Version 2: Whole Grain Gluten Free bread...in a Zojirushi bread machine

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sdean7855 on 15 Apr 2025 at 06:07

Since the previous posting on this, I have struggled through to something of a success: a whole grain (brown rice flour & oat flour) gluten free bread that tastes great and doesn't crumble...but craters somewhat.  Rather than having  people struggle through all  my  prior failures and confusions, I deleted the old post and am creating this new one on my first bread That Works.

Background:

My wife, age 74, has a for-real doctor diagnosed auto-immune neuropathy resulting in brain fog and narcolepsy, Her condition doesn't have any magic bullet, just things amount to a fighting retreat..  Every 2 weeks she has a daylong infusion of immunoglobulin which helps somewhat  AND on top of all this she had GI tract parasite damage when young , has both lactose and gluten intolerance and a gut that we've described as Sinners in the Hand of an Angry Stomach.  Doc has told her that other than the infusion, the only thing that seems to help is a strict Mediterranean diet (which means differing things to different people)  but for sure a lot of restrictions : little to no starch, minimal eggs (a few a week), no sugar, no fat other than limited olive oil, lactose free skim milk, whole grains, no gluten.

So: little eggs, whole grains, no lactose and gluten, the  least starch (potato) possible.  Here is my current working Rx in Word docx format.  It's modeled on the Zojirushi one, changed for my wife's requirements.  My previous abject failures were due to a basic misunderstanding of the difference between regular wheat-and-gluten bread dough and GF dough. The former has to be worked/kneaded to develop the gluten and ends up a cohesive sticky ball, the latter must be almost runny and does not need kneading (no gluten, after all), only complete mixing.  When the mixing is complete in my Zoji machine, it looks like this and the cratered loaf looks like this

GFconsistency after well mixed.  Cratered GF loaf

The internal structure of the loaf looks like this. Cratered GF loaf internal consistency Note the big pores in the center which I presume lead to the cratering.  The dry ingredients are:

•    7.8 oz brown rice flour 
•    5.3 oz oat flour
•    6.24 oz potato starch 
•    .28 oz xanthan gum 
•    3 oz salt 
•    2 tsp active dry yeast

The wet:

•    19.2oz Lactose free skim milk
•    one jumbo egg, room temp, beaten 
•    .5 oz apple cider vinegar 
•     1 oz olive oil 
•    2 oz maple syrup  

Questions:

#1: What can I do to reduce cratering?.  Or rather to reduce pore size in mid loaf....Less syrup, less yeast, some change to the salt?

#2: I wish to have as little starch as possible; can I reduce it?  How important is starch to structure? I would like to increase the flours and decrease the starch,

#3: How much xanthan gum is really necessary? The bread is slightly gummy.

All in all this Rx is a roaring success after my previous abject failures.  It's delicious, though it requires longer toasting than the regular wheat/barley/buckwheat bread I make for myself.

It's worth mentioning that there's no way to adjust the baking temperature in the Zoji.  OTOH, given that there's no gluten to develop in a GF bread, a bread machine isn't really necessary...just mix the ingredients and put it in the oven....so if there's some oven adjustments that would help with cratering I could just mix and bake it.  FWIW, I have the Zoji programmed to mix/knead for 17 minutes, then rise for 35 and bake for 80.
 

Comments, suggestion?  Thank you all for your patience with my blundering around in the dark.

I use a 4x4x4 inch one for experiments and a 9x4x4 inch (USA Pan) for full sized bakes. Read about Caroline's (trailrunner) recent Pullman bakes. She mixes the dough, gives it a few folds and puts it in the pan. When it has risen she either bakes it immediately or puts it in the fridge overnight. 

I've been doing it and it works great for my normal whole grain gluten loaded bread. 

Your bread sounds similar to whole rye bread which has no gluten. They mix it, scoop it into the pan, let it rise and bake.

I hallucinate that it could work for your gluten free bread. Simply mix, pan, rise and bake. 

One trick I have found to prevent the top from sinking on my loaves is to dump it out upside down and leave it that way to cool.

Gary

 

Hi sdean7855

You might consider converting the recipe to a quick-bread by swapping the yeast for baking powder once to try it out.  It would be easier to make and bake.

To replace 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast with baking powder, you would use 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Baking powder is a direct 1:1 substitute for yeast in many recipes. 

Explanation: 

  • Baking powder

    is a leavening agent that reacts immediately when exposed to liquid and heat, unlike yeast which requires a longer rise time. 

  • The 1:1 ratio

    means you can simply measure out the same amount of baking powder as the recipe calls for yeast. 

  • Considerations:

    While baking powder is a simple substitute, the leavening effect might not be as distinct as with yeast, and the baked goods may rise more quickly. 

 

Procedure—Muffin Method
1. Sift together the dry ingredients (a).
2. Combine all liquid ingredients, including melted fat or oil.
3. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and mix just until all the flour is moistened. The batter will look lumpy. Be careful not to
overmix (b).
4. Pan and bake immediately (c). The dry and liquid mixtures may be prepared in advance, but once the mixtures are combined, the
batter should be baked without delay, or loss of volume may result.

Tony

But why would I want to replace the yeast with baking  powder?  What profiteth a man(Mark 8:36).  Will that make the pores more uniform and ensure smaller pores in the middle?

Thanks for the link. I don't bake gluten free but I imagine the tortilla test could be applied to any flour. This makes me want to try one of these flours.

Gary

I really have two issues: the cratering and the wish to reduce the starch...you seem to address only the second or are you saying it would help with the cratering?  The loaves in the link seem a bit like what I used to call Klunk bread, very dense, achieved by the addition of Psyllium husk.  I like the airy loaf I'm getting now....just don't want it to crater.

Which leads to another question: the dynamic of dough expansion in a round loaf vs a bread pan....also in scoring the top.  All my bread making has been in the Zoji, which is sort of like a regular bread pan, see image (this is of my daily wheat/barley/buckwheat bread)

It's 5"x8.5" and about 5"tall.  Would I have less cratering with a bigger pan or less dough?  The problem is that everyone has something that works for them and so tends to say, well, if you did it like this, you don't have problems.  I do have bread pans so I could try various pans

The reply above was only about starch as I don't know how to answer the cratering problem (don't use a bread machine). Cratering, sinking and flying crusts seem to be more prevalent in gluten free baking in general. My thinking on it is that smaller, shorter gluten free loaves give me less problems, and some commercial gluten free loaves are also small and short too, I have noticed. 

When it comes to psyllium gluten free breads, I've managed to achieve similar open crumb to your original bread even when using psyllium (so not always klunkers).

Keep us posted, think we're all invested in your breads now.

-Jon

Can anyone directly address what I think (but what do I know?) is the problem, namely why the pores in the center and top of the loaf are so big...and therefore create a weak structure leading to the collapse? Is there some way or a different yeast to have the pores form more evenly perhaps more slowly.  Could it be that the yeast gets hyperactive towards the end?  Should I try less yeast

Thanks all!!!

They are bigger in the middle and top because it is easiest for them to grow there. 

Maybe in a Pullman pan with the lid on and just the right amount of dough, being constrained on all sides would allow for uniform sized holes?

Gary

I wonder....the dough is thin compared to the normal cohesive ball of wheat bread dough.  Maybe I'll try just one tsp of yeast...it may be than the GF is  so comparitively thin that the yeast has less opposition and so expands with more omph.

Thanks for all the encouragement.

Tune in next week after this loaf runs out for the next thrilling episode of The Mysteries of Gluten Free Bread....

I get my ingredients from azurestandard.com

 

As Gary suggested, I would start with using a different pan. The Zoji pans waste (i.e. conduct) a lot of heat into thermal mass other than the dough (the heavy-duty handles and base). Heat transfer to the center of the loaf is poor. And I would bake it elsewhere, too, at higher temps (375ºF). The Zoji's are notoriously low-temperature bakers (around 300º max). It shouldn't take 80 minutes to bake a loaf of bread.

I haven't found the link yet, but 2-3 years ago I found a good article online comparing several bread machines that have gluten-free modes. The tester didn't point this out, but I later discovered that the ones that gave the best results baked at higher temperatures than the others.

Edit:  Just found the link:  https://gfjules.com/reviews-of-best-bread-machines-for-gluten-free-bread/

She has changed the article quite a bit since first posting it. In the first version, the Zo didn't fare well; the winners were the Panasonic R2550 and T-fal Actibread. Both are excellent bakers; the latter is no longer made.