Saturday, June 12, 2010

A Bread Miracle!

Bette Hagman is a genius.


I have a daughter who is sensitive to gluten.  She doesn't have celiac disease but she does have a disorder that causes her to react to gluten.  Once we became aware of the fact that our daughter can't have gluten we have provided her with gluten-free alternatives.  For bread she eats rice bread.  She may also be sensitive to artificial ingredients, so we have a very limited selection of rice breads that we can buy for her...basically ONE brand of bread which has all natural ingredients.  The bread is okay as toast or fried on a griddle, but it's not great.  I have wanted to give her bread that she can really enjoy eating and thanks to Bette Hagman, tonight I was able to do just that.

Bette Hagman has written an entire cookbook on gluten-free breads.  I have tried my first recipe tonight and it knocks the socks off any homemade white bread I would ever imagine eating.  It was so delicious I was actually a little jealous that she would be getting this all the time while we are stuck eating regular wheat bread!  (Yes, we could all eat her bread, but it's more expensive than wheat so I'll save it just for her...most of the time!)

Here's the cookbook:


The recipe that I started out with is her "Basic Bread".  The ingredient list is far from "basic" let me tell you.  Here's all the ingredients in one place:


Let me tell you what's in this loaf:
-sugar
-egg replacer
-garfava flour
-sorghum flour
-xanthan gum
-tapioca flour
-salt
-corn starch
-apple cider vinegar
-yeast
-eggs
-butter
(and milk or water, your choice)

She has you make this "bread mix"...like that "Make-A-Mix" cookbook from long ago.  I pre-measured pretty large quantities of most of those ingredients shown above and stirred them together in a giant bowl.  Then measured just a couple of cups of the "bread mix" into another bowl, added the remaining ingredients to it and whipped it up good in the blender, poured it into a bread pan, let it rise, baked it a while, and Voila!  A gluten-free bread miracle!

This isn't a great picture but here goes:



The slice looks weird because I spread it with butter to make it look more scrumptious but instead it just looks..."glumpy".  Can you see how "holey" it looks?  It's just the most tender delicious stuff ever.

Thank you Bette Hagman for all your hard work.  My daughter's life is better for it.




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