Regular readers of my Weekend Cooking posts may remember that many of our meals are low-carb, and that we converted to a pretty much gluten-free kitchen over a year ago. Between these two dietary restrictions, we have been going without the homemade, whole-grain rolls and loaves of bread that we used to have, alongside homemade soup, on a regular basis throughout the fall and winter.
Eventually, we started adding carbs back into the meal plan, but gluten-free bread seemed difficult and time-consuming to make, and, disappointingly, for the few recipes we did try, the texture was more like a biscuit than a yeast bread.
Until…
*cue fanfare*
King Arthur Flour to the rescue!
Those of you who are sick of hearing how wonderful King Arthur Flour products are, might want to stop reading here, but first, just take a look at the photos of this gluten-free, whole-grain bread made from the KAF Gluten-Free Whole-Grain Bread recipe:
Doesn’t it look almost exactly like “real” bread? Tasted great, too!
Next, I want to try making it with the substitution of KAF’s Ancient Grains Blend for part of the KAF Gluten-Free Whole-Grain Flour Blend.
For white bread, my most successful effort yet, has been Gluten-Free Challah with Poolish made from a recipe from Nosh on This by Lisa Stander-Horel and Tim Horel. It’s similar to this recipe for Rosh Hashanah Challah on Lisa’s blog, Gluten-Free Canteen, but has “poolish” as a starter.
Delicious!
Looking for more recipes? Check out these G/F baking blogs:
Gluten-Free Canteen (on Twitter @GFCanteen)
King Arthur Flour Flourish (on Twitter @KingArthurFlour)
Art of Gluten-Free Baking (@fourchickens)
Happy weekend cooking!
This post is part of Weekend Cooking, a weekly feature on Beth Fish Reads. Click here for more Weekend Cooking posts from bloggers around the world.
That’s good to know that it’s possible to make home-baked bread gluten-free. I’ve really soured on commercially-baked breads — too much salt and too much sugar. Plus, no good flavors except salty & sweet.
Those breads look SO good! I’ve used KA Gluten Free Flour for some things, but never attempted any breads. You’ve inspired me to try. 🙂
Haven’t made a gluten free bread, unless you count rye. I bake my bread with a sourdough starter, though lately I’ve had to add a bit of dry yeast to the overnight sponge as it seems to have lost its uumph, or get up and go.
You can’t talk enough about KAF — I love them! I use their Ancient Grains Mix often in my own (gluten) breads. I haven’t done much GF baking, but I love how successful you’ve been.
Ok, you have me on this one, I think I will try it! I have tried my hand at some gluten free breads but the taste was lacking for us so we had mostly cut the bread out.
This looks like a magnificent loaf!
Like Candace, I am a total convert and fan to the KAF Club! I cannot believe what a big difference it makes to use their products!
Yum! Those bread loaves look delicious. I’ve always been a little intimidated by homemade bread, but I think I need to just get over myself and give it a try. I will be sure to find some King Arthur Flour!
With a name like tinabakesbread, you can hardly help it, can you! The challah was really good, too, and I don’t think anyone would have guessed it was gluten-free.
I recently found out that someone I see almost every Friday night has a sister who works for King Arthur Flour. I felt like I knew a celebrity! 😉
I end up ordering most stuff online from them now, but before we went to gluten-free baking, we used to be able to buy KAF all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour at the market.
It does look the same as ‘real’ bread, and lovely, too. The look of the white loaf reminds me of ciabatta.
I believe it was in the stars that you left that comment on my blog. It’s been suggested to me by my doctor that I should go gluten-free. She says that it helps a lot of people who have my type of autoimmune disease – Hashimoto’s – it’s when your body attacks your thyroid. From what I’ve been reading on The different hypothyroid blogs is that gluten-free really helps a lot of people. So I did some basic research. I have to say I’m a little nervous and feel that I will fail. I have the worst eating habits in the world. It’s basically if I see it and I want it I’ll just eat it. Mostly junk foods. Like chocolate and cheesecake and ice cream and birthday cake and donuts. You get the picture.
I use KAF all the time when I bake but it’s the regular flour not gluten-free. I tried it one time to bake a red velvet cake and I never went back to any other flour.
How hard did you find it to switch to a gluten-free menu? Do you ever eat any of the old foods like a slice of birthday cake or a candy bar? Do you find that your overall health has improved since going gluten-free? What kind of milk do you drink?
Thank you for taking the time to read and answer my questions. I really appreciate it.
It’s difficult, but I’m lucky in that I don’t have to eat a gluten-free diet myself, we just switched our kitchen over to make it a safe, gluten-free environment for when our adult daughter comes for a weekend visit or for the holidays. I hate cleaning, and it was so much more than the normal cleaning before company to try to rid our kitchen and dining room of traces of gluten that we decided to convert. We can still eat the occasional gluten-containing foods and go out to eat, etc. so we’re not following a 100% gluten-free diet ourselves. I used to do a fair amount of baking, and for me, giving up “regular” baking has been the hardest thing, but I’ve found that g/f baking can be very enjoyable, too. There are a LOT of G/F cooking and food blogs out there, and I’ll send you an email with some links!
We’ve been trying to go low carb. So hard for husband and my dad. Both seem to “need” more carbs than me. I keep playing around with keto which I might just do during the day when I only have worry about feeding me.
Looks delicious! I love King Arthur flour too especially their gluten all purpose flour.
I think of low-carb dieting as being good for men — all that steak and salad — but I guess it all depends on what works for each person. I get cranky without my carbs!