Perfect Gluten Free White Bread - Adventures of a Certified Celiac

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I found this recipe by Namaste Foods about a year ago and it has become a family favorite. It is the perfect gluten free white bread, in my humble opinion! My youngest daughter “helps” me bake the bread, then anxiously awaits for it to come out of the oven. She loves eating slices of this bread and can hardly wait for it to cool down enough to slice!

I follow the recipe as listed here on the Namaste Foods website. However, after baking many loaves on my own, I have developed a good system for ensuring this bread turns out everytime. Please refer to the previous link for the recipe and see below for my step-by-step guide to the Perfect Gluten Free White Bread!

1- Prep Your Ingredients

The first thing I do is set out all of the ingredients I am going to need. When I’m really on task, I allow my milk, eggs, and flour to come to room temperature before I begin. (Yes, you read that correctly! My flour needs to warm up because I keep it in the deep freezer to ensure freshness.)

Also, I turn on my crock pot to the “warm” setting so it will be up to temp when I’m ready to proof my dough before baking. It’s important to place your dough in a warm location (not too hot or too cool) to allow it to rise before baking. I have found that in my house, that proofing paradise is my crock pot.

**Cuisinart 4-in-1 Multi-Cooker, 7 quart**

I’m pretty much in love with my crock pot! It is actually a 4-in-1 multi-cooker. Fancy, right!? This bad boy can slow cook, steam, brown/saute, and roast! Buy it here on Amazon. Because of the roasting function, it has a removable wire rack. I leave this rack in place when I proof my dough to keep the pan from sitting on the bottom of the slow cooker. But I digress, back to the task at hand!

Tip 1:

Gluten free baking is best done with room temperature ingredients.

Tip 2:

If you don’t have time for your ingredients to reach room temp on their own, then you’ll have to help them along. Pre-measure your milk into a microwave safe container (I use my Pyrex measuring cup), then warm it up for about 45 seconds in the microwave. It shouldn’t be hot, just slightly warm. Stir after heating to even out the temp and set it to the side.

To warm up eggs (without cooking them!), place them in a bowl of warm water while they’re still in their shells. They will warm up enough while you’re prepping everything else to be good to go when you need them.

2- Proof Your Yeast

Once all your ingredients are out and ready to use, it’s time to get baking!

Measure your yeast into warm water. I stir a little drop of honey into the warm water before adding the yeast. This gives the yeast a little power snack to motivate them to get to work.

3- Measure Dry Ingredients

Next, add all your dry ingredients into your mixing bowl and mix on the lowest setting for about a minute. I find the Namaste GF Flour Blend and Anthony’s Organic Corn Starch on Amazon.

4- Measure Liquid Ingredients

Once my dry ingredients are well combined, I prep my wet ingredients. I add the oil and honey to the room temperature milk. I prefer to add the oil first, then the honey, using the same tablespoon. Because of the oil on the spoon, the honey comes off the spoon easier when I mix it into the milk. I typically wait to add the apple cider vinegar until I’m ready to combine the wet ingredients into the dry ones. Also, I always beat the eggs before combining with the flour.

5- Combine Dry and Liquid Ingredients

When the yeast is ready and rocking, it’s time to combine everything. At this point, I stir the vinegar into the milk. Then I set the mixer to the lowest speed and get to work. I like to pour in the eggs, followed by the yeast/water mixture. Then I take the milk/oil/honey/vinegar mixture and pour a little into the mason jar that contained my yeast and swirl it around to ensure I’ve properly evicted my little friends. I do this several times until it seems the jar is fairly clean. Then I pour whatever milk mixture is left in the measuring cup into the mixing bowl.

Tip 3:

Get a good stand mixer! You will use it all the time if you bake gluten free. This is the best way to ensure proper mixing and ingredient activation. GF baking often uses xanthan gum. Stirring by hand or using a hand mixer typically is not enough to really activate the xanthan gum, leaving your baked goods to fall flat. A stand mixer is truly the best (and easiest) way to go.

I use a KitchenAid and can not imagine baking without it. Definitely a must have for gluten free baking! Get it here on Amazon.

6- Let that Mixer Do Its Thang!

After all the ingredients are combined, set the mixer to medium and let it go for exactly 3 minutes. I set an alarm so I don’t over or under mix the dough. In gluten free baking, it is important to allow some air to incorporate into the dough. Remember that gluten not only binds bread, but it aids in the rise of the dough as well. By beating gluten free doughs and batters a bit longer than traditional ones, the xanthan gum gets activated. This supplies our GF dough with some stretch and binding. As the dough mixes the stand mixer can sound a little aggressive as it works. As tempting as it is to turn it off or lower the speed, you have to let it do its thang! This higher mixing speed allows air to be incorporated, creating tiny air pockets, which allows the bread to be a little fluffier.

7- Proof Your Dough

Now it’s time to pour the dough into a greased loaf pan, cover it with oiled plastic wrap, and place it in the slow cooker for approximately 30 minutes. You should let it rise until it comes just above the top edge of the pan. I use a standard metal loaf pan, so that means my bread increases in size about 50%. I don’t recommend letting it rise until it doubles in size because it can create major holes throughout your baked loaf. Remember that just because the bread rises to a certain size, does not mean it will stay that size once it bakes and cools. So I let it go till it’s about 50% larger, then I pop it in a pre-heated oven.

As soon as I put the lid on my slow cooker and begin proofing my dough, I pre-heat the oven. My oven is a bit off, so I set my temp to 375 degrees. (The recipe says to bake it at 350.) You should always use an oven thermometer, calibrate your oven, and make necessary adjustments to ensure proper baking temperature and times. For me, 375 degrees is 350. Good times!

8- Bake it Up

It’s finally time to place this masterpiece in the oven! Make a “tent” out of aluminum foil and place it over your pan & dough. This will prevent the bread from forming a thick top crust and getting too dark. If you don’t tent it, then the bread will be very difficult to bite through. And it might come out looking like a charcoal briquette!

Remove your top oven rack or raise it up to the highest position and put your bread on the bottom rack. The bread will continue to rise quite a bit as it bakes and you don’t want it to bake into your oven rack. Yikes! Set your timer for 40 minutes and leave the oven to work its magic.

When the timer goes off, remove the alumunim foil tent and place your bread back in the oven on the bottom rack. Set the timer again, this time for 20 minutes. (Depending on your oven, you may need to bake 5-10 minutes longer. Unfortunately, this is going to be a trial and error thing as you determine the best bake time for your set up.

9- Rest and Cool Off

After the final timer rings, remove your bread from the oven. Let it rest in the pan for 10 minutes. I set a timer for this step also because I tend to get distracted and I’ll leave it in the pan for waaaay too long! If you don’t take it out of the pan after about 10 minutes, it turns gooey and nasty. To remove it from the pan, I use a small wooden spatula around the edges to loosen any areas that may be stuck. Then I use the spatula to lightly lift around the bottom edges of the loaf to make sure it isn’t baked to the pan. After this little song and dance is done, I flip my pan over and slide the loaf out onto a baking rack to cool.

And there you have it folks, the Perfect Gluten Free White Bread!

Tip 4:

Let your bread cool completely before slicing it! If you get impatient and slice too early, it is a difficult task. The bread gets kind of smashed and sticks to the knife. Plus, your slices tend to be thicker.

Tip 5:

Use an electric knife to thinly slice your bread after it has completely cooled. Thick slices are tasty when it’s super fresh, but believe me, by day 3 or 4 you are going to wish you had listened and cut it thinner. As the bread dries out, more is not better in this case. I use this electric knife by Cuisinart, but any electric knife should work fine. This one comes with a blade specifically for cutting bread and another blade for carving meat, giving you more bang for your buck!

Notes:

When measuring your gluten free flour, you should spoon it into the measuring cup instead of scooping it out of the bag. The best approach is to use a scale and weigh your ingredients, but this recipe does not yield itself to that method. Spooning the flour into your measuring cup will help keep you from adding too much due to the flour being compacted in the cup. Basically, you want to loosely fill the cup. Hope that makes sense! Lol!

I bake my bread for a total of 60 minutes. The bread is slightly moist in the center on the day I bake it, but it extends the “life” of the bread. (I simply slice it and let the slices I want to use immediately lay out for about 30-60 minutes. This allows the air to dry it a bit more so it’s perfect for sandwiches, etc.) I have found when I bake this more than 60 minutes, it is too dry by the second day to be good for more than toast.

You can freeze it once it’s baked and cooled, but I don’t recommend it. Once the bread is defrosted, it is much drier than when it has not been frozen. It’s comparable to a fresh loaf on about day 3.

This bread is best used within 4-5 days. It does not have any preservatives, so it will get moldy much faster than store-bought bread. It is best stored in an air-tight container or bag on the counter, bread drawer, or pantry. Putting this bread in the fridge will cause it to dry out very quickly.

Namaste Foods’ Recipe: Granny’s Gluten Free Oven Baked Bread

I really hope you give this recipe a try. I promise, you will be so happy you did! And if my little tips and tricks help you along the way, then even better. 🙂 Please let me know how your bread turns out in the comments below. As always, post any questions too, because others may have the same one!