Finally a gluten-free bread that is egg-free, dairy-free, vegan, easy to make, soft, bready and utterly delicious! This bread is more nutrient-dense than the store-bought gluten-free breads which often contain lots of additives and fillers. It's also easy to make, needing very little hands on time. Just mix it up in a food processor, leave it to rise for a couple of hours and bake in a dutch oven with a little boiling water for a lovely thin crust. Soft and squidgy when fresh but it also makes the best gluten-free toast! After a day or two, keep this bread sliced in a bag in the freezer and then toast it straight from frozen and slather it with nut butter for a healthy vegan gluten free breakfast whenever you fancy it!
This bread recipe is really my baby. I have developed this recipe over the last decade through trial and error and a massive excel spreadsheet!
When I first went gluten-free, I used to buy all the shop versions of gluten-free bread but I found them really unsatisfying. They all seemed like they were made of air and I would find myself hungry again very soon after eating it. So, I started baking my own bread following recipes I found online and in my many gluten-free cookbooks.
Vegan Gluten Free Yeast Free Bread Recipe
Once I became more comfortable baking gluten-free bread, I started experimenting and adjusting the various different elements of it. I compared lots of different recipes and researched the various ingredients to find out what function each had in the recipe. Then I started an excel spreadsheet so that I could test each element of my recipe and record the results each time, checking the crumb, bounce, gumminess and taste of each loaf. It’s so funny looking back at this spreadsheet that was started back in 2014 and has notes on over 50 different iterations.
I love this recipe because the bread is flavourful with a fantastic bready texture. For me, gluten-free bread should be doughy and chewy, and should feel like you are really eating something not just an airy light piece of bread that dissolves in your mouth. I want it to be soft but firm enough to hold its own, cold with some vegan cream cheese or hummus but also hold up well to toasting and eating with vegan butter and peanut butter slathered on top.
Going vegan meant that I had to adjust my gluten-free bread recipe quite significantly. I had to remove the eggs, milk and butter. Milk and butter are pretty easy to swap to vegan alternatives but the egg swap was more problematic!
Delicious Low Fodmap Multigrain Sandwich Bread; Gluten Free, Dairy Free
Most gluten-free bread recipes rely heavily on egg for the bouncy texture and also for the rise. You see, gluten-free flours are heavier and more dense than wheat flour so you usually need the eggs to provide more lift. Eggs are a leavening agent and also help to provide the structure for holding the air bubbles released by the yeast when it’s feeding on the sugars in the dough (the proteins in the egg help somewhat in replicating the structure that gluten would usually provide – although the structure from egg is not stretchy like gluten).
Now you probably already know that usually we can replicate the function of eggs in vegan recipes with various ingredients like aquafaba (chickpea or bean cooking water), apple sauce, flax seeds mixed with water, etc. I already had flax seeds in my original recipe (to add that stretchiness to replicate the gluten in wheat bread) so, at first, I tried just increasing the flax seed quantity. Unfortunately, it just made the bread really heavy and not as bouncy as I wanted it. After yet more research, I discovered that psyllium husk was the way forward and, after yet more recipe testing and more columns in the spreadsheet, I found the perfect ratios of flax, psyllium and water to get just the right kind of doughiness in the bread.
I think this works really well because the psyllium is excellent at absorbing water (you’ll see when you whisk it together that it goes to a gel-consistency very quickly!) so it makes a really moist dough. This means that there is a lot of steam inside the bread when it is baking which means lots of little air pockets and less dense bread. So, finally I have ended up with a gluten-free bread recipe that is also vegan! And I can tell you, there aren’t many of those around!!
Apple Pull Apart Bread (gluten Free Vegan)
As with all gluten-free bread recipes, you will need a variety of different flours for this recipe (although if you have a good food processor, you can just whizz up the wholegrains to make it into flour - 1 min/sp.10 for Thermomix users). This is because no gluten-free flour works in the same way as wheat so you need to combine various flours to get a similar effect. Each flour uniquely affects the bread's taste and texture. This combination of flours is the one that I like the best (with some scope for switching them up, as you’ll see if the next section).
Wholegrains are healthiest as they contain the outer part of the grains that have all the fibre and nutrients in them. However, starches are also needed to provide lightness of texture so that you don’t get a loaf that’s as heavy as a rock! Commercial gluten-free breads include a lot of starch because it makes a very light, soft loaf. But the refined starches have all the nutrients stripped out so that the bread is full of empty calories, which is why you often get hungry again very soon after eating them.
So, you need to balance the desire for a light texture with the desire to make a healthy and satisfying loaf of bread. I find that a wholegrain to starch ratio of 3:2 gets that balance about right for my liking.
Blond Sandwich Bread Recipe: Grain Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free
This is a much simplified gluten-free bread recipe. I have a busy lifestyle and I just don’t have time to make my bread unless it’s super easy to fit into my life! So, whilst it may not be the absolute perfect way to make bread, it’s pretty good and super simple! Over the years, I have significantly reduced the hands-on work for making this bread to keep each step to something I can do quickly while I’m popping to the kitchen to make a coffee! So, the basic steps for making this bread are:
You may notice that this doesn’t follow the normal double rise method that you would use for wheat bread (knead, first rise, punch down, prove, then bake). That’s because all those processes are meant to aid the development of gluten. When you are using only gluten-free ingredients, there is no need for any of that! This makes gluten-free bread much quicker and easier to make! (If you have a bread machine, you will see that the gluten-free option is always much shorter than the others for this reason). So, we can dispense with all the kneading, long rises and just mix, rise and then bake!
I’m sure you know what to do with gluten-free bread but if you need any more ideas, I love my bread toasted and spread with any of the following:
Everyday Gluten Free Bread (dairy Free + Egg Free)
It is also fantastic served with scrambled tofu for an indulgent weekend breakfast! Baked beans on toast is always a favourite for a quick nutritious supper in our household too!
If you find any of your bread has gone stale before you used it (or before you popped it into the freezer), just chop it into cubes and put it in a bag in the freezer to use for croutons. See this recipe for how to make delicious homemade croutons very easily in the oven or the airfryer.
This bread keeps at room temperature for 2 days but is best kept frozen after that. Homemade bread (with or without gluten) goes stale and develops mould more quickly than commercial breads (because it doesn’t have any artificial preservatives in it). I usually leave it in a bag on the counter for a day but after that I slice it completely and put it in a plastic bag to store in the freezer. (I re-use the same plastic bag for each new loaf). Then you can just toast the bread slices directly from the freezer. They do take a little longer to toast this way so you may need to give it two goes in the toaster!
Gluten Free Yeast Free Bread Recipe
One tip for bread that has gone a little stale… make croutons and keep them in the freezer! When I have a little bit of bread that has gone a bit too hard to want to eat as toast, I just cut it up into small cubes and stick it in a bag in the freezer. Then next time I have soup, I can take these cubes out, mix them with a tiny bit of oil and a sprinkling of salt and garlic powder, and throw it in the air fryer (still frozen) for 5 minutes. It makes the best
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