GF Sandwich Bread

For months and months and MONTHS I went in search of a good tasting GF bread recipe I could make from scratch that didn't cost an arm and a leg with requirements to purchase a million different specialty flours.

I searched and searched for recipes, and went through several failed attempts...several!!! Wanna see some proof?

I tried breads that looked perfect...and then shrunk down to tiny little slivers as soon as I removed them from the oven.

I tried breads that rose up to HUGE heights!!! Loaves that looked way too good to be true, even after I removed them from the pan. They smelled awesome, looked awesome.

But as soon as the loaves started to cool down, they shrunk and sagged down into the "mushroom" or "butterfly" effect...where the top half of the bread is larger and heavier than the bottom half, creating a butterfly look.

The bread tasted okay, but often had a milky, sticky texture...not good enough. More and more attempts, with new and different recipes, using both a bread machine and my oven, and all I ended up with was a ton of wasted (and expensive) supplies.

Because I'm too cheap and lazy to buy lots more specialty GF flours not interested in spending a lot more money on experiments right now, instead I have found 2 sandwich bread mixes that my family really likes and will eat over and over again.

Will I keep trying to find a better tasting and less expensive GF sandwich bread? Yep. But in the meantime, these 2 mixes work.

First, GF Pantry has a sandwich bread mix that is simple to make, looks like regular white bread, tastes great as toast, great as sandwich bread, and works really well for recipes requiring breadcrumbs.

The loaves rise up fairly high...and stay that way. Using an electric slicer I can usually get 21 good slices out of each loaf. The slices can be a little brittle/fragile when holding up some sandwiches, but overall this is a great mix. The bread rises for 30-40 min. and bakes at 375 degrees for 30 min.

The second bread mix we really like is Pamela's sandwich bread mix. The texture is considerably more dense than the GF Pantry brand, it's heavier and more sturdy. It doesn't rise quite as high, so I typically get about 18 good slices from each loaf.

The taste is really good, it holds up very well as toast, in every kind of sandwich, and works really well for breadcrumbs, croutons, and stuffing. The bread rises for 1 hour and bakes for 70 min.

You can use an electric mixer or a whisk to make either mix. The GF Pantry mix will look similar to a cake batter, while the Pamela's bread mix will be much thicker, almost like a biscuit dough.

Here's my loaf just prior to baking, and after 1 hour rising inside my oven with the door shut on warm/200 degrees.

TIP: Wet an icing spatula with water to smooth out the top of the loaf before baking.

Why? Purely for aesthetics. By wetting down and smoothing out the top of your loaf before baking, your finished bread will look a lot more like normal bread instead of a crackly, biscuit looking top. See the difference?

Some people in my family prefer the taste of the GF Pantry bread while others prefer the Pamela's brand, so we alternate between the two mixes.

You can buy both of these bread mixes through Amazon.com's subscribe & save program. For us it works out really well because it ends up being a lot cheaper than buying these bread mixes from my local stores. 

Not to mention, you can use these mixes to make croutons for salad, stuffing at Thanksgiving, bagels, pizza crust, pie crust, large soft pretzels, and many other recipes (check out the Pamela's website for more recipe ideas using their mix).

If you're new to baking gluten free, I recommend starting with one of these brands for sandwich bread. But if you come across another from scratch GF bread recipe that doesn't take a million costly, specialty flours to make, and you've tried it and think it tastes awesome, please leave me a comment! I'd love to give it a try.