125 Best Gluten-Free Bread Machine Recipes [Paperback]

When we got started with gluten-free bread making, we bought three books and a Zojirushi BBCCX20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine. The first recipe we tried was from the bread maker manual, which turned out heavy and relatively tasteless. Our second recipe was the breadsticks from this book (page 146). We made them exactly as the recipe described, and scored a delicious success.

The best part of this book is its completeness. Each recipe includes full ingredients and instructions, like most books. But it also includes specific instructions on measuring the temperature, customizing machine cycles, etc. We learned a lot by making recipes from this book before trying recipes from our other two books.

To be successful with gluten-free bread making, you need the right machine. Pages 15-19 of this book give specific recommendations on how to choose the right one. If you want my one sentence answer, buy the Zojirushi, which meets all of the requirements described there. You need a machine that can handle gluten-free dough, which is often thicker and heavier than wheat dough. The Zojirushi has two paddles in a horizontal baking tray, instead of one paddle in a vertical tray like many smaller machines. It is also programmable, which helps a lot. More tips:

* Make each recipe EXACTLY as recommended the first time. That will allow you to compare any changes you make with the results obtained by the authors.

* Measure ingredients exactly, particularly flours. Don't pack the flour into the measuring cup, just scoop into the measuring cup and scrape off the excess. If you tap or otherwise pack the flour into the cup, you'll end up with too much of that flour, by perhaps 20% or more.

* Measure temperature after baking cycles, as often recommended in this book.

* If you have hard water (ours is very hard) use bottled spring water for baking. This can make a surprising difference.

Gluten free baking requires practice, but the result is worth the effort. Enjoy!

I just got this cookbook 2 days ago and I have made 2 recipes. If I never found another recipe in it, it would STILL be worth what I paid. BOTH my loaves of bread turned out FANTASTIC!!! I have been gluten free for 14 months now, and I have baked MANY a loaf of bread. NONE, not ONE, has turned out as perfect as the 2 I just made. Yesterday I made the Cinnamon Raisin Bread. Today I made the Grandmother's Brown Bread. I have not ONE negative thing to say about either loaf of bread. They are PERFECT!! I want to tell you what I used and what I did. For one thing, I do not own, nor do I intend to own, a zojirushi-whatever it's called bread machine!! The machine I have is a Sunbeam model 5891. This machine is PERFECTLY adequate to handle these loaves of bread. I do NOT agree that you need to fork out hundreds of dollars on some expensive bread machine. Both recipes that I made required a dough cycle, and a bake cycle. My machine has both. I put in the wet ingredients, turned on the dough cycle, added the dry, helped it get all the crumbs from the corners with a rubber spatula within 2 minutes as directed, closed the lid, let the machine finish mixing, removed the paddle, smoothed the top as directed, let the dough cycle finish, turned it on to bake, took it's temp when done, assured it was at 200 degrees and removed from pan immediately. NO SINKING!!! NO FUNKY AIR POCKETS!! NO DENSE HEAVY SHRIVELED LOAF!! It's GORGEOUS!!! Now, the one other change I made is, most if not all the recipes call for instant bread machine yeast. I buy my yeast in bulk at Costco. It's regular yeast. I'm not about to go out and purchase MORE yeast, so, what I did was whatever water was called for in the recipe, I used WARM water, I added my yeast to the water (increasing to 2 tsp when recipes called for 1 1/2), and put in 1 tsp sugar. I let this bubble while I added the remaining wet ingredients. Then, I poured in my yeast mixture. The recipes in the book call for adding instant yeast to the DRY ingredients. So, basically all I did was activate my yeast first, by adding it to the water (which I warmed) with a teaspoon of sugar, and increasing slightly to make up for the fact that mine wasn't instant. VOILA! The bread is tall, the bread is light, the bread is beautiful. I am SO happy about these 2 loaves of bread, I cannot contain my excitement. I can't wait to try more recipes!! I will try to update after I do! Thank you SOOOOOO much for this book!!! Bread baking has never been easier for me and I was a HUGE bread baker before getting Celiac disease.
UPDATE!! After having a baby and moving twice, I hadn't been doing a lot of baking and was buying Rudi's bread at Costco for a while. Now I am BACK AT IT! And I have my book out again too. I make the Grandma's Brown Bread on p. 30 all the time, subbing flax meal for the rice bran. It turns out great every time in my Sunbeam. I also recently made the cornbread on page 102, adding bacon and corn as suggested. It was delicious, and rose up to be like a regular slice of bread. My boys and I made the breadsticks on page 146, and ate the entire batch immediately! We will be doubling that recipe next time, and it was fun to make! I also just made the Date Nut Loaf on page 204. It is delicous if you want a mildy sweet and nutty bread! Overall, I still LOVE this cookbook and it is the only one I use to bake bread. My Sunbeam bread machine is still working perfectly for these recipes as well!

I purchased this book as a companion to my Zojorushi Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker machine. The instructions and the extensive number of expensive ingredients required were initially daunting to me. For instance, the Zo has a preheat cycle, so it's not as crucial to ensure room-temperature liquids. But the recipe book is pretty stringent about that. Which one is right?

Confused, I started out with a Bob's Red Mill bread mix, just to get a feel for the machine. I used cold eggs right out of the fridge, and the loaf from the mix out great. Encouraged, I started trying out the recipes in this book.

One recipes, the Italian Herb Bread, consistently turns out perfectly, even though I use different herbs than those listed. I was able to get the White Bread recipe to work by increasing the flour by 1/4 cup, increasing salt by 1/4 tsp., and decreasing the water by about 1 Tbsp. It also worked when I replace 1/2 c. of the rice flour with sorghum flour. The Basic White Bread (different recipe than White Bread) also came out OK, but wasn't anything to write home about.

Other recipes, such as Multigrain, Henk's Flax, and Ancient Grains, even when followed to the letter, always come out undercooked in the middle, even when I increase the bake time to 70 minutes, which is the maximum bake time for my Zo. Also, these loaves were either very short (never risen) or deflated (rose and then fell). Even tried moving the Zo away from the door to avoid cold drafts - but no change.

One problem is that the Zo (per manual) bakes between 250-290 degrees, and this recipe book assumes that the bread machine will bake at 350 degrees. If I were standing at the machine when the 70 minute bake cycle was finished, I could try initiating another ten or fifteen-minute bake-only cycle and see if that would work. But I bought a breadmaker because usually I don't have time to stay in kitchen and bake bread. I also can't afford to keep wasting several eggs and cups of expensive ingredients while I mess with the recipe - that's why I bought this book. Very frustrating!

I've tried trouble-shooting according to the Zo manual - decreasing/increasing water, yeast, salt, etc. As noted above, this worked for one recipe. But I still haven't found the sweet spot with the multi-grain recipes, which is sad, since I really prefer them over the bland and less nutritious rice bread recipes. Perhaps the problem may be that it's difficult to achieve the desired combination of baking time + temperature using these recipes with the Zo. I am planning to email the authors to see if they have suggestions as to what other adjustments I might be able to make.

UPDATE OCT 13, 2011: After reading reviews, I ordered "Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine," by Analise G. Roberts. This book gives very specific instructions about the best settings for the Zo breadmaker. Although my model isn't exactly the same as hers, the settings worked perfectly with the recipes from the 125 Best book by Washburn and Butt. Those authors did respond to my email (thank you!) after I had already gotten the fix from the other book, but I wanted to recognize them for excellent customer service and a willingness to work on the problem with me.

What was the difference in settings? Roberts recommends a longer preheat than the 125 Best authors (10 minutes instead of none) and selecting Rise #3, which is 20 degrees hotter than Rises 1 or 2.

So, here are the settings I use on the Zo with the recipes from this 125 Best book:

1. Preheat 10 minutes
2. Knead 20 minutes
3. Rise #3 45 minutes
4. Bake 70 minutes

Because of the Preheat Cycle, I was able to use eggs, egg whites, and yeast right out of the fridge. All other ingredients were room temp. I also used the Zo's recommended method of adding the ingredients to the pan, which differs from the 125 Best authors' method.

Using these new settings, two different loaf recipes from the 125 Best book have turned out PERFECTLY! I'm still keeping the rating at 3 stars, however, since the recipes don't work AS WRITTEN for my machine, but are delicious once I learned how to adjust them.

The moral of the story: if you have having trouble making GF bread, don't give up! It can be done!!

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