Tag Archive for 'Gluten-Free Flour'

Product Review: Udi’s White Sandwich Bread

Our search for the perfect gluten-free bread continues with heavyweight contender Udi’s. Udi’s Bread is in Denver, and we heard about them way before this. As a matter of fact, they contacted us at some point, and then we got back to them, but we never really got it together to try some of their bread for a review until now. Now that you can buy their bread at Whole Foods in Portland, we figured it was high time for us to give them a shot.

Udi's White Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread

Long time readers will know that we find store-bought gluten-free breads disappointing on the whole, and have resorted to making our own with a bread machine. Recently I’ve been doing a series of posts detailing our experiments with bread recipes from around the Internet, and how they work out with our tester Zojirushi bread machine in the Gluten Free Portland labs.

Udi’s markets their white sandwich bread as their original style, light and fluffy white bread. So we’re probably looking at something that will approximate American white bread. Here are the ingredients:

Filtered water, tapioca starch, brown rice flour, potato starch, canola oil or sunflower oil, egg whites, tapioca maltodextrin, evaporated cane juice, tapioca syrup, yeast, xanthan gum, salt, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, cornstarch, calcium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate), mold inhibitor (cultured corn syrup, ascorbic acid), ascorbic acid (contains cellulose and cornstarch), enzymes. Contains eggs.

We’re becoming a lot harder to please when it comes to bread ingredients, and the first thing that jumps out at me when I look at this list is that two of the three gluten-free flours in use here are starches. The first being tapioca starch. It seems like there’s something about making gluten-free bread where you need starch to do it, so I’m used to seeing tapioca starch in bread recipes, but it’s not something you want to be eating lots of, and to me, having it as the first ingredient is not a good sign. A quarter cup of tapioca starch is 100 calories, has 26 grams of carbohydrates, no fiber, no protein, and basically no vitamins and minerals except a little iron. Potato starch is even worse. Compare this to a quarter cup of sorghum flour, which has 120 calories, and has 26 grams of carbohydrates, but has 3 grams of fiber, 4 grams of protein, and also has iron, and B-Vitamins. See the attached chart on this helpful page for more information about the nutritional value of alternative grains.

Udi'd Gluten Free White Bread Slices

So OK. OK. Sometimes you just want some bread to make a hamburger or a PB&J and you don’t mind that it’s not really the best thing for you. Let’s talk about taste. Sienna and I both liked it. Being a white bread, it’s on the flavorless side. We didn’t find any strange aftertastes. As far as something you can buy at a store to make a sandwich out of, I would say that this bread has got the Trader Joe’s gluten free rice bread beat hands down. I would put it as equivalent or maybe a little better than Whole Foods own gluten free bread. Whole Foods has got a weird texture problem. Udi’s bread toasts OK and is good with some butter on it. As a replacement for white bread it does do the job, so we can see what the big deal is about.

When compared to bread that you can make at home, though, it’s still not really there for me. I would also say that you should check out Jensen’s Breads, which are available around town, are locally made, and are better.

We want to know: Do you have a favorite store-bought gluten-free bread? How about a preferred flour mix or bread recipe on the Internet? Send us a link. Let us know in the comments!

Bookmark and Share
Published on July 16, 2010 in Product Review. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Bread Recipe: Gluten Free Cooking School Sandwich Bread

Here’s our next candidate in the series of gluten-free bread recipes we’re reviewing here. We’re looking for the best gluten-free bread recipe that the Internet has to offer. This next one comes to us via Gluten Free Cooking School dot Com and is their “Really Good Sandwich Bread.” I picked this one simply because it came up as number one in a Google search and looked like a basic gluten-free white bread. As we’ll be doing with all the recipes in this series, we used our bread machine to bake it. (Shameless plug: don’t miss our guide to gluten-free bread machines.)

I’m not going to include the recipe here. I followed this one to the letter. To make the bread, you need to make up a batch of their all-purpose gluten-free flour mix, here, and then add basic bread ingredients that go in most breads. The one item that’s a little troublesome is that the flour mix calls for masa harina. This is a special kind of corn meal that you can usually find in the Mexican food area of your local supermarket. Masa is corn (usually hominy) that has been boiled with lime and water and then dried. In Mexican cooking, this is what corn tortillas, tamale shells, and other corn items are made from. Strangely, our local Whole Foods didn’t carry it. Fred Meyer transferred me all over the store looking for it, and finally told me that they didn’t have it. I ended up going there for something else later that day, and it turned out that they did have it on the shelf. The proportion of masa harina in the mix is pretty low, and I think that a person could probably just substitute a fine corn meal. Later note: we heard from the author that a better substitute is almond flour.

In the recipe, they tell you to throw the mixed ingredients into your bread machine and set it to the “80 minute setting.” This ends up being infuriatingly general. I would have liked to have known what that meant. For example, does that mean 20 minutes of rising and 60 minutes of baking? Or 20 minutes of kneading, 20 minutes of rising, and 40 minutes of baking? Who knows? Many times with recipes on the Internet, a person can check the comments section for more information or better ways of doing a recipe. Unfortunately, this recipe has almost 300 comments, half of which seem to be people discussing baking the bread without a machine. The more I read, the more confused I got. Later note: The author has updated the cooking time information so that it is very clear.

I would tell you what we did, except that it didn’t really work. We ended up having some bread machine problems, too. When we tried to program 20 minutes of rising and 60 minutes of baking, our machine turned itself off after the rising. It was another 20 minutes before we discovered that the bread was cooling instead of baking. Here’s what we ended up with (another short loaf).

White Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread

Definitely take my review with a grain of salt, because the bread didn’t come out the way it probably should have. That said, if you’re looking for a relatively flavorless, inoffensive, white bread then you’ve come to the right recipe. The bread by itself tastes a tad strange, but when paired up with other things the flavor fades into the background. The flour mix is basically corn, brown rice, and soy flour, which is probably more nutritious than some of the breads that are simply rice four and starch. So that’s a good thing.

On the down side, the bread doesn’t really brown in a toaster, and I wasn’t really impressed with it as toast. As a sandwich bread, we tried it with hamburgers, BLTs, and grilled cheese sandwiches with our Panini press. (After a month-long Panini grill search, we got a Cuisinart Griddler, which we’ve been very happy with.)

Gluten-Free Panini Sandwich

I’m kind of surprised at how popular this bread seems to be. Neither of us was very impressed by it. The bread is better than the Trader Joe’s gluten-free rice bread, but that’s not saying much. I personally preferred the Bob’s Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread Mix, which we reviewed here. A person would be much better served by the Teff Bread that we reviewed last time, our favorite gluten-free millet oatmeal bread, or any of the breads we’ve tried from Gluten Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine by Annalise G. Roberts, which we reviewed here.

This is just a very long-winded way of saying that neither of us liked this bread, and I’m scratching my head over why it’s so popular. At the same time, it didn’t really turn out right, so maybe more testing is called for.

Easy to Make: 2 out of 5
Sandwich Bread: 2 out of 5
Toast Bread: 1 out of 5
Overall Score: 1 out of 5

We are always looking for another bread recipe to make. Do you have a favorite gluten-free bread recipe? Send us an email or leave a comment here!

Bookmark and Share
Published on May 20, 2010 in Gluten-Free Bread. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Gluten-Free Bread: Dark Teff Sandwich Bread

I’ve decided to start a new series of posts dedicated to trying out different gluten-free bread recipes from around the Internet. Basically all the gluten-free bread you can buy at a store is unsatisfying, so we make our own using a bread machine. Here’s our guide to gluten-free bread machines. We also use the bread machine program recommended by Analise Roberts in her book about cooking bread with bread machines.

We already have a favorite gluten-free bread, but I think that it’s good to experiment and try new things. You never know when you’re going to find something better. This week I tried out an interesting recipe from the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen. It’s their Dark Teff Sandwich Bread. I made some small changes to the recipe.

1 ½ cups warm water
1 package dry active yeast
1 teaspoon organic cane sugar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
2 cups teff flour
½ cup arrowroot powder
½ cup tapioca flour
1 ½ teaspoons xanthan gum
¼ teaspoons sea salt

I’ve bumped down the salt quite a bit and removed some of the sweetener choices. The star of the show in this bread is teff. Teff is known for being very nutritious. Among other things, it is high in phosphorus, has a very high calcium content, and contains plenty of iron, copper, aluminum, barium, and thiamin. Teff is also high in protein. Arrowroot powder and tapioca flour are both more starchy flours, and aren’t amazingly good for you. Here is nutrition information for teff, tapioca, and arrowroot.

Teff Flour for gluten-free bread

The recipe on the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen’s site is for making the bread by hand, but my plan is to make all these recipes with our bread machine. Mostly because that’s the way it’s going to work for us in “real life.” As such, I’m going to rewrite the directions here. Basically, it amounts to mixing the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. Then adding them to your breadmaker per the manufacturer’s instructions.

In addition to measuring, one thing we’re especially careful about is making sure that everything is the proper temperature. So the water needs to be between 100 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m pretty sure that everything else can be added at room temperature.

Teff Bread Loaf

Here’s the finished loaf. Yes. Yes. We were underwhelmed by the amount it rose. I want to keep in mind that a short loaf like this could very well be my fault. With bread, it’s hard to see something as a pattern until you’ve made the same recipe a number of times. It could also be the program I’m using on the bread machine. As could be expected from the amount it rose, the bread is pretty dense. Teff has a sort of sour nutty flavor, and the finished bread tastes almost like a mild dark rye bread.

Teff Bread Chicken Sandwich

The name of the bread includes “sandwich,” which to me means that it’s probably going to be a lighter bread that doesn’t have so much flavor that you can’t taste anything else in your sandwich. We found that to be the case with this bread. The bread doesn’t really toast much, but on the good side that means it isn’t easy to burn in the toaster. While it doesn’t exactly shine with some butter and honey or jam on it, the bread is very good for sandwiches.

Gluten Free Teff Bread with Eggs

My favorite application for this bread so far has been with eggs. There’s something about the flavor of the bread that makes it go really well with egg yolks. I bet it would make for a great egg sandwich. Sienna and I both liked this bread and we agreed that we should do some more experimenting with it. Here’s how it does with our new-fangled scoring system.

Easy to Make: 3 out of 5
Sandwich Bread: 3 out of 5
Toast Bread: 2 out of 5
Overall Score: 3 out of 5

We’re almost out of bread and are looking for another recipe to make. Do you have a favorite gluten-free bread recipe? Send us an email or leave a comment here!

Bookmark and Share
Published on May 5, 2010 in Gluten-Free Bread. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

© 2008-2010 Gluten Free Portland Oregon All Rights Reserved