How Do I Make Bread Without any Gluten?

It is debatable whether gluten intolerance is affecting more and more people or whether doctors have become better at identifying the symptoms of celiac disease and more accurately diagnosing individuals suffering from unexplained gas, stomach problems, vitamin deficiency and others. But one thing is certain - gluten, the plant protein contained in numerous grains, causes over 55 kinds of diseases. For this reason and others, gluten-free bread is becoming ever more popular.

But can we actually make gluten-free bread at home? How and what kinds of flour can we use? These are the questions that healthy eating enthusiasts are asking. To make gluten-free bread, one can use various sources of starch, such as buckwheat, sorghum, sweet chestnut, chickpeas and even peas - there are plenty of choices, it all depends on your taste preference. Usually, different combinations of the aforementioned are used, depending on the desired end result.

For example, buckwheat flour bakes well but some people dislike its peculiar, strong taste and find it difficult to digest. Sorghum flour isn't recommended to be used on its own but when combined with rice flour and chickpea flour, the end result will leave you highly impressed.

Lovers of cakes and layer cakes prefer a mixture of sorghum flour and sweet chestnut flour. It's advised to use pea and chickpea flour only as supplements to mixes between other kinds of flour because they possess quite a strong aroma.

There are several quirks when making gluten-free bread. Firstly, it requires a sticky and moist dough, so don't worry when it ends up like that. You should mix together all the dry ingredients well first and only then begin adding the liquid ones, without stirring too much.

You shouldn't leave the dough to sit because it loses its structure; just put it in the oven right away and bake. When pouring it into the baking dish, the dough must not be thicker than 1" (2.5 cm). Bake the gluten-free bread at 392°F (200 °C) until dry on the inside - check by sticking a toothpick in the middle.