Customer Reviews

Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This cookbook is the only one out there for GF Bread-Machine Baking. The book has good recipes and a great flour mix. But I have a problem with her problem fixes and her some of the instructions. The bread machine specific programing instructions, (which take about %10 of the book) only apply to one brand of bread machine, you'd think she got royalties. Her fixes to common problems all start with, "if you read the recipe, and bought the same brand and model of machine I have then you would have no problems". In fact she is wrong. You can use another brand and you can alter the instructions for your needs. They also don't cover basic bread error fixes, like sour smell when mixing (too much yeast or your yeast is bad) and dampness (de-pan after minimum cooling). You need to consult the gluten-centric bread-machine manual for these.

I have a 10 year old Breadman model TR-440. I can make perfect bread-machine bread.
I use her flour mix and mostly follow the recipe for sandwich bread. I alter it in that I use olive oil instead of canola oil and I use unsweetened almond-milk instead of dairy. I do let all my inredients come up to room temp before I start.
I set my machine for #2-Basic Medium Crust. I scrape down the sides during the first mix with my silicone spatula.
Then I walk away. It beeps for fruit and nuts addition, I scrape it down again.
Then an hour and a half later, it beeps for done.
I take it out, cool it for 10 minutes then de-pan. Let is cool for another 20, and Yum-pass the buttery spread!

Oh and don't try to use her flour mix to make bread machine bread with Betty Hagmann's bread machine recipes, it does not work well.

Bought this book knowing she'd used a Zojirushi and I have a Breadman. Breadman's are fairly well known for "aggressive" mixing and bakes at a much higher temperature, but even with my 10 year old model, I have one customizable program. Because GF flours are very delicate, you just can't mix them for very long -- I've seen a number of producer recommendations to not mix for more than 4 minutes, nor let rise over about an hour. With that in mind, I didn't even bother utilizing Annalise's settings - I considerably shortened the mixing and baking times for my Breadman and increased the rise time by about 10 minutes. Perfection. That being said, the recipies in the book (yes, there aren't many) can really be used as MASTER recipes to convert traditional wheat recipies to GF. For me it was getting the liquid to dry proportions right, as well as the amount of xanthan gum. This book does that very well and the result is a decent size loaf without the gummy, dense texture of many other GF recipies that tastes great and works as both a sandwich bread, or toasts up for breakfast. Just what I was looking for.

I am a huge fan of Annalise Roberts. When I was first diagnosed with Celiac Disease in early '06, her first book, Gluten-Free Baking Classics was one of the first in my GF library of cookbooks. It offered me the first glimmer of hope that a gluten-free life needn't be tasteless but in fact could be delicious. All of the recipes in her first book were fantastic.

Her new book, Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine, is equally as wonderful. It is laid out in two sections - the first section has GF bread recipes that include dairy and eggs and the second section has GF bread recipes that do not include dairy and eggs. Thus far, I've only tried the recipes in the second section, though with the success I've had with her first cookbook, I would virtually guarantee the recipes in the first section would be great also. Thus far I've made the French-Italian Sandwich Bread which was just perfect! The finished loaf had a great crumb, it toasted beautifully, it even tasted great right out of the machine (many GF breads have to be toasted in order for them to be edible!). And the second loaf I made - the Multi-Grain Artisan Bread was equally as wonderful. I made sandwiches this past weekend using the Multi-Grain bread - totally scrumptious! This bread isn't just a delivery system for whatever is inside the sandwich - the bread itself is fantastic! I'm telling you - Annalise Roberts has hit the jackpot with her Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine.

While the recipes in her Gluten-Free Baking Classics For The Bread Machine cookbook were developed and tested using a Zojirushi BBCC-X20 Home Bakery Supreme bread machine, there is no reason that they can't be made in other bread machines. Once you know your machine, it's a cinch to use the recipes in other bread machines. My sister has a Breadman machine and she makes GF bread in it quite often, with great success.

Annalise doesn't stop at just including recipes. She devotes a chapter to getting started. For those new to gluten free baking, the information she includes is enormously helpful from how to measure and mix GF flours to how to purchase and store them, not to mention quite a bit of helpful and extensive information on baking with GF flour. There is also an entire chapter entitled "The Art and Science of Using a Bread Machine to Make Gluten-Free Bread". She is clearly a teacher - devoted to helping you understand how to use a bread machine to bake gluten free bread with all manner of trouble-shooting tips for those who run into problems.

I can't recommend Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine as well as Annalise Roberts Gluten-Free Baking Classics) enough. I am a huge fan and am eternally grateful to her for helping to make my gluten free life not only bearable but fruitful and delicious and exciting and livable. Now, I can have my bread AND eat it too!

Ellen A.
[...]

Lets start with the good stuff : I ordered this book alongwith my purchase of the zojirushi home bakery bread maker. The author of this little cookbook has put together instructions for a home made cycle to bake gluten free breads in the zojirushi. I've used those setting with other cookbooks (1001 Gluten Free recipes from Fenster, Gluten free Gourmet bakes bread) and have always had success with her settings. So that in itself is awesome!

Now for the other stuff. the book itself is a black and white, minimally illustrated 68 pages long. The first 12 pages are devoted to the author's history with gluten free baking. Pages 12 to 19 explain how to bake gluten free breads in a bread machine - more specifically, in the zojirushi Home bakery supreme. This is where the highlight of the book is : HOW TO PROGRAM YOUR ZOJIRUSHI TO BAKE GLUTEN FREE BREADS. The remaining 50 pages have 16 main bread recipes and tweaked versions of those 16 recipes. EG. Multi grain artisan bread has two sub-recipes: multi grain walnut artisan bread and multi grain pecan artisan bread. All this says is to dump in 3/4 cup of nuts in when the "mix-in" signal goes off.

The recipes themselves. I tried the basic sandwich bread recipe three times with poor results. The bread mix that the author recommends includes millet flour, sorghum flour, cornstarch, potato starch and tapioca starch. The millet has a slightly bitter flavor with my 8 year old celiac picked up on right away. The bread sank in the middle every time. I tweaked the liquids, I made sure the eggs were room temperature, I bought fresh yeast. Nada. it was also ridiculously crumbly. There was no buttering a slice without it falling apart.

I also tried the Challah bread recipe which was not sweet enough and also very crumbly. On the other hand, the bake cycle the author describes turned out perfect loaves when I used recipes from other recipe books. So, I think the issue here lies with the recipes and not the machine or in something I am doing.

So, in sum, I am disappointed in how much i paid for a cookbook that I will probably only look at if I need to reprogram the bake cycle in my machine.

If you are looking for a first time gluten free breadmaking cookbook I recommend books by the Bette Hagman or by Carol Fenster instead.

I bought a Zojirushi bread machine a few months ago (in the hope of finally being able to make decent tasting gluten free bread), so I bought this book to go along with it. This wasn't my 1st bread machine nor my 1st book about gluten free bread, I had made gluten free bread in the past that was ok but thought this would make a big difference. I was very excited to try it and had high hopes for this new book, but it was a big disappoinment! :-(

I really wish previous reviewers (at the time of my purchase) had shared this major bit of information: ALL the recipes are based on ONE and only flour mix.
This book has a "look inside" feature on amazon, and you can see she uses a flour mix called "flour mix A". This had me wrongly assuming there was a flour mix B and a flour mix C etc... Well there isn't. :-(
So if you don't like the taste of flour mix A (Millet flour + Sorghum flour + cornstarch + potato starch + tapioca starch) or if it doesn't work for you, then this book is pretty much useless!

I had several issues with the 3 recipes (with and without eggs) I tried (several time each of them):
* The taste was bad, very bitter, sometimes to the point of being inedible, and with a rather "yeasty" taste.
* My loaf was quite dense and didn't rise appropriately and sometimes collapsed in the middle. I tried all the suggestions from the Troubleshooting page with no improvement whatsoever! :-(

I waited a while before posting my review because I thought it had to be me doing something wrong and I didn't want to give an undeserved bad review, so I tried the recipes again and again (1st following them to a T, then trying the suggestions for troubleshooting), but I am now convinced that the basic recipe just doesn't work. Maybe it's because we are in Florida and it is more humid, but we have air conditioning!
I am actually relieved to see that other people have had the same issues... I haven't completely given up trying, as I will try and tweak the recipes to see if the results are better but I'm not holding my breath.

For people who are on a GFCF diet, be aware that not all the recipes are dairy free in the book.
Based on my experience with it, I would definitely not recommend that book.
I would advise you to get Delicious Gluten-Free Wheat-Free Breads by LynnRae Ries and Bruce Gross instead, which offers much more diversity and great tasting sweet and savory breads (some of them also with dairy) and recipes suitable both for bread machines and oven!

I guess I lucked out on this one, because when my 4 yr old was diagnosed celiac last year, the online celiac communities were all (for the most part) recommending the zojirushi. So, I bought it. Up until now, I had been using only one gf bread recipe that I found online around the same time. It was good, but still really heavy and dense. A slice alone felt like a meal, so we all but forgot about sandwiches in our house.

This book changed everything for us! Since we already had the zojirushi, and were fans GF Baking Classics, this book was a no brainer. My child is once again enjoying pb & j's like most children at that age. Even Gluten eaters come into my home and want some!! We absolutely love the cinnamon swirl bread, which I have to make two loaves at a time... one for eating hot, while the whole house smells wonderful... and the other for french toast the next morning!!

The book is small, but I would have paid twice as much for the content. It has allowed my child to be just that much more like a regular kid with a regular diet. Then again, that is what all of Annalise's recipes do. They make you forget you're eating gf altogether.

I just received this book and I doubt I will ever use it. For one, it specifies one type of bread machine (very expensive AND not the one I own) and all of the instructions are specific to the settings of that one machine (not to mention that at least a third of this very thin book is devoted to touting and explaining how to use this one bread machine). This was NOT mentioned in the description of the book and it should have been (maybe the name of the bread machine should be added as part of the title)! Furthermore, it requires a flour mixture for all of the recipes. I hate books that require flour mixtures. I would much rather have instructions for compiling the recipe ingredient by ingredient. It is too much trouble and too expensive to have to buy and mix five or six types of flours and then store them! Finally, the index of this book is deceptive: it shows tons of recipes, but, really, there are only 17 recipes in the book...the rest are variations such as an addition of a spice or fruit, etc. I am really very unhappy with this book and will not order any other books by this author. Furthermore, I am aggravated that I wasted my money! There are a lot of places on Amazaon that I could have spent eleven dollars that would have been worth my hard earned money!

After trying to get by with frozen gluten-free breads I finally purchased the Zojirushi bread machine and the Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine book. What a difference! My daughter and I can eat peanut butter sandwiches again! We have also enjoyed grilled paninis and corned beef on <fake, but great-tasting> "rye". This is an absolute must-have for the Celiac diet. My husband (who can eat gluten) even enjoys the breads I bake now and he has had more than his share of "door-stop" gluten free baked goods. The combination of the right bread machine and this detailed, easy-to-follow cookbook make eating enjoyable despite the otherwise restrive diet.

This is one of the best basic books about baking. I'm a 42-y-o men with no experience in baking. This book guided me in the process of managing new kinds of flours -not too many though- basically sorghum flour, tapioca flour, and starches plus other condiments all easily available in iherb.com, vitacost.com, as well as in amazon.com. I'm trying every recipe from top to bottom and all of the loaves have come out just perfect. It's a very tiny book, but by now it's enough for what I have to learn. Thank you

This book's title should have been Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Zojirushi Bread Machine. I have been baking yeast bread for over 35 years and gluten-free bread for over 6 years, and the only time I have ever come out with a product that was completely inedible was in following the recipes in this book exactly using my Cuisinart Bread Machine. Ms. Roberts points out that for the Zojirushi Bread Machine, you need to use less liquid, fat and eggs than when baking gluten-free bread in a conventional oven. I discovered the hard way that this advice does not apply to a Cuisinart bread machine. The bread dough ends up being way too dry and the finished product is very brick-like. I have never had any problem using other bread machine recipes for my Cuisinart, so my guess is that the Zojinrushi Bread Machine must be exceptionally different from the others.

If you like Ms. Roberts' bread recipes in her original Gluten-Free Baking Classics (as I do) and want to use them in you Cuisinart Bread Machine, I've found that for a medium-sized loaf, you can multiply all of the ingredients by 1.5 -- except for the yeast which should remain one packet and the eggs which instead of 3 eggs should be 3 eggs + 1 egg white; make sure that all of your ingredients are at room temperature; mix and add your liquids first, then coat with the mixed dry ingredients and add the yeast last. Set the machine to the gluten-free, medium loaf setting and it will work out fine.