Gluten Free Olive Bread and Cooking to Specifications

While I can pretty much eat anything, I know I’m lucky to be able to do so. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that we are both the most chemical-drenched generation in history and suffering from an unprecedented rise in auto-immune diseases.

Like many cooks, for me, part of the joy of cooking for my friends is the feeling of nourishing them and taking care of them in a practical way. It’s sad that people seem to feel as though they should apologise for their food choices  whether for health or personal reasons but I often hear “oh, sorry to be a pain but I can’t/don’t eat…” In fact, since I have so many things on my to-cook list, it helps me to have some parameters when I think about a menu.

Remember when I talked about lemon ginger tea and the imminent prospect of singing at a wedding? It was for my friends Nici and Max and in return they kindly shouted us to tickets to the Gurten Festival in Switzerland where we saw, among other bands, Faith No More and The Gossip together.

Nici has celiac disease and usually if I’m cooking for a friend who is gluten-free, I make rice or other grains but since we didn’t know if we’d be able to sit down if the ground was muddy, onigiri was likely to get squished and there was nowhere to heat food, bread seemed like the easiest option.

I did a little poking around and seeing Shauna’s recipe was easy, similar to the superlative no-knead bread in procedure and well-received in gluten-free quarters, I tried it. It was received unanimously well.

Do you know any other good gluten-free bread or cake recipes?

Olive Bread

This dough is enough for 2 loaves and the loaf I made after leaving it overnight was tastier than the one I baked right away, like most bread. I couldn’t find some of the flours here so I substituted but you can see the original recipe at Gluten Free Girl.

I found the tapioca flour at the Asian store and all the other stuff at the health food store. Sometimes if you can only find the whole grain at the shop, they’ll grind it for you.

I think you need to use olives you pit yourself here – they are sort of the point of the bread and the pre-sliced ones are insipid.

Mix the brown rice, millet and tapioca flours, yeast, salt, and xanthan gum in a large bowl.

Add the water, eggs, oil and honey to the dry ingredients and stir with a metal spoon until it comes together. It will be quite loose.

Add the olives and rosemary and stir evenly through.

Gather it all into a ball, cover the bowl with a tea-towel and leave to rise for 2 hours in a warm place (a hot water cupboard can be good).

The dough will keep up to a week in the fridge according to Shauna’s recipe.

To bake it, divide the dough in two even pieces, wet your hands slightly as the dough will be very sticky, and shape it into two balls (or make one and save the rest of the dough for another day).

Leave to rest in a warm place on a piece of baking paper for 40 minutes if baking right away or an hour and a half if the dough is coming out of the fridge.

20 minutes before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 230 celsius (450 fahrenheit) with a Dutch oven inside it.

Score the top of the loaf with 1 cm deep cuts and sprinkle with the oil and salt.

Put the parchment and loaf into the hot Dutch oven and close the lid. Put the whole thing in the oven.

Bake for half an hour and then carefully remove the lid of the Dutch oven and allow the top to brown (yours might be brown already, my Dutch oven isn’t up to much).

If you knock on the bottom of the loaf and it sounds hollow, it’s done.

Cool loaves on a rack.

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Tagged as: cornmeal, gluten free girl, olives, recipe, yeast