Do You Need a Bread Machine?

If you don't want to pay upwards of 5.00 for a loaf of sorta decent gluten free bread, then yes, you should probably invest in a bread machine. You can make wonderful bread for yourself whenever you want it, your family can make gluten-FULL bread whenever they want, and your house will always smell delicious.

There are some good articles out there to help you choose which kind of machine to buy. Here's a good one from Celiac.com:

http://www.celiac.com/articles/287/1/Bread-Machine-Tips/Page1.html

I've had 2 bread machines in my GF career, and they have both made great bread. The first was a Cuisinart CBK200 (about 129.00.) This machine had lots of bells and whistles, but I pretty much always used the GF setting with good success. After a few years of beating that poor machine to the ground, it died on me. In the nick of time, my mother-in-law gave me an extra that she had, a Welbilt (selling on ebay right now for 30.00 - 60.00), which was much simpler to use, but still puts out great bread. Lots of GFers swear by the Zojirushi, which can be had for 200.00 or more.

The key to good gluten free bread making is experimentation. Don't expect your first loaf to come out perfectly (if it does, yay!) Just be sure to follow the instructions carefully. Yes, it does matter in which order you put the ingredients (wet first, then dry, yeast on top). And because there are no preservatives in homemade bread, if you're not going to eat it all at once, make sure you slice some and freeze the slices. Then, when you're dying for a toasted PBJ or grilled cheese, your bread is all ready to go.

Here's a recipe to get you started. Let me know how you make out!

Basic Bread Machine White Bread

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup honey or 2 T. sugar
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, at room temperature (or use regular milk and add 1 1/2 T. white vinegar to it)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon xanthan gum
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup potato starch
1/2 cup soy flour
2 cups white rice flour
1 tablespoon active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS
Mix eggs, vinegar, oil, honey, milk and place in the pan of bread machine.Mix the all the dry ingredients (except yeast) and place on top of wet ingredients. Sprinkle the yeast on top (try not to let the yeast touch the sides of the pan.)

Select the Gluten Free or sweet dough cycle. Five minutes into the cycle, check the consistency of the dough. Add additional rice flour or liquid if necessary.
When bread is finished, let cool for 10 to 15 minutes before removing from pan. Enjoy!

FYI: Unfortunately, GF bread is never very pretty :( But, as we all know, looks aren't everything!