Beth’s Four-Flours Gluten-Free Bread

Last Sunday morning, Beth cooked up a fabulous breakfast to celebrate Audrey handing in the final copy of her thesis - remember Audrey? She has been writing about the Sarawak cloth-weavers and she made us that delicious Laksa and the Mohinga Fish Soup.

The piece-de-resistance of Sunday’s breakfast was, in my opinion, the Four-Flours Bread that Beth made from scratch, with her own special combination of gluten-free flours. It was absolutely yum-oh: it toasted well and harmonised perfectly with poached eggs, fried mushrooms and spinach & fennel.

















Here’s Beth’s Secret Recipe:
Four-Flour Bread Ingredients for a 1 kg loaf.

Wet ingredients:
water 400 ml
olive oil 3 tbs
sea-salt 2 tsp
maple syrup or carob molasses 2 tbs
soy milk 2 tbs

Dry ingredients:

Mix these four following flours together:
- Besan (chickpea) flour 1 cup
- Buckwheat flour 1 cup
- Brown rice flour 1 cup
- Potato starch 1 cup

With:
- 2 tbs xanthan gum
- 2 tsp batatis rhizome powder (Shan Yao - Wild Mountain Yam)
- 2 tsp Tandaco yeast

Seeds/Grains to be added later:
- 2 tbs linseeds
- 2 tbs kibbled oats


Directions for Bread-maker:
Beth uses a Breville Baker's Oven: Electronic Bread Maker (model BB280) that she bought from the Breville Factory Outlet in Ultimo, near the Sydney Fish Markets. She says it was a cheap one that she bought just to see if she was really 'into' bread-making. And now that she knows she really IS into bread-making (!) she says she will probably upgrade sometime to a model with a retractable blade, as the BB280 blade leaves a hole in the bottom of the loaf.

Add ingredients in the given order above, wet ingredients followed by dry, making sure that the yeast is the last one in. Set to Basic Bake (2 hours), with preferred crust setting.

The machine will take off and start mixing all the ingredients, letting them 'rest' for the appropriate times for the yeast to rise etc. You can watch if you want through a little window in the top - great for entertaining the kids on a rainy day (or is that only pre-Nintendo kids?) - when the blade starts kneading, the dough comes together in a ball and it is like watching a fat hamster scurrying around the barrel.

After the second rising (about 20 minutes) the bread maker will beep and you add the grains, mixing them into the dough for a more even spread. Fancier model bread-makers have an auto function for adding seeds at this stage - you put them in a little chamber and they are released at the appropriate time.

Then it's a matter of putting your feet up and waiting for the house to be filled with that oh-so-delightful smell of fresh baking bread.

In a later post, we will investigate the traditional 'made by hand' bread method. My friend Stevie in Newcastle is a dab hand at bread, having made fresh, crusty loaves for his family of six for years. He knows his way around both the hand-kneading processes, as well as several bread-making-machines. Look out Steve - the bloggstudio is coming!!

Beth was saying yesterday that she is keen to try making a gluten-free Pizza base that the Breville instruction book says can be made in the bread-maker.

Mmmmmm - Yum-oh!