Honestly, gluten-free baking is challenging enough when it comes to making bread. Let me explain; Gluten is an integral part of making a sliceable, moist, springy loaf because it is literally the glue that holds a flour-based product together. In bread production, the dough is kneaded and worked to develop gluten strands present in flour, that's why your dough changes from being a sticky mass to a soft, workable ball.
When the gluten-containing flours are removed, so is the process of gluten development. In order to still make a loaf of bread, ya know, bread-like, other things like eggs, xanthan gum, guar gum, milk and cornstarch are added to hopefully hold everything together.
Most times, I have ended up with a loaf of crumbly, dry, uninspiring, falls-apart-when-used-for-a-sandwich type mess.
Now that we have gotten the gluten problem out of the way, let's make it vegan too!
This is my typical thought process when asked to make gluten-free vegan "bread":
1. Awesome, that means no eggs
2. Do we have anything that isn't chickpea flour? ( literally the grossest flour ever)
3. Xanthan gum kinda sucks.
4. No. Please come back when you have a real question.
Anyways, through various struggles of trying to find the perfect crumb for a vegan gluten-free loaf, I finally figured out a winning recipe.
With a few ingredients swaps and discovering the magic of psyllium husk, a slice-able, sandwich proof bread was born.
Buckwheat Bread with Sesame & Seaweed
225g Buckwheat Flour
2 tsp Salt
75g Water
10g Psyllium Husk
5g Fresh Yeast ( or 1/2 tsp dry instant yeast)
213g Oat Milk (or other non- dairy milk)
1 tsp Vinegar
15 ml Maple syrup
1 tbs Sesame seeds
opt - 1 tbs Seaweed Flakes
1. Hydrate the psyllium husk in the water.
2. Gently warm oat milk to about 25c and bloom yeast for 10 minutes.
3. Mix together salt, buckwheat flour, sesame and seaweed flakes.
4. Add the oat milk to the hydrated psyllium husk and fold the liquid into the dry ingredients. The dough will form a dense ball.
5. Spray your loaf pan with pan spray and line with parchment paper. Shape the dough and press it to fit the pan. Cover the bread with plastic wrap and let it rise for 2 hours before baking.
4. When the dough has risen, finish the crust with some sesame seeds and sea salt. Bake at 350 Celcius for 20-30 minutes. the crust should be brown.
5. Remove your bread from the pan, and cool completely before slicing.
Buckwheat has a strong flavour that isn't for everyone, but there are other gluten-free flours you can use instead:
- Cup 4 Cup ( a blend sold in health store)
-Quinoa Flour
- Brown Rice Flour
- Amaranth Flour
- Sorghum
- Chickpea and other bean flours
-Corn flour, Semolina, cornmeal
You can also make your own blends to find the perfect taste.
Happy baking!
Milk & Honey