Allergen-free whole grain bread: Part 3
Remember the challenge I had using my old hand mixer to make dough for the first bread trial?
Well, I decided that this bread-making enterprise was a good excuse to replace the old relic with a beautiful heavy-duty KitchenAid stand mixer. That’s reasonable, right? Right!
So, this morning I excitedly began bread trial #3 with my new Classic Plus mixer (the least expensive model: I am, after all, a student). I decided to continue using the recipe from bread trial #2, this time replacing the white flour with the King Arthur gluten-free flour I had had reasonable luck with the first time. To get some additional lift I added 2 teaspoons of baking soda combined with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar: one of the egg-replacement options designed to cause dough to rise.
Mixing the dough was a breeze: I just had to let the machine do its thing and watch, mesmerized by the action of the dough hook as it created a beautifully cohesive blob out of the individual ingredients. Honestly, it was such a satisfying sight that I could almost happily continue to create one doorstopper after another.
Yes, this loaf, like those in trial #2, turned out disappointingly dense. Worse than the previous ones, actually. The “crust” was thicker and extremely dry, the center tasted as though it was completely uncooked, and the bread smelled unappetizingly acrid.
It was, perhaps, unfortunate that I chose to make a batch of muffins while this bread was baking, and before I discovered the results. As I’ve mentioned, I love muffins, and for years I’ve longed to find a recipe that I could adapt for my food-sensitivity-related needs. I routinely bake a version of Joy the Baker’s Vegan Pumpkin Walnut Bread for my kids, usually in the form of muffins, and frequently adapted slightly by using banana instead of pumpkin and decreasing the sugar content.
Since becoming gluten-free, I have made a version of this recipe for myself by adapting it like this:
2 cups gluten-free whole grain oat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder* (*avoid with corn allergy)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 very ripe bananas
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
I have experimented with also throwing in ground flax and/or chia seeds to try to bind this concoction, and the result is invariably a reasonably tasty but extremely gummy muffin. I eat them, but I don’t believe anyone else would.
I was very excited to try making these muffins with the King Arthur “whole grain” gluten-free flour, hoping that this combination flour, which is not completely whole grain, would help decrease the gumminess. For a bit of binding I added 2 tablespoons of psyllium husk, rather than flax or chia, as it occurred to me just this morning that I should try to avoid adding seeds to my allergen-free recipes!
The muffins mixed nicely (I love my new mixer!) and came out of the oven looking, and smelling, fine. The texture was a bit crumbly, along the lines of cornbread, with an initial flavor of banana and slight sweetness. But almost immediately that flavor was replaced by the overwhelming taste of baking soda/powder, an unpleasant sensation that increased as it lingered. I was forced to eat a cookie dough truffle just to remove the bitterness from my mouth. A short time later I realized that my entire kitchen was filled with that terrible taste in olfactory form, and I was obliged to remove both the bread and muffins and place them unceremoniously in the compost pile.
It would have been a completely disappointing day if I hadn’t had some luck making rice pudding.