“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” 
 - James Beard

Here’s the recipe I told you about in our first Savory ‘n Sweet blog posting. This is the ABSOLUTE BEST gluten-free multi-grain bread recipe I’ve tried, and believe me when I say I’ve tried a lot.

When I decided to give up wheat, I was able to find delicious alternatives for most of my favorite baked goods. Either I was able to buy something ready-made or more usually I was able to find recipes that I could bake myself.

The black hole in my culinary world was a gluten-free alternative to fragrant, dense and delicious home-made whole grain bread. I tried the breads available in whole foods markets. Without exception they tasted more like starchy cardboard than bread.

I felt like Julia Child when she said, “How can a nation be great if their bread tastes like kleenex?” 

I then tried countless recipes I found on-line. Some were passable, but tended to be more like white bread than whole grain. I was looking for a bread that had some nutritive value to it as well as wonderful heft and flavor.

After many discouraging attempts I happened upon treasure - a recipe for whole grain teff bread. I tried the recipe purely out of curiosity about teff flour (which by the way, is delicious) and was astounded. Here was the fragrant, deeply flavorful, moist, multi-grain bread I’d been searching for.  

OK now we were cooking!

Sadly, I’ve been unable to find that original recipe on-line so that I may give the author the thanks they are due. So, I’ll send my thanks on a prayer off into the ethers, with a blessing added in for many delightful baking experiences to come. Thank you whoever you are!

Now I had found my master recipe. Through additional experimentation I discovered that I could substitute any combination of whole grain, gluten-free flours that appealed to me and it still came out deliciously moist, fragrant and satisfying.

Here is the recipe I settled on as my favorite. This is the bread I bake every week. It is fragrant, flavorful, full of holes and heft. I use it for toast, for sandwiches, for croutons, for bread crumbs and for anything else I can think up. What's more, a warm, fragrant loaf of this bread is always a hit at pot-lucks.

Although this is a yeast-raised bread (with the attendant delicious fragrance and flavor) it is a snap to mix up. The dough is scooped directly into the bread pan for rising. No kneading necessary.

Not so long ago a wonderful friend gave me a bread pan worth its weight in gold. It is specifically intended for baking gluten free bread. It has ridged sides that support the sponge as it rises, and makes for a perfect rise without the concave center that so often happens in gluten-free baking. If you love to bake as I do, and love home-baked bread it would be a worthwhile purchase for you.

Here is a link to where you can purchase it.
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A tip - as soon as you remove the bread from the oven, immediately flip it upside down onto a cooling rack, and cool for 30 minutes upside down. This will allow the bread to firm up before you remove it from the pan and prevent the top from caving in slightly. As you can see from the picture above I forgot to do this and the top is slightly concave!

Without further ado, here’s the recipe, along with several yummy variations. Wait till you see how flexible this recipe is! 

Welcome to the Soul Doors kitchen! Surprise! Creating in the kitchen is one of my favorite things to do. This is the first of what will be occasional recipe posts under the heading of Savory n' Sweet.  I hope you’ll enjoy these favorite recipes that feel to me like a natural fit in Savor the Sweetness.
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First some background. I love to bake! Mixing together a variety of dry and liquid ingredients, scooping or pouring the resulting batter into a pleasing shape, then placing it into the alchemical magic of a hot oven and watching it transform to a golden-domed, fragrant delight, is a never-ending source of inspiration to me. Even better is creating my own recipes based on the proper proportions of flours, leaveners, binders, sweeteners, and liquids. Best of all, is creating delicious, nutritious recipes, gluten-free, no refined sugars, high protein and lots of hidden vegetables!

I’ll share a little story. A number of years ago I received strong inner guidance that wheat was not good for me. Though I had no physical symptoms I reluctantly followed that guidance and discovered that the gluten-free breads and muffins available at the market were more like eating cardboard than bread. It was disheartening for a gal who adored her dense and flavorful home-baked whole grain bread. So, I set out to bake dense and flavorful whole grain gluten-free bread.

Many, many failures later I discovered a recipe on-line that I could recreate into the loaf of bread I had been craving. (I’ll share this recipe in a future post.) I was launched into the creative world of gluten-free flours and recipe tinkering. I never regretted giving up wheat because I had such fun researching, learning and experimenting, and I was delighted to find that the anxiety I’d carried around with me for most of my life disappeared. Apparently something in the wheat was causing me to feel anxious. Who knew?

Fast forward several years and I welcomed three grandchildren into my life. One grandchild in particular had numbers of food sensitivities as well as an aversion to eating meat, most vegetables and many fruits. If it didn’t look like bread, crackers or pasta, he wasn’t eating it. I was concerned for his protein intake, as well as the vitamins and minerals he should be getting from fruits and vegetables. Loving a baking challenge, I set out to create muffins (a form of food he would eat) that were high in protein, had vitamins and minerals from hidden vegetables, had no refined sugars and tasted sweet and delicious.  Easy right?
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Um, not so much. But lots of enjoyable experimentation later I hit upon a recipe that checks all the boxes. I’m delighted now to be able to share with you this recipe for Pumpkin Spice Muffins.