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400g Damhert Gluten Free brown bread mix
7g fast action dried yeast
1 tablespoon clear honey
400ml tepid water
16g Le Poole's bread improvement paste
2 tablespoons olive oil, to grease
Today we bake gluten-free brown bread number 3, we use Damhert brown bread mix. Outside the recipe on the packaging, we replace the butter with Le Poole's bread improver. It is the first time we use this. We want to see if it makes a difference in the annoying crumbling that gluten-free bread does.
How we made Damhert gluten-free brown bread
Stir yeast into the flour then add water honey and Le Poole's.
Mix 1 minut on speed 1 then 3 minuten on stand 3.
Meanwhile grease the tin with 1 tablespoon olive oil.
Spoon the dough into the baking tin using a wet spatula.
Preheat the oven to 225°C and bring 200ml water to the boil
Smoothen the top.
Sprinkle on some cold water.
Cut the dough loose, all around.
Brush 1 tablespoon olive oil on top of the dough.
Make a 3cm deep slit in the dough length wise.
Let the dough to risee +/- 45 mins, preferably in a plastic bag.
Slide the tin into the oven next to a bowl hot water.
Allow the bread to bake for 10 minutes beside the bowl of hot water, do not remove the bowl from the oven but do reduce the temperature to 200°C. Bake the bread for another 45-50 minutes.
After removing the bowl of water the bread collapsed, we think opening the door after 10 minutes of baking caused the problem.
At this time the bread totally collapses.
After 50 minutes in the oven.
Tip the bread out of the tin on a wire rack.
Because we do not like to throw away food and also because gluten-free flour is not cheap, we first let the bread cool down completely. Then we cut off the tough unattractive top and we taste the bread, it tastes surprisingly good.
Let the bread cool completely before slicing it.
We might just still do the bread box test tomorrow!
Our conclusion
The making and the baking of this bread was a bit more work than the previous two. The dough is rather sticky, hence the wet spatula. The cutting loose and slashing of the dough we do not understand at this stage, it seems to have no effect, but we do it anyway. When the dough is rising some bit come over the top of the tin and drop off. The dough has a lot of tiny air bubbles and is very soft. We bake it exactly according to the instructions on the package but the bread collapses. It looks terrible but it smells good. The texture and the colour inside are fine. After removing the top crust it tastes very good and it stays much better in the lunch box than the last two breads we baked. So the bread improver improves indeed! But because of the collapsing another disappointing result!
In the lunch box the bread stays fine too, so the bread improver really works!