Gluten-Free Bread Sticks: HBinFive

 

You can find the recipe for these gluten-free bread sticks on page 247 of the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book.

This particular gluten-free dough utilizes a mixture of sorghum flour, soy flour, tapioca starch and cornstarch and xanthan gum.  Gluten-Free flours can get expensive so I bought some sorghum grains for about $3 dollars at the farmer’s market and milled my own sorghum flour.  I didn’t use all of the grains so I have some left for a couple more loaves of gluten-free bread.

I tried to mill the tapioca starch but the grains kept clogging up my grinder.  I used tapioca starch that I got from a different farmer’s market. I also added some potato starch and substituted ground flax meal for the xanthum gum.

When I mixed the dough, it was really wet.

So I added more sorghum flour, tapioca starch and some potato starch to get it to the right consistency.

I let the dough rest on the counter for 2 hours, then I placed it in the refrigerator.  This was Saturday night.  I didn’t get the chance to bake anything until Monday night so it was in the refrigerator for 2 days.

I made the Gluten-Free Parmesan Bread Sticks first.  I measured off a 1/2 pound portion of dough, then shaped it into a ball and placed it on some parchment paper sprinkled with a little sorghum flour.

I flattened the dough out and rolled it into an oval with a rolling pin.  Then cut it into strips using my pizza wheel.

At this point, the instructions say to separate the strips.  However, the dough was too wet to do this so I just baked the bread sticks like this.

And separated them with the pizza wheel after they finished baking.  They came apart pretty easily actually.

They tasted really good.  I enjoyed them for dinner with some potato leek soup.

I also made the Gluten-Free Cheddar and Sesame Bread.  To make this dough, I grabbed the rest of the dough from the refrigerator using wet hands and shaped it into a ball.

Then I tried to elongate it but it was too wet so I just sort of laid it in the baking pan and pressed it even with my wet fingers.

Before baking, I spritzed the loaf with water and sprinkled it with sesame seeds.  Then baked it for about 35 minutes.  It had really good oven spring and a great color so I had high expectations for this loaf.

I removed it from the oven and it still looked good so I was looking forward to trying it.

After the loaf had cooled, I sliced a piece.  It tasted good.  It was crunchy on the outside and had a pretty good flavor on the inside.

After the loaf had cooled some more, I tried another piece.  It tasted nasty.  I had some the next day and it was even more nasty.  It had a bitter aftertaste.  I tried toasting it and eating it with butter but to no avail.  I couldn’t even finish it so I gave it to the birds.  I’m not really sure what happened with the loaf.   The dough sat in the refrigerator for 3 more days after I made the bread sticks so that could be the problem. It was still within the 7 days but probably not optimum especially for a gluten-free bread. 

My opinion is that this dough tastes better as bread sticks.  The loaf just didn’t have the right flavor.  I didn’t roast the soy this time so that could be part of the problem.  I’ve been researching gluten-free flours so maybe I’ll try this again sometime with a different combination of flours and see if I like it better.  Or, maybe I’ll just stick to the bread sticks.  I liked them so I wouldn’t mind making them again.

Thanks for joining me in the bread-baking blog.  Check out BigBlackDog to see all of the breads in the July 15th Bread Braid roundup. 

Happy Baking!
Cathy

About the HBinFive Baking Group

The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book. For more information on the HBinFive baking group, check out BigBlackDog.

Here are some additional bread-making resources:

• Bread Recipes
• Bread Cookbooks
• Bread Making
• Baking Supplies
• Bread Flour
• Bread Mixes