Stolen from About.com for our church communion. Ironic, isn’t it!

For consistent results, it is highly recommended that you don’t make ingredient substitutions in this recipe and that you weigh your dry ingredients on a good quality kitchen scale. If you bake bread often, it’s so much faster and easier to weigh than to measure.

DRY INGREDIENTS:

135 grams / 4.8 ounces / about 1 cup white rice flour
100 grams / 3.5 ounces / about 1 cup tapioca starch
75 grams / 2.6 ounces / about 1/2 cup sweet sorghum flour
OR light buckwheat flour – See note below.
70 grams / 2.5 ounces / about 1/2 cup brown rice flour
20 grams / 2 tablespoons dry active yeast
25 grams / 2 tablespoons cane sugar
11 grams / 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 grams / 1 teaspoon guar gum
2 grams / 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1.25 grams / 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (adds flavor and acts as a natural preservative)
Optional – 7 grams / 1 tablespoon apple fiber (a dry nutritional supplement, available at health food stores)

LIQUID INGREDIENTS:

3 large egg whites, room temperature (114 grams / 4 ounces)
2 tablespoons light olive oil (25 grams)
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar (5 grams)
286 milliliters / 9.66 ounces lukewarm water / 1 cup + 3 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon (don’t use hot water – it will kill the yeast)

Note: If you store your gluten-free flour in the refrigerator or freezer, be sure to bring these ingredients to room temperature before preparing bread recipes. Chilled ingredients will stunt the rise of the bread.

Gluten-free sweet sorghum flour or light buckwheat flour both work beautifully as a portion of the flours used in this recipe. Both Bouchard Family Farms in Fort Kent, Maine and Buffalo Valley Grains in Buffalo, MN sell light buckwheat flour online.

If you have a grain mill you can grind your own gluten-free light buckwheat flour. Use gluten-free hulled buckwheat. Birkett Mills and Eden Foods both sell hulled buckwheat and both products make wonderful home-ground light buckwheat flour.

Xanthan (ZAN than) gum and guar (gwar) gum are the most frequently used gums in gluten-free recipes and gluten-free products.

Gums are “hydrocolloidals.” They attract water, bind, thicken and emulsify gluten-free ingredients. If you don’t add gum to most gluten-free baked goods, especially breads, you are apt to end up with a crumbly dry disappointment.

But if you aren’t completely satisfied with the texture of your homemade gluten-free breads, whether you use xanthan gum OR guar gum, consider using a combination of both xanthan gum and guar gum in your recipes. Here’s why.

Food chemists have learned that gums used in food preparation have very unique properties and when combined can improve the texture and mouth feel of gluten-free baked goods. This is called a “synergistic effect” which means that the properties of one gum enhance the properties of the other.

Xanthan gum is manufactured through a fermentation process. A bacteria called xanthomonas campestris is used to ferment a sugar like dextrose (from corn,) glucose, lactose or sucrose. Xanthan gum is used to make liquids more viscous, or thick.

Guar gum is extracted from guar beans. Like xanthan gum, guar gum is also used as a thickener in gluten-free baked goods, but it doesn’t exhibit the gelling properties of xanthan gum. Guar gum good is a good emulsifier (it helps fat molecules blend) and is high in soluble fiber.

Have you noticed how gluten-free breads made solely with xanthan gum have a tendency to feel and taste slightly wet even when completely cool? Or how breads made only with guar gum fail to hold their shape during baking and tend to collapse in the middle as they bake and cool? And how they dry out more quickly?

The reason for these very different end results is because xanthan gum and guar gum each bring different functions to gluten-free recipes.

According to Swiss-based Jungbunzlauer, a manufacturer of food-grade gums, “Combinations of xanthan gum with galactomannans [like guar gum] show a synergistic viscosity increase, in comparison to pure guar gum solutions.”

Next time you bake a loaf of homemade gluten-free bread substitute half of the gum called for in the recipe with its synergistic partner. If the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of xanthan gum, use 1 1/2 teaspoons of xanthan gum and 1 1/2 teaspoons of guar gum.

Learn more about gluten-free flours and starches. Check out our Gluten-Free Flour and Starch Glossary