remove the pan from the machine. Allow the bread to remain in the pan for approximately 10 minutes, then invert pan and shake gently to remove the bread. Cool upright on a rack before slicing.