This is the first post on Gluten-Free Bread Machine dot com. I’m going to go on and on about why it’s really great to have a bread machine, and especially what’s awesome about it if you’re being gluten-free. It doesn’t matter really, how sensitive you are. So far, the best GF bread I’ve had was the bread I make in my own breadmaker. Store-bought gluten-free bread is usually too dense and/or too dry. Or it’s that nasty rice bread. There are the breads in the refrigerated section that are a little better, but they tend to be stunted little excuses for bread. Nasty. I actually like the Trader Joe’s rice bread, but seeing as how I can bake better bread at home, it doesn’t make any sense to buy it. Here’s some more about the subject:
Love Fresh Bread? Get a Bread Machine – Ah! Who doesn’t love fresh bread? I do. You would have to be crazy not to love cutting a slice off a freshly baked loaf of bread and spreading some butter or honey on it. That’s what it’s all about. It still has that fresh-baked bread smell and flavor. Nobody wants to bake bread every day (unless they do it for a living) but using a bread machine makes it a snap to bake bread every week. For an extra-luxurious option, you can set a timer on many breadmachines that will make it start in the early morning. That way you can have bread waiting when you get up for breakfast.
Baking Bread is Easy – I used to bake my bread by hand. It’s fun to knead dough and let it rise and all that. But until you get a routine down, it can be a pain. For one thing, kneading can be problematic. You don’t want to do it too little or too much. Also, it can be hard to make sure your bread is rising at the right temperature. Sometimes things just don’t work out and there are so many variables involved, it can be impossible to know what went wrong. Breadmakers take a lot of the guesswork out of the process. As long as you can measure your ingredients accurately, you’re pretty much set.
You Control Your Ingredients – The are a lot of manufacturers getting into the gluten-free game. Unfortunately, a lot of them are using shared equipment, and there’s no way of knowing how well they are cleaning their equipment, unless they are batch-testing their products. So you get cross-contamination. When you make your own bread, you control what you put in your bread machine, and how clean it gets in between when you bake. In addition, you can make recipes that are far more nutritious than rice bread!
Bread Machines Control Temperature - If you’re baking bread in winter, it can be hard to find a place in your kitchen to let your bread rise. I used to have a gas stove, and the pilots there would keep things warm enough. Now I don’t have that anymore, and my oven can’t be programmed to keep a temperature that is low enough to make bread rise. Bread machines keep the dough at the right temperature for the right time, so you don’t have to worry about that. In addition to that, many bread machines will also bring your ingredients to the right temperature even before mixing everything up.
One Advantage of a Programmable Breadmaker – A lot of bread machines aren’t very programmable. Some have different courses that you can use to vary certain factors. If you’re going to be making gluten-free bread, you need to at least be able to control the amount of kneading that happens. The reason for this is that kneading bread is all about getting the gluten going. Since there isn’t gluten in GF bread, then you don’t want to knead it much.
Bake Healthier Bread – Yes. Yes. Read the ingredients on that loaf of rice bread and you will find that it is mostly potato starch, tapioca starch, and/or rice flour. It’s not exactly bad for you, but compared to wheat, it’s not good for you either. There are a ton of great gluten-free bread recipes available on the Internet. You can make your own bread with millet, buckwheat, teff, quinoa, and bean flours. My current favorite bread uses a lot of millet and is flavored with a little molasses. It’s awesome and much more healthy.
Bread Machines are Fun – Besides making bread, a lot of breadmakers are good for things like making jam. They’re also good at producing dough to make pasta or pizzas. They’re also a lot of fun just for making bread. They take a lot of the drudgery and worry out of it. I like making a loaf of bread by hand here and there, but at the same time, it’s not something I want to do every week. I just don’t have that kind of time. Instead of doing all the drudge work, you get to do the fun things, like adding sunflower or pumpkin seeds to a recipe just to see how they go.