Basic Gluten-Free White Sandwich Bread

First up is our basic gluten-free white bread, and it's pretty easy to make (certainly no more difficult that regular, fully-glutened, wheat breads).  I like to call it the "Sneakiest Gluten-Free Bread Ever" (as in, you can't tell it's gluten-free).

Through a little mixing and matching of various found recipes that I tried along the way, I have come up with what I consider to be a perfect basic gluten-free bread.  It's a standard white loaf, and can be added to with nuts, seeds, spices, extracts, other grains, etc. to make it into different flavors and varieties.

This bread is good! Springy and nothing but positively bread-like in texture.  No crumbles at all.  Not cake-like in the least.  You can even fold it in half without it breaking.  It rose very well (it's at least the same size if not bigger than standard store-bought Wonder Bread).  And it has an even, mild flavor.  It's great for sandwiches, toast, making into bread crumbs, french toast, croutons, etc....or lovely just eaten all by itself.  Oh, and Hubby 100% approves -- I even got a fist bump.  He said if I told him I made it by magic, he'd believe me.  :)

I do have to concede that it's not the best nutritionally (due to the King Arthur flour blend being -- albeit incredibly convenient -- simply rice flours and some starches)....but really, is any white bread all that good for us?

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp. yeast
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 1 ½ cups warm water
• 2 ½ cups of King Arthur Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour (see note below)
• 2 tsp. xanthan gum
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1 ½ Tbsp. oil
• 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine the yeast, sugar, and water. Let this mixture sit while you mix the rest of the ingredients – bubbles and foam should form if the yeast is good.
2. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the flour, xanthan gum and salt.  Mix well.
3. In a third bowl, whisk the eggs, oil and vinegar until it’s all a bit frothy.
4. By this point the yeast mixture should be foamy, so you can pour the two liquid mixtures into the flour mixture.
5. Blend the dough with the regular stand mixer attachment for about 4 minutes on a low/medium speed, scraping down the sides once or twice.
6. Scoop the dough into a greased loaf pan.  (Using a spatula sprayed with cooking spray helps this process along greatly - the dough will be sticky).  Allow it to rise in a warm area until it’s a little shorter than you want your bread to turn out when cooked (I have found that it rises only an inch or two more while baking, so I let mine rise until it's above the top of the loaf pan before putting it into the oven -- and I suspect that the more you let it rise before baking, the less dense the final cooked loaf will turn out).
7. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-60 minutes.

(Note re: Flour, 1/21/2022): When I originally posted this recipe way back in 2011, the product was called "Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour."  They no longer seem to produce anything labelled with that exact name, but now have something called "Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour."  I think these are the same, because they are both the ones without Xanthan Gum included.  Since I am adding my own Xanthan Gum to this recipe, I am not using any pre-made flour blends that already have it included.

18 slices, each with:

• 108 calories
• 3 grams protein
• 19 grams carbs
• 2 grams fat
• 0 fiber
• 119 mg sodium