As good Chileans, we really love bread. It is not uncommon to see bread in every meal of the day, as toasts on breakfast (or as a snack between lunch and dinner), or some fresh bread to accompany lunch and dinner. That is why it is a big deal to find good gluten-free bread for Chileans (we are kind of obsessed with it jajaja).

Shaped and presented in many ways, these rolls have a really nice presentation, and when they are fresh, they are the perfect complement for every meal due to its neutral flavour.

Although they might seem like a not complicated bread to make, it has its own challenges. These rolls have to be soft, fluffy, yet firm with a nice soft crust. This structure is a particularly hard combination to achieve for gluten-free bread, so special measures have to be taken.

First of all, the xanthin gum had to be eliminated. Since it is a gum, it would make the bread to develop a gumminess that doesn’t go well with the soft and fluffy structure. Second, the flour mix has to be one that yields a soft, yet firm and not extremely arrested structure. Lastly, we need to incorporate a milky and buttery flavour to the rolls without interfering in the structure (butter and milk can make bread denser).

To achieve our objective, the psyllium husk, dry skim milk powder, and our gum-free flour mix come into play. The psyllium husk provides a not gummy structure to our rolls stay firm, the dry milk powder will provide an extra fluffiness and softness, while the flour mix is low on fibre achieving overall a tender crumb.

Also, baking powder and lemon juice are used to help the bread rise without developing a strong yeast flavour (remember that we are looking for a neutral flavoured bread). The result is a nicely presented gum-free dinner roll that can be pulled out, perfect for any occasion!

As with any bread recipe, I recommend having a stand mixer with the paddle attachment to make your work easier. If you don’t have one, don’t worry, you can still make the recipe. Just be sure to mix everything pretty well!

To make this recipe, you will need to have a 9-inch round cake pan to leave the dough to rise and form the dinner rolls and a scale to make every roll the same size, so have them handy!

Here we go with the recipe!

The Softest Dinner Rolls

Recipe by Giovanni PamparanaCourse: Breakfast, Lunch, DinnerCuisine: EnglishDifficulty: Easy

Servings

8

servings

Prep time

20

minutes

Cooking time

35

minutes

Here we present you the softest gluten-free dinner rolls that are perfect to eat them with any meal!

Ingredients

• 430 g of our gum-free flour mix

• 50 g dry skim milk powder

• 20 g powdered psyllium husk

• 12 g salt

• 12 g baking powder

• 300 g warm water (around 105-110ºF/40-43ºC)

• 30 g honey

• 10 g instant yeast

• 90 g melted and cooled unsalted butter

• 1 large egg + 1 yolk beaten up

• 2 tsp lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar as a substitute).

• 1 egg + 1 tbsp of water for the egg wash

Directions

• Mix the water, yeast and honey and let it rest for 5 minutes to activate and make sure that the yeast is alive. If you can see foam on top, it means that everything is ok!
• On the stand mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, mix and homogenize all the dry ingredients (flour mix, dry skim milk powder, psyllium husk, salt, and baking powder).
• Once the yeast is foaming, add the rest of the wet ingredients (butter, egg and yolk mixture, and lemon juice) to the dry mixture and start beating the dough up, first at medium speed for two minutes and then raising the speed to high for at least 5 minutes.
• Using a silicone spatula, remove the dough from the bowl borders and put everything together.
• Spray/oil the 9-inch round cake pan and put a piece of parchment paper (or a plate) over your scale.
• Wet with water your hands and start taking dough pieces of around 110-120 g. Give them a rounded shape with your hands. If they start sticking, just wet your hands a bit more.
• Try to give it your best shot rounding them and place them on the round cake pan! Your objective is to form a flower shape with the dough balls! Leave an even space between the balls on the border and the one in the middle so they can rise evenly.
• Once you have all the balls in place, cover them with a plastic wrap. Now it’s time to proof the dough. Leave the dough on a warm and draft-free place for around 1 hour.
  (I use the oven, I preheat it to 120ºF/49ºC, leave the oven door open for a minute, and then I place the dough inside with the door closed and the oven light turned on)
• Once the time has passed, take out the dough and preheat the oven to 375ºF/190ºC.
• Once it’s preheated, brush carefully the dinner rolls with the egg and water wash and bake them on the middle rack for 35 minutes. The internal temperature of the center roll has to be at least 195ºF/91ºC.
• Take the dinner rolls and leave them to cool inside the cake pan for 10 minutes. After that, turn over the dinner rolls over a wire rack, and quickly turn them upright again. Leave them cooling in the rack for another 15 minutes.
• Now it’s time to pull one out and enjoy! These dinner rolls are best if served fresh during the same day!

The post The Softest Dinner Rolls appeared first on The Gluten-Free Corner.

Although the English muffins are commonly found in English speaking countries such as Canada, the UK or Australia, they are not that known elsewhere. For example, I discovered this bread just a few years before I left Chile. Even today, you can’t commonly find them in the grocery stores (maybe just in some specialized ones).

A good English muffin has to be very soft and spongy inside but also needs to have a nice crust that allows the bread to be cut in half to toast it or to make a sandwich without breaking. The spongy crumb allows the bread to adhere to every speed that you use, such as jam cream cheese or some more butter to top it with something else (you won’t regret that extra butter flavour on your bread).

The crust sprinkled in cornmeal will allow us to let it rise without sticking, but also to handle it better and give it an initial browning in a hot pan.

We will be using our gum-free flour mix because we want a soft crumb, but we will add some more fibre to the dough by adding some quinoa flour (don’t worry, it won’t taste like quinoa :)). Also, we will replace the classic xanthan gum with psyllium husk for the structure to avoid the gumminess (we want them to be very tender inside).

For this recipe, we just need two baking sheets lined with parchment paper, and a frying pan large enough to “fry” the rolls before baking.

I recommend to have a scale handy so you can make every bread roll about the same size. Also, having a stand mixer makes the beating of the dough easier. Worry not, that you can also do it by hand, just make sure that you mix and homogenize everything pretty well!

Ok, so now let’s continue with the recipe!

Buttery and Soft English Muffins

Recipe by Giovanni PamparanaCourse: BreakfastCuisine: EnglishDifficulty: Medium

Servings

12

servings

Prep time

1

hour 

Cooking time

35

minutes

These English Muffins are the perfect combination of a buttery flavour with a crunchy outside and soft inside. Perfect for toasting!

Ingredients

• 400 g of our gum-free flour mix

• 100 g quinoa flour

• 45 g dry skim milk powder

• 30 g powdered psyllium husk

• 9 g salt

• 430 g warm water (110-115ºF/40-43ºC)

• 10 g yeast

• 30 g honey

• 2 eggs beaten

• 40 g melted and cooled unsalted butter

• 100 g coarse cornmeal

Directions

• Mix the water, yeast and honey and let it rest for 5 minutes to activate and make sure that the yeast is alive. If you can see foam on top, it means that everything is ok!
• On the stand mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, mix and homogenize all the dry ingredients (flour mix, quinoa flour, dry skim milk powder, psyllium husk, and salt).
• Once the yeast is foaming, add the rest of the wet ingredients (butter and beaten eggs) to the dry mixture and start beating the dough up, first at a medium speed for two minutes and then raising the speed to a high speed for at least 5 minutes.
• Using a silicone spatula, remove the dough from the bowl borders and put everything together.Line up two baking sheets with parchment paper and sprinkle them with 60 g of the coarse cornmeal (30 g each baking sheet).
• Put a plate or a piece of parchment paper on your scale, and using your wet hand, take pieces of around 90-100 g of dough and shape them into balls, placing them afterwards in the cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheets. If they start sticking, just wet your hands with some more water. This recipe should yield 12 English muffins, so place 6 balls evenly distributed into each baking sheet so they have enough space to rise.
• Once ready, cover the balls with a loose plastic wrap (if you put a tight plastic wrap over the balls, it won’t allow them to rise properly). Now it’s time to proof the dough. Leave the dough on a warm and draft-free place for around 1 hour or they double in size (I use the oven, I preheat it to 120ºF/49ºC, leave the oven door open for a minute, and then I place the dough inside with the door closed and the oven light turned on).
• Take out the baking sheets from the oven and preheat it to 350ºF/180ºC.
• With a spatula, flatten the dough balls a bit to give them the classic English muffin form, and sprinkle them with the remainder cornmeal.
• Heat up a frying pan with a tbsp of oil, wiping the excess with a paper towel. Now fry each English muffin at medium heat for 1 minute each flat side. Try to press the English muffins with a spatula a bit more while frying. Be careful not to brown too much the muffins! Return the fried English muffins to the lined baking sheets once ready.
• When you finish up frying all the English muffins, remove the excess cornmeal on the baking sheets. Bake them for 30-35 minutes, flipping them over when they hit the 20 minutes mark to achieve an even browning. Check the internal temperature to be at least 195ºF/91ºC before taking them out.
• Leave them to cool for at least 20 minutes in a cooling rack and enjoy

The post Buttery and Soft English Muffins appeared first on The Gluten-Free Corner.

This gum-free gluten-free flour mix will prove to be a really nice and versatile mix that can be used from cakes, pies, and even bread. Since it contains dried milk, it would not be dairy-free, but this ingredient is essential to provide softness to the dough. Anyhow, there is a nice part of it. This mix is extremely easy to make and requires easy-to-get ingredients.

Xanthan gum is the key ingredient for gluten-free cooking for long. Thanks to this gum, we can achieve nice crumbs and make bread that doesn’t fall apart. The downside of using this gum is that it can provide an undesired chewiness or gumminess in our preparations. I am not saying that it is bad, it is just bad in excess, so the key is knowing how to use it, or how to complement is with other ingredients!

Several options are available to replace or reduce and complement xanthan gum. A commonly used complementary ingredient is the powdered psyllium husk. I really love to use the psyllium husk since it provides less gumminess texture than the xanthan gum, incorporates a lot of fibre to the dough (it’s basically pure fibre!), and allows to get a desirable texture and form. Like all fibres, it absorbs a lot of water. You can try the experiment of mixing a spoon of psyllium husk with water in a glass and wait for a few minutes. I won’t tell you what happens, so I don’t ruin you the fun (jeje).

Other options are to replace the xanthan gum with other gums such as the agar gum and guar gum. Also, you can prepare a replacement made from tapioca starch, called “tapioca gum”, which is elaborated by combining water with tapioca starch to hydrate it and then evaporate the extra water, creating a dense slurry that can give structure to bread preparations. I won’t go deep with these since I don’t use them often.

Coming back to the flour mix recipe, we will use five ingredients to build the mix. White and brown rice flour, potato and tapioca starch, and non-fat milk powder. The proportions are as follows:

• 57% white rice flour
• 18% brown rice flour
• 16% potato starch
• 8% tapioca starch
• 3% skim milk powder

As always, I recommend you making a batch of flour so its easier to use (believe me that we will use this one a lot ).

For 1kg of flour (you can make the amount you want by multiplying the amounts):

• 565 g fine white rice flour
• 175 g fine brown rice flour
• 160 g potato starch
• 75 g tapioca starch
• 25 g skim milk powder

Just be sure to homogenize it well!

The post Gum-Free Gluten-Free Flour Mix appeared first on The Gluten-Free Corner.