Simple Vegan Gluten Free Bread Recipe
By Andrew Gubb
Xanthan Gum
Xanthan gum is the only difficult ingredient to get. I found it by searching “xanthan gum barcelona” until I found a wholesaler dealing with industrial ingredients. You will be able to have it sent to you from an online shop, for sure, if you can't find a local place that stocks it.
Though it's an e-number, most independent sources say xanthan gum appears to be safe. It's a sort of soluble fibre produced by fermenting maize in a certain way.
Xanthan gum helps replace the “gumminess” of gluten, creating a bread which can hold the bubbles from the yeast and become as light and fluffy as normal bread.
I bought a breadmaker just a few days ago. After searching for a good vegan gluten free bread recipe online, I finally found one that seemed to be OK. It didn't have any eggs, or egg substitute, or milk powder, but it still had a list of different flours as long as my arm. Most of them I couldn't buy in humble Barcelona, and one of them I hadn't even heard of before. With a bit of playing with it I managed to make a simple vegan gluten free bread recipe that was actually really good. It didn't make me cry from joy, like the original bread was supposed to. But it was good, and it was bread.
For people like me who can't get sorghum, teff, millet flour, and things like that, I present to you a simple vegan gluten free bread recipe with only 6 ingredients.
Edit: It's been about a year since the first version of this article and I've been making it on a pretty regular basis since then. I edited it with the tweaks I've made, which now make a pretty consistently great bread. I keep getting requests for this from my friends, even the ones who eat gluten, so I can't be too off the mark. :)
Ingredients For Simple Gluten Free Bread Recipe
3 cups of maize flour
1-1/2 cups of maize starch (sometimes called maize flour or corn flour, but it's finer and whiter and is used to thicken custards and gravies; you can verify it's really maize starch by looking at the ingredient list)
3 tsp xanthan gum (see info box)
50 ml (1/5 cup) brown sugar (or, whatever sugar you have in the house)
2-1/2 tbsp active yeast powder (apparently it shouldn't be “rapid rise”, whatever that is)
600 ml / 2-1/2 cups of warm water
Procedure
Mix the dry ingredients together until well blended together and with no lumps. Add the water and stir it in; the amount of water should be just right but in case anything goes wrong just make sure to get it to cake batter consistency.
Put it in your breadmaker, and you know. Get it to breadmake. Some recipe, huh? I know, I know.
If you want to know how to make the simple vegan gluten free bread in an oven, I suggest you check out the original recipe, which explains how to do all that complicated stuff: Vegan Gluten Free Bread Recipe
If you live in America and can buy the extra ingredients, maybe you could try the full recipe and tell me if it really does make you cry, too.
By the way, check out my blog for more awesomeness about life, the universe, and everything: Andrew Gubb's Blog - Indigo Children and Adults, Lightworkers, and Saving The World
techygran 2 months ago
Hi Andrew, this looks very good! I am going to try it! I wonder if you could find teff flour somewhere in Barcelona since it comes from Northern Africa and is used in a lot of soft bread recipes in that part of the world. Maybe worth a look! All the best! Voted you up!