Gluten Free Focaccia Bread
Gluten free just gets easier and easier. For years I struggled with how hard it was to do gluten free. It was scary and when I looked at the ingredients list on the back of packages or in recipes I was discouraged. Some of you might even remember that I worked in a wonderful gluten free bakery for one year. It was a great experience, even though I gained 25 lbs. The products were amazing, but not to healthy.
And I believe that if you make it to healthy you can compromise the experience, but for me there has to be some nutritional value, especially if I am going to indulge a lot.
I love baking breads. Focaccia is one of my very favorite breads. Easy to make and oh so tasty. It is really a remarkable comfort food. Right out of the oven warm or cooled down, it makes no difference to me. I love it so much.
Did you know, I have published a gluten free cookbook. Everyday Baking, and it really is a wonderful book. I use it frequently, especially since my recent move to Utah. In my community there are many gluten free and it is great to be able to handle the needs of friends without stress.
The greatest obstacle in doing gluten free is changing your mind set from dough to batter. Gluten free breads are batters, not doughs. Bread dough gets it’s texture and crumb from the gluten. Gluten free breads get the texture from being a wet egg batter. Once you realize that it becomes easy to create and make wonderful gluten free breads.
This bread is so amazing. Light and airy, you would never know that it is gluten free. The way I make it is that I create a wet batter in my WonderMix and actually scoop it out of the bowl with a large ice cream scooper unto a well gluten free floured parchment paper and with wet hands I pack it down to about 1.5 to 2 inches. I let it rise and with my fingers I poke holes into the top and cover it with olive oil, herbs, and kosher salt. I bake it in a hot oven for about 15 minutes.
My formula for the flour is three or more gluten free grains. Like oats, amaranth, brown rice, sorghum, or buckwheat. I blend the grains together and grind them on the pastry setting with my WonderMill. The flour is amazing and I use it for all my gluten free baking.
Gluten Free Focaccia -Recipe
- 1.5 cups warm water
- 1/2 cup potato starch
- 5 eggs
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 teaspoons Zantham Gum
- 1 tablespoon instant yeast
- 4 cups fresh ground gluten free flour, a blend of three or more works well.
(Brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, Sorghum, teff, or buckwheat) Ground in your WonderMill on the Pastry setting.
Reserve 1/2 cup flour for baking the Focaccia
Place ingredients in WonderMix Bowl and mix well. This dough should be more like a heavy cake batter. Not like a bread dough. Mix well for 2 minutes with dough hook and dough diveder if you have one. Knead well.
On flour covered parchment paper, scoop desired amount of dough and sprinkle with flour and pat down into a thick 1to 2 inch circle. Let rise to double and with your fingers, place small indents in top of bread. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with herbs and kosher salt. Place in oven on hot pizza stone or bake on pan in a 400 degree oven keeping it on the parchment paper. Bake until golden brown.
Yeild 2 large Focaccia Breads