Half an index finger-high bread made with a machine: gluten and egg-free

Baking used to be an easy thing for me, always making cakes and cookies to share with friends and co-workers while I was in school. I even hosted a cookie swap with fellow APO brothers-still have the recipes in my notebook. But then came being an adult, and replacing worry-free dining hall meals with home-cooked food which requires planning, shopping, making and clean-up. There is also less time for baking when working with a 45 minute commute each way and nine hour work days.

 Then add in finding out being allergic to wheat. Often times I am asked to have a rainbow of gluten free flours available for some recipes-and sometimes I just can't get out to the right store to get them or decide to be brave and try to use what I have on hand. It's a lot of about experimentation and not being afraid to fail (or being willing to turn your turn-to-dust chocolate shortbread rice-flour cookies into an ice cream topping). I think if I want to have better success rates I need to try try again and keep a notebook like this baker Alice (thanks, Karen for sharing this with me a year ago!) I'm not ready to get that serious about baking. I tried weighing the flours to be equivalent to the white/wheat flour for the recipe book that came with the bread  machine but had big flops.

My friend, Yanny, shared with me some gems from a book by glutenfreegirl : "gluten-free baking usually requires a mix of 3 GF flours. One should be a whole-grain (sorghum, brown rice, garfav). Second a starch to lighten up the mix (potato starch, tapioca starch/flour, cornstarch, arrow root). Last should have a personality you want to add. Amaranth has soft texture, slight malt flavor (cookies, cinnamon rolls). Almond for protein and a bit of fat. Coconut flour, but it sucks up moisture. Millet for crumb. Quinoa is savory (quiches). Teff is the finest texture so it almost melts during baking and helps bind muffins and quick breads." For pancakes and cookies I find using a gluten free blend  (2:1 parts of whole-grain to starch and xantham gum, for this blend 3 cups of flour needs 1 tsp xantham gum) and then to add some nutrition no more than 25%-33% of personality flour. I really wish I could do almond flour-darn allergy! Elena's Pantry blog uses it for many of the baked goods.

So, I'm still in search of a magical bread machine recipe that comes out great every time-and still puzzling over what I can swap in for powdered milk to get in line with trying to reduce soy in my diet. I haven't seen powdered oat milk or anything at the stores yet. Mayhaps I just need to swap in the warmed liquid milk substitute and use less water...but one thing to change up at a time. I made two loaves these past two weeks, experimenting with making it eggless and the amount of yeast.

Loaf #1 I was warned by Gluten-free Goddess that eggless loaves don't rise as high. Visit her site and site some of her bread machine tips-like using a spatula to do extra mixing.

Loaf #1 is from Food.com.
I left out the egg and used 2 tbsp ground flax seed as suggested by people who tried the recipe on food.com. I used powdered soy milk and 1 packet of rapid rise yeast as that is what I had on-hand. It was very dense, not fluffy like people who followed the recipe raved, but they probably used eggs. The loaf had a slightly sweet flavor though enough that I ate it plain. I selected the quick loaf setting (2 hrs) as suggested and decided to add extra water when I saw it wasn't mixing well.

Loaf #2 was the same recipe but I doubled the yeast that I used. Let me say, it was so ugly I don't want to post a picture. The it ended up almost being a crescent moon shape (fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight...uh,what, no, I never used to watch silly Japanese animes!) But it tasted good-such a good breakfast with avocado slices or nut butter and honey.

Perhaps I'll try with the recipe specified amount of yeast next time. And make sure the dough is more like banana bread batter consistency so it fills the pan evenly like Loaf #1 during mixing phase.

What dish are you trying/would like to master at present? And what was your guilty pleasure cartoon after school?