Easy gluten free bread

'You'll need a food processor for this one. The rice flour gives the bread a different consistency to that which you would expect from a traditional loaf, but this is an essential recipe to have to hand if you are feeding friends or family members with gluten intolerance'

Rachel Allen, 'Bake', p115

Well, as I said, my Mum is trying out a gluten free diet so it was an ideal opportunity to try this recipe while we were staying last week. Finding the ingredients was the hardest part - we looked in 3 major supermarkets but couldn't find any of the special flours required. Eventually we found rice flour; potato flour; cornmeal and soya flour in Holland & Barrett. 

That just left xanthan gum. 'What the heck is that?', I wondered. I'd seen it on food labels, and aiways imagined it to be some nasty artificial additive. However, as Rachel says it can be found in health food stores, I thought it couldn't be too bad. A little research on Wikipedia needed... It is a 'polysaccharide secreted by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris'. Hmmm, sounds pleasant! It is produced from the fermentation of glucose; sucrose or lactose, grown in isopropyl alcohol and then ground to a fine powder. Xanthan  gum may contain traces of corn; soy or wheat so it's advisable to check the label carefully if you have allergies. Xanthan gum is often used to stabilise salad dressings and sauces; to improve the texture of ice cream and to bind toothpaste. Another use, as in this recipe, is to replace gluten in baking. It gives the dough a stickiness that gluten would otherwise provide. Oh, and we finally found it in Lakeland! 

It does seem a large initial outlay to make this bread. The flours and cornmeal were £1.89 for each 500g bag, the xanthan gum £4.49 for 100g. However, you only need small amounts of each - 225g rice flour; 25g potato flour; 50g cornmeal and 1 tsp xanthan gum. 

Making the bread was easy, basically just whizz together in a food processor. The dough is too wet to knead, so you simply pour it in to a tin; leave to rise and then bake. The taste and texture are, of course, very different to a traditional loaf and I can't say I'm a convert. However, if I was going gluten free I'd happily eat it.