Gluten-Free & Vegan Bread Double Decker Review and Give-away

Once again, Julie and I are posting tandem cookbook reviews and giveaways.  Today, I'm super excited to write about Jennifer Katzinger's brand new Gluten-Free & Vegan Bread--Artisanal Recipes to Make at Home published by Sasquatch Books.

Since ditching gluten in '09, I've tried my hand at xgfx bread recipes several times, and until recently, I've found them to be mostly MEH at their finest, and at their worst, I've filled my trash can with their hateful hard brick bones. 

So when Julie waved a review copy of Gluten-Free Vegan Bread at me a few months ago, it immediately gave me a long face and a case of the uneasies.  Not just because it reminded me of my failed xgfx bread attempts, but also because I was already familiar with Katzinger's previous two books and wasn't their biggest fan.  While Flying Apron's Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book and Gluten-Free and Vegan Holidays are both beautiful cookbooks filled to the brim with dedicated xgfx recipes, the bread recipes never really worked for more me or seemed appealing.

Julie prodded me to give this new book a chance, so I took it home and read it cover to cover.  I was immediately drawn into the introduction where Katzinger announces her new and significantly updated approach and philosophy to xgfx bread baking. 

The big differences in these new recipes are:

• The addition of xantham gum (to help hold the bread together and to keep them from being too crumbly).
• The addition of starch (to lighten loaves so they're not too dense or brick-like).
• More affordable sugar (none of these recipes require cups and cups of maple syrup).

I was so excited to see these changes, but I was also enthralled with other elements of this book:

• The use of a very innovative technique to achieve xgfx dough rise. 
• The long baking times.
• Soaked chia to add moisture and binding.
• Super interesting bread varieties (yeasted, wild starters, flatbreads, batter and quick breads) along with very appealing grain pairings.

Once I committed myself to try a recipe, I was hooked with the results and then kept trying more and more.  So far I've baked:  Soft Millet Sandwich Bread, Light Teff Sandwich Bread, Cinnamon Walnut Loaf, Zucchini Bread, Kalamata Olive Bread, Russian Black Bread, Raspberry Rooibos Tea Bread and an adapted Banana Bread.

Every bread I've made has been delicious and varied from the one before it, although I've only tried a variety of the quick breads and yeasted varieties.  Also, a few of the recipes fall into the author's previous style and call for no starch or gum, and again I had a few issues with those, but when I adapted the recipes a bit with some gum, they worked great for me.

The first two breads I made with Julie at her house, and we opted for sandwich style loaves.

Cinnamon Walnut Loaf and Sweet Vee.

Soft Millet Sandwich Bread.

I've made the zucchini bread three times, since it's a great recipe and we also experienced a huge zucchini glut this Summer.

Zucchini Bread.

On my last go-round I was able to adapt the recipe easily for a bake-sale.  I spooned the zucchini batter into individual cupcake liners and topped them with a chocolate chip streusel topping.  They were brown, but they were good!

I swooned over the thought of baking Raspberry Rooibos Tea Bread for months, and when I got to it, it was a beautiful, tasty bread, but it crumbled like mad and broke into giant pieces when I tried to turn it out of the pan (again it contained no gum or starch and only teff flour).

I noticed the banana bread was very similar to the rooibos bread, so I decided to try to adapt it.  I added 3/4 teaspoon xantham gum and subbed in 1/2 cup of superfine brown rice flour for the same amount of teff, and it came out beautifully. 

Modified banana bread with chocolate chips.

Especially with the addition of chocolate chips, 'cuz OMG teff and chocolate together are magical.   Other favorites I made were the Russian Black Bread (I made this twice) and the Kalamata Olive Bread. 

Kalamata Olive Bread

The olive bread was one of the more complicated breads I made from this book ingredient-wise.  I thought it'd be a good recipe to share, since it offers a good feel for the sort of ingredients you might need to procure to use this book. 

Kalamata Olive Bread--shared with permission from Sasquatch Books
Makes 1 Medium Loaf

1 cup brown rice flour	1 teaspoon xantham gum
1 cup tapioca flour	1/2 cup kalamata olives, whole
1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour	1 envelope (2 3/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1/2 cup millet flour	1 1/2 cups room temperature filtered water
1/2 cup almond meal	3 tablespoons canola oil
1/3 cup flax meal	2 tablespoons Sucanat
1 teaspoon sea salt

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F and place a water bath on the bottom rack of the oven floor.  Lightly grease a sheet pan or line with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the brown rice flour, tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, millet flour, almond meal, flax meal, salt, and xantham gum.  Add the olives and gently mix.
3. In a separate large mixing bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer), dissolve the yeast in the room temperature water.  Add the canola oil and Sucanat.  Just as the yeast begins to foam and feed on the Sucanat, about 3 minutes, add the combined dry ingredients with the olives.  Mix thoroughly but just until the dough holds together.  This will take just a few moments.  You can do this by hand with a strong arm and a sturdy spoon, or with your stand mixer and the paddle attachment pulsed on low speed.
4. On a work surface generously dusted with brown rice flour, turn out the dough ad gently form into a batard shape.  Place on the prepared pan and score with one line that runs the length of the batard, just off center.  bake for 15 minutes.  Decrease the temperature to 425 degrees F and bake for 1 hour.  Decrease the temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for another 45 minutes, until golden brown and crusty. (Total baking time will be 2 hours).

Here are some of my other favorite things about Gluten-Free Vegan Bread:
❤ If I was gonna be reborn a cookbook, this is what I'd want to be.  I love its size, lovely colorful cover, end flaps, heavy silky paper and it's organization and design.

❤ Each page contains a single recipe and there are gorgeous photographs throughout.

❤ Each recipe tells you how much of each flour and starch you need.  No commercial mixes are called for anywhere in the book and Laurie doesn't make readers mix up a flour/starch combo to use (and thus store) for the cookbook.

❤ The breads are yummy enough for gluten-eaters.

❤ A few of the recipes call for a small amount of date sugar or Sucanat, which I found easy to sub with good ol' unbleached granulated sugar.

Onto the FREE STUFF!  This giveaway is open to US and Canadian addresses.  To win your own copy of this book, simply post a comment to this review by midnight Pacific time on Wednesday, November 14th 2012 (please make sure to leave some sort of way I can get in touch with you), and I'll draw a random winner.

Don't forget, you can enter Julie's giveaway, too! 

Bee a Friend.

• Title:  Gluten-Free & Vegan Bread:  Artisanal Recipes to Make at Home.
• Author:   Jennifer Katzinger
• Blog/Website:   None
  
• Publisher:  Sasquatch Books
• Photos: Color photographs throughout
  
• Focus: xgfx and soy-free bread recipes
• 5 Recipes to Intrigue: Pecan Cinnamon Rolls, Apricot Kuchen, Potato Rosemary Bread, Focaccia con Gusto and Orange Chocolate Bread
• XGFXness:  All recipes are vegan, soy and gluten-free, and most recipes are also nut-free.  The most common flours required are:  sorghum, millet, quinoa, teff, arrowroot, tapioca and almond. 

Disclaimer:  I requested and received a free review copy of Gluten-Free & Vegan Bread  from Sasquatch Books.  No compensation or gift was exchanged for this review, and the opinion posted here is my own.
 
xo
kittee