Requiem for a Loaf: Gluten-free Lentil and Rice Bread

When you’re gluten-free your life can start feeling like an unending quest for good bread. Gone are the days of Texas Toast and the short-lived years of exquisite sourdough. Those two have nothing in common, not even the yeast, but both are delicious in their own ways.

When you’re gluten-free your bread choice becomes “dense” or “denser”. Do you want a solid brick to gnaw at or a body-less, oil-heavy, egg-y thing most often filled with commercial yeasts and those woefully unsatisfying things – flaxseeds – that gluten-free bread producers seem to think all gluten intolerant people crave.

Dear gluten-free bread producers,

You are wrong. Please stop trying to make our gluten-free bread extra “fake healthy.” We are healthy enough without refined flour. Besides, if you’re going to throw in a ton of oil to make it soft and moist, you might as well not pretend.

Why does every loaf have to have 5 grams of fat per slice? I have one and I feel like I just won a hotdog eating competition…full and disgusting, that is. So with the help of Cuisine Soleil I now have a freezer full of brown rice, tapioca, millet, lentil, buckwheat and chickpea flour. From this I can surely create a tasty loaf of bread according to my (and Jeffrey Steingaarten and Lionel Poilane‘s) preferences: “A chewy, moist, aerated interior; the ancient, earthy flavors of toasted wheat and tangy fermentation; and a range of more elusive tastes – roasted nuts, butterscotch, dried pears, grassy fields – that emanate from neither flour, water, nor salt, but from some more mysterious source,” says Steingaarten. “The true bread of the countryside….The eternal bread,” says Poilane).

They’re referring to sourdough here, and the natural fermentation of the starter or “mother” that uses wild yeasts instead of commercial ones ad varies depending on location, the water, and the molds on the flour and in the air. This is not Wonderbread.

If non-gluten-free people can have their daily bread, then so should we. But I had to start small. I personally believe that mixing too many types of gluten-free flours makes digestion tricky. If you have a problem with the bread you won’t know which of the five or so flours you used caused it. So it’s safer to start with the ones you know your stomach can handle. In my case, those are rice and tapioca. That’s why I made some gluten-free dinner rolls with those two plus chestnut flour and I made a loaf of bread with those two plus lentils. So if there was a problem I’d know what to blame.

I didn’t make a starter from scratch. I’ve done gluten-free sourdough starters before and they’re incredibly tricky. So I cheated. After all my (Steingaarten and Poilae’s…) eloquence above about the beauty of sourdough, I used commercial yeast. It’s fail-safe. Like my two “safe” flours, I figured it was best to start with what was safe before moving into the scarier open waters of the art of breadmaking.

And this worked. It’s not fluffy and light but there’s a good crust and when the loaf is hot the interior is chewy and moist. Light it is not, but it’s better than some of my gluten-free sourdough creations from two Christmases ago (See my article entitled “Sourdough Disaster and Killing Little Betty Sue Rice Culture Watson”).

Gluten-free Lentil and Rice Bread
adapted from two recipes at Gluten-Free Goddess