Durham's Gluten Free Network

So here I am again experimenting with a West Bend Hi-Rise Bread Machine!  This one has two paddles and mixes much better.  However still not as nice as having a mixer, but for the reasons already mentioned, bread machines are the way I want to go for now. As always, this is NOT an affiliate link or any other kind of ad.  It's what I use. I'm happy to shine a light their way though, because this is a great appliance, worth the money.

I have three loaves to show you and an experimental recipe for one of them.  One of the nice things about having your own machine is that you can use oat flour, if you tolerate it.  Only about 10% of people with Celiac have a gluten reaction to avenin, the "gluten" in oats.  And oats have a familiar flavor that many people like.  GF bread manufacturers don't use oats because it's risky.  Most farms rotate from oats to wheat or barley and back again on the same land.  And no matter how good the weeding, a few gluten grains get mix…

Taking a tiny break from bread machine recipes to present a Stand-Mixer bread recipe today.  I also want to talk about Amylose and what vinegar has to do with gluten free bread.  In the previous articles in this series, I discovered that mixing is a big problem for most bread machines.  That ends today with a Stand Mixer.  I will go back to a bread machine soon, for all the reasons I've already listed, but let's explore the mixer option a bit first.

Today the Kitchen Aid is the standard in baking mixer machines, but I decided to go with a budget model instead since it got rave reviews just last year.  Few bells and whistles, but an excellent mixer.

Since gluten free recipes use flours that absorb water more slowly and they have to form a gel "hydrocolloid", not gluten, usually this means bread machine recipes call for more water than you might expect.  As a result, the bread's structure may suffer, and there is a rush to bake the bread during the first rise (t…

Today's results are a bit denser, with zero gummy texture, a lot like a multigrain bread, and it's a great source of dietary fiber. So far the success rate has been 3 out of 4, but at no time has it been easy or "set it and forget it" which is the promise of bread machines.  And I hit yet another snag.  As a result I'm considering a different machine.  I'm noticing that a lot of people say similar things in reviews where families have tried two or three different models before settling on one that works.  That's a bit of a problem, I would think, for the manufacturers. Either we expect too much, or they aren't giving us enough.

There also seems to be a trend in bread machines toward one or two high end options and tons of cheap models with limited flexibility in baking.  I've soured on my purchase decision and have regretted buying a cheap model.  I didn't think it was that cheap really.  There are models out right now in the $65 range and I …