Sometimes you do not have the time to let bread rise for eight hours, but you also would like to enjoy the deliciousness of fresh bread. Enter: a brown "quickbread" recipe. This bread is fluffy, delicious, and tastes like "real" bread. . . but its gluten free! It tastes great with butter straight out of the oven, and also makes good toast the next morning.

And as an added bonus, it will fill the house with that great fresh bread smell.

The Gluten Free Bread Journey

I began looking for a gluten free bread recipe when I realized how bad the store-bought gluten free options were. Sure, they aren't too bad if you toast them up and only have a slice of storebought bread a few times a year. But regularly? No thanks. They taste like cardboard, and the texture is just... wrong.

Gluten free flour mixes - especially bread mixes - often have a similar problem. I was horrified the first time I felt the texture of a gluten free flour mix. It was a white flour replacement and it was nothing but starch. My baking attempts up until going gluten freen had turned towards trying to do more whole grain baked goods, and the starch heavy mix felt wrong.

Starch has its place, of course. It will make your loaf rise more readily, and be less dense. Its great. But it needs to be balanced with flours, grains, and seeds which have texture, like brown rice flour, psyllium husk, and flaxseed. No gluten free mix will ever be exactly the same as a whole wheat blend, but it is possible to achieve the look, feel, and nutrition of whole grain bread.

"Brown" Bread

This bread is nice and brown, speaking of its great whole grain properties, right? Wrong. The dark color is from the blackstrap molasses. Brown rice flour is actually pretty light, as are the other ingredients. So if you want a lighter loaf, use something like sugar, or a lighter molasses. I like to use the blackstrap to keep the sweetness light and to add a little extra nutrition.

I also have a sourdough brown bread recipe, which you can find here.