Gluten-Free Multigrain Bread

I recently bought a series of eBook cookbooks called "Gluten Free Lifestyle" by Katie Ross (Note as of 1/21/2022: this website appears defunct and I can't seem to find a new/successor one -- but I'm going to leave it active here just in case).  She’s in Australia, and I find that her eBooks offer loads of great information specifically about GF flours and baking gluten-free.  One of her eBooks in particular even goes so far as to list out all of the various GF flours that are available, their properties, what they are best used for/in, how they taste, substitutions, etc.  If you don't already have them, I highly suggest you get these eBooks, at least the "Baking" and "Flours" volumes.

This bread recipe comes from Katie's "Baking" eBook.  Here goes….

Gluten-Free Multigrain Bread
(by Katie Ross, Gluten Free Lifestyle)

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup brown rice flour
• 1/2 cup sorghum flour
• 1/4 cup amaranth flour (I couldn’t find amaranth flour at my stores, so I bought amaranth seed/grain and ground it up at home in my coffee grinder)
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour/starch
• 1/4 cup cornstarch (the recipe called for arrowroot starch, but I couldn’t find it after trying two local stores.  I used cornstarch because Katie's materials said that arrowroot starch and cornstarch can be exchanged 1-for-1 in recipes)
• 1/4 cup flax seed meal
• 2 teaspoons xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 2 additional egg whites
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 2 tablespoons agave nectar (the recipe called for honey, but when I started making the bread I discovered that I didn’t have any, so I made this substitution on the fly)
• 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast 

Procedure:

1. Make sure all of your ingredients are at room temperature.
2. Pre-heat your oven to 200-degrees.  (We are creating a warm environment where your bread will rise.)
3. Sift the Dry Ingredients into a bowl (the flax meal doesn’t need to be sifted – just add it in as is).  Set aside.
4. Combine the Wet Ingredients into a second the bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer if you have one).  Using your electric hand mixer (or the whisk attachment of your stand mixer), mix the Wet Ingredients on medium-to-high speed for 3 to 4 minutes.  The mix should foam up and fill your bowl.
5. Turn off the oven (it’s now at a good temperature but we don’t want it to get too hot).
6. Continue beating the Wet Ingredients, while gradually adding in the Dry Ingredients.  You may need to scrap down your bowl with a spatula once or twice.
7. Grease your loaf pan and scoop the dough into it.  Even out the layer, and then place it in the now-turned-off oven for one hour to rise.  It should rise up at least to the top of the pan, but be careful that it doesn’t rise too far and start to spill over.
8. Now, turn the oven on to 350-degrees and bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.
9. Remove from the oven, but leave the bread in the pan for 15 more minutes to help it hold its shape.  But don’t leave it in the pan any longer than that, else it might get soggy.
10. Let it cool completely, slice and enjoy!

The loaf came out small (short), but gosh was it good.  Textured like a store-bought loaf of "real" bread -- light, airy, not crumbly in the least, and for lack of a better word: floppy.  Not cake-ish at all like a lot of GF breads tend to be.  It tastes awesome all by itself, and works great for toast and sandwiches.  Also, almost a week after baking (stored in a Ziploc bag on the counter), it was still fresh!  I ended up throwing it in the freezer because I didn't know when we'd finish eating it.

I got 17 slices, each with:

• 96 calories
• 3 grams protein
• 14 grams carbs
• 3 grams fat
• 2 grams fiber
• 139 mg sodium.

(That’s less calories, the same protein, less carbs, only 1 gram more of fat, more fiber, and less sodium than my traditional full-wheat-gluten white bread – can’t beat that!)

I just need to find a way to make it turn out bigger, which I am currently working on.  I also felt the recipe was a little involved, and strange that the yeast wasn't allowed to "bloom" like in other recipes.  It almost seems to me that the whipping of the egg whites was what gave this bread it's height, and allowed it to fall after baking and end up so short.  Perhaps letting the yeast bloom (more like in the white bread recipe) will prevent this problem.  So, I am having a lot of fun experimenting with bread recipes and -- thanks to information I learned from Katie Ross -- trying some of my own formulations.

Finally, a little shot of a lovely sandwich that I made with this bread: roast beef, asiago cheese, and dijon mustard, with a side of broccoli salad from the deli and some pickles: