Read First Before Buy Gluten Free Baking Classics Bread Machine
After buying Ms. Robert's other book, Gluten Free Baking Classics, I received this book as a thank-you gift from a friend. Luckily, I already owned the older model Zojirushi V20 which, according to Ms. Roberts, works the same as the newer model she used to test the recipes in this book. Mine just has fewer bells and whistles as it is about 8 years old. I tried her sandwich bread recipe first. It came out fabulous - best loaf of gluten free bread I've made/eaten to date. I didn't measure my loaf, but it is nice sized, at least 4-1/2 to 5 inches high. I substituted grapeseed oil for the canola oil (not a big fan of canola oil) and used sea salt. Next time, I will make the buttermilk variation and double the amount of salt as sea salt is not as "salty" per teaspoon as regular iodized salt. This time I increased the measurement by 50% but it could have used a smidgin more.
After reading her Baking Classics (which I'm also enjoying), I emailed her with several questions regarding substitutions and she was very helpful and quick to respond. Unlike other reviewers here that were disappointed in the number of recipes in the book, I thought the scope of the book covered most everything I would ever want to make in my bread machine. I like having a number of tried and true recipes that use the same core baking mix. It is all too easy to spend lots of money buying specialty flours and other gluten free products. By using her baking and bread mixes, I can order key ingredients in larger quantities, knowing that I will use them up before they turn rancid.
My friend's sister bought her a Breadman bread maker, so the two of us will be experimenting with her machine to see if she can use these recipes as written. At some point, I'll update my review as to our successes and failures.
A great addition to the gluten free baking kitchen! The bread is excellent. Looks good, is light and tastes great. Using the basic sandwich bread receipe, I can have sandwiches again. Really the best gluten free machine made bread I have tasted!
BalasHapusI have a different (Hitachi) bread machine than the author uses but the bread receipe works great in it. The real work here is getting all the different flours for the bread and mixing the flour mix. It is not hard once you have the flours and mix it all together.
I would buy this again.
Bought this book knowing she'd used a Zojirushi and I have a Breadman. Breadman's are fairly well known for "aggressive" mixing and bakes at a much higher temperature, but even with my 10 year old model, I have one customizable program. Because GF flours are very delicate, you just can't mix them for very long -- I've seen a number of producer recommendations to not mix for more than 4 minutes, nor let rise over about an hour. With that in mind, I didn't even bother utilizing Annalise's settings - I considerably shortened the mixing and baking times for my Breadman and increased the rise time by about 10 minutes. Perfection. That being said, the recipies in the book (yes, there aren't many) can really be used as MASTER recipes to convert traditional wheat recipies to GF. For me it was getting the liquid to dry proportions right, as well as the amount of xanthan gum. This book does that very well and the result is a decent size loaf without the gummy, dense texture of many other GF recipies that tastes great and works as both a sandwich bread, or toasts up for breakfast. Just what I was looking for.
BalasHapus
BalasHapusI will be honest... I bought this book not for the recipes but for the instructions for using the Zojorushi breadmaker for GF bread. I'd read the reviews and decided that getting this info was worth the investment of the whole book, since the Zo manual appears to have been written by non-native-English speakers and can be hard to follow!
BalasHapusI'd already purchased the 125 Best Gluten Free Recipes for the Breadmaker book by Washburn and Butt. The recipes all sounded amazing but few of them turned out well - most were under-cooked and shrunken. Boy, am I glad that I invested in this book by Roberts, since her directions for programming the Zo completely FIXED the problems I was having with the recipes from the other book. Here were the three fixes:
1. Roberts recommended using the Preheat Cycle for 10 minutes. This is great because I can use eggs and egg whites right out of the fridge. The other book recommended no preheating cycle, but rather to warm the eggs in water. Warming eggs or leaving them out on the counter for hours makes me nervous, plus, I need to be able to throw stuff in the machine and go to work.
2. Roberts notes that the Rise 3 cycle is almost 20 degrees warmer than Rises 1 or 2. So now I use the Rise 3 cycle instead of Rise 1 cycle and the bread rises significantly higher before baking starts.
3. Roberts also noted that the Zo's bake temp is 250-290, whereas the other book assumes a bake temp of 350. Therefore, she recommends 70 minutes of bake time instead of 60.
By using Preheat, Rise 3, and 70 minute bake time, the Zo has made several perfect loaves using the recipes from the other book. I do intend to try the actual recipes in this book, too. But even if none of Roberts' recipes were to work, the book was worth it to get info needed to program my machine correctly. Thank you, Annalise!
After buying Ms. Robert's other book, Gluten Free Baking Classics, I received this book as a thank-you gift from a friend. Luckily, I already owned the older model Zojirushi V20 which, according to Ms. Roberts, works the same as the newer model she used to test the recipes in this book. Mine just has fewer bells and whistles as it is about 8 years old. I tried her sandwich bread recipe first. It came out fabulous - best loaf of gluten free bread I've made/eaten to date. I didn't measure my loaf, but it is nice sized, at least 4-1/2 to 5 inches high. I substituted grapeseed oil for the canola oil (not a big fan of canola oil) and used sea salt. Next time, I will make the buttermilk variation and double the amount of salt as sea salt is not as "salty" per teaspoon as regular iodized salt. This time I increased the measurement by 50% but it could have used a smidgin more.
BalasHapusAfter reading her Baking Classics (which I'm also enjoying), I emailed her with several questions regarding substitutions and she was very helpful and quick to respond. Unlike other reviewers here that were disappointed in the number of recipes in the book, I thought the scope of the book covered most everything I would ever want to make in my bread machine. I like having a number of tried and true recipes that use the same core baking mix. It is all too easy to spend lots of money buying specialty flours and other gluten free products. By using her baking and bread mixes, I can order key ingredients in larger quantities, knowing that I will use them up before they turn rancid.
My friend's sister bought her a Breadman bread maker, so the two of us will be experimenting with her machine to see if she can use these recipes as written. At some point, I'll update my review as to our successes and failures.