Sure, you can buy gluten free bread in a lot of shops here in Germany these days, but the amount of plastic packaging is truly sad. So I started experimenting and came up with a super easy recipe. It needs a full day (or night) to raise, and time to cool down after baking – so plan ahead. I make the dough in the morning, put it in the oven in the evening and let it cool down over night so that’s almost a full 24 hours.
The taste and texture reminds me a bit of sourdough bread and I’ve gotten into a routine of making this bread once a week on Fridays to give us fresh bread for the weekend. This is what you need:
- about 1/3 pack of yeast (in Germany that means about 14 g) in smaller pieces
- 500 ml (half a liter) cold water
- 3 tbsp’s honey
- 3 tbsp’s psyllium husk (Flohsamen in German / fiberhusk in Swedish)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tbsp bread spice (Brotgewürz / brödkrydda)
- optionally 3 tbsp’s ground linseeds (Flax seeds / Leinsamen / Linfrö)
- optionally 3 tbsp’s ground pumpkin seeds – I grind these together with the linseeds in my coffee grinder. If you skip these you’ll have to add more flour in the end
- 700 ml (a little less than 500g) buckwheat flour (Buchweizenmehl / bovetemjöl). I have experimented with other gluten free flours (flour mixes) with good results too. More flour if you skip the ground seeds listed above.
- optionally you can now add a handfull of whole pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts or similar in the end to mix things up a bit. But this is just for fun.
Start from the top of the ingredient list and add one after the next into a bowl and stir in-between.
Now cover with a tea towel and leave to raise for 6-8 hours in a non drafty room tempered place. I put my bowl in a kitchen cupboard to keep it out of the way.
Now, unlike normal bread you don’t work the dough. No kneading. You just put some flour on your hands (to keep it from sticking to you) then grab the dough out of the bowl and transfer to a bread pan (that you should grease before). Optionally make a few lines as decoration with a knife, and then cover up with that kitchen towel and leave to raise for another hour.
Bake in 180 C (360 F) for about 1 hour. Then let the bread cool down before cutting. I take my loaf out of the form after baking and leave it wrapped in a towel on the kitchen counter until next morning.
I’ve also made buns (Brötchen / frallor) from this recipe. By getting the raised dough out of the bowl unto my kitchen counter and with a big knife simply cutting it into 8 pieces. Placing these on a baking sheet (Backblech / bakplåt). Letting them rise for another hour and then baking in 220 C (430 F) for 30 minutes. Works perfect!
Enjoy!