It’s great that a gluten-free diet does not have to exclude the satisfying taste of hot fresh bread. And with the right bread maker, you can enjoy the convenience and comfort of your favorite loaf every day.
Before you pull out your wallet it is well worth doing a little research to ensure you purchase a great bread maker that will give you fantastic value for money.
We have sone a lot of the hard work for you and tried and tested a few models out. Here's our quick guide to the latest gluten free bread makers.
Gluten-free bread comes with its own quirks as you need to replace the gluten that gives regular bread its characteristic springiness and elasticity. You want to be sure that the bread maker you buy does not turn out gluten-free fails.
That’s why we have created this helpful 10 point guide, that should equip you with the information you need to get a bread-maker that does gluten-free right.
Read on for the 10 key areas to look out for to ensure that your bread maker will keep you in an abundant supply of hot, fresh, gluten-free loaves.
Gluten-free bread can be made in a regular bread machine, but the differences in ingredients and preparation mean that you need the correct settings to get a credible loaf.
With regular bread, prolonged kneading activates the gluten in the flour to give the dough its characteristic stretchiness.
With gluten-free bread making, ingredients like xanthan gum are used to reproduce the elasticity so intensive kneading is not needed.
This means that the special gluten-free setting on the bread machine should have a shorter or single kneading cycle compared to the regular settings. Without this, your loaves will be pulverized!
If your countertop and budget afford, you want to get the largest bread maker you can. This is because gluten-free bread needs space for correct mixing of the altered ingredients.
Better results for gluten-free (easy slicing and good crumb) are obtained with larger loaves. Bread makers are usually classified according to their dimensions and the size of loaf they turn out:
Unless your entire household is gluten-free, using the bread machine for other recipes runs the risk of you coming into contact with gluten from other baking.
The pan is obviously removable, but traces of flour may be secreted in other parts of the machine, and baked on dough may contain allergens.
A bread maker that is easy to thoroughly clean means that you can be confident that it is free of allergens, sanitary, and looks great too.
The mechanical paddle within the bread machine does the hard work of mixing and kneading that your hands and a spoon would do. However, this ingenious contraption becomes a hassle when the machine gets round to baking the bread.
Cheaper bread makers will bake your loaf with the paddle projecting upwards into the bread, leaving you with the task of retrieving the paddle and making a hole in your perfect loaf.
To side-step, this issue, look for a bread maker that will automatically collapse the paddle or pause its cycle so the paddle can be removed before baking.
One of the best ways you can ensure that your baking remains truly gluten-free is to invest in a second separate loaf pan for your gluten-free baking. Look for a bread maker which has spare pans, paddles, and other accessories readily available.
Make sure that your gluten-free items are labeled so that they won’t be used with wheat.
If fresh bread is a regular part of your gluten-free diet, a bread maker with a delayed-start function allows you to add ingredients overnight and wake up to a freshly baked loaf.
Good quality contemporary models will have a digital timer and controls that allow a delay of up to 13 hours before commencing the baking cycle.
For those of you who like your bread to be crusty, some models of bread maker will allow you to vary the crustiness of the baked loaf. You can usually select from three different browning levels to get your bread as light or dark as desired.
Many contemporary models of bread maker will include a viewing window so you can check on the progress of your loaf, so you can get your loaves just right!
If you need dough for pizza or bread rolls your ideal bread maker should be able to run the mixing and kneading stages of the gluten-free program and then be paused to allow retrieval of the dough.
You need to be able to pause the gluten-free cycle rather than any standard dough settings as the handling of the dough will be more appropriate for gluten-free ingredients.
A standard-sized bread maker with pre-set programs that include gluten-free baking will cost at least $150 dollars. Cheaper or budget models tend to lack the range of settings and flexibility of control that you need to get the best out of gluten-free baking with a bread maker.
Good quality bread makers come with at least a 1-year warranty, to provide you with the confidence that your bread maker will be the gluten-free workhorse you need it to be.
If you would like to learn more about bread making then read our complete guide here!
