Gluten-Free Bread Baking: The Best Science-Backed Tips and Tricks

If you've ever attempted baking gluten-free bread, you know the hurdles we have to overcome. I'm sure you've suffered the disappointment of many failed bakes. I've been there too... I've baked breads that didn't rise, and breads that were gummy, and breads with giant holes, and breads hard as a brick. It's all a learning experience. Thankfully, I've learned a lot in the now fifteen years I've been gluten-free, and I'll do my best to dissect and organize everything I've learned about gluten-free bread baking.

In this post, we'll first go over how bread rises, and why you can't simply substitute gluten-free flour in your "regular" bread recipe. We'll talk about gluten replacers and how to recognize a good gluten-free bread recipe. This is a long comprehensive guide, that will direct you towards other helpful articles I've written or read that will be enlightening in your bread baking journey.

How Bread Rises

It's important to understand the mechanics behind bread rising and oven spring, if we're to replicate those mechanisms in gluten-free bread. Oven spring refers to what happens in the first few minutes of baking that make bread rise so much. If you're into the nitty gritty of the calculations, I highly recommend this read on The Fresh Loaf.

So the bread has proofed on the counter, and risen ~50%. Let's assume the dough is around 70F. It goes into a 400F oven, and the rest is just thermodynamics: the dough temperature will increase, and it's quickly going to reach optimal yeast growth temperature.

In the first few minutes of baking, yeast activity increases, which means yeast is creating CO₂ and ethanol at a rapid rate.

As temperature increases, the gas volume also increases. That's Charle's Law: the volume of a gas is directly proportional to its temperature. This starts to create expanding bubbles in the crumb of the bread.

The CO₂ that was dissolved in the liquid phase of the dough is now being forced out as a gas. This has to do with the partial pressure of CO₂ being reduced as bubbles expand in the crumb, forcing more gas out of the solution.

Finally, ethanol and water reach their boiling points and evaporate, which push those bubbles in the crumb even further, creating what we see as holes in our bread.

To summarize what's going on: first, CO₂ creates small bubbles in the dough, which is the birth of what we see as the crumb. Water evaporates and pushes those crumb bubbles even further out. That's when we start seeing larger pockets, which we all recognize and love as a beautiful slice of gluten-free bread. That's the goal at least!

Oven Spring Numbers

For a wheat bread with an average roughly 60% volume expansion during baking, the numbers contributing to oven spring are as follows, as cited in scientific literature and summarized on The Fresh Loaf:

• ~10%: Charle's Law, thermal expansion of gas
• ~20%: CO₂ gas being forced out of solution
• ~30%: Water evaporation

What is REALLY interesting is how much water contributes to oven spring, which for us as gluten-free bread bakers is going to be the foundation of our work.

Substituting for Gluten-Free Flour in Bread

The short answer is you just can't "convert" a regular bread recipe to gluten-free by using a gluten-free flour. You may be protesting and saying nope, I've done it before! And if you're an experienced baker, you've likely been able to substitute a gluten-free 1:1 mix like Bob Red Mill or King Arthur in recipes like cookies and muffins. But bread is so different. Even Bob Red Mill says their flour is not made for yeast baking.

In her book Baked to Perfection (which I highly recommend), Katarina Cermelj explains a pretty intuitive and totally logical way of thinking about the differences in those recipes. The truth is that when you're baking muffins and cookies, the ratio of flour to other ingredients is low... meaning there's not a significant amount of flour compared to other ingredients like milk, eggs, sugar, butter and so on. So if flour is a small portion of the recipe, its impact will be reduced. However, in bread baking, the main ingredient is flour. The choice of flour will have a significant impact on the outcome.

Differences Between Wheat and Gluten-Free Flours

When baking with regular wheat flour, you have gluten on your side! Gluten's role in baking is to provide a 3-dimensional network that will support rise. However, in gluten-free baking, that's gone. Instead, we use hydrocolloids, a class of molecules that can replace gluten's functionality by coiling in water and making a network capable of trapping some gases. A popular hydrocolloid in bread baking, due to its ability to coil and gel at room temperature, is psyllium husks. See the psyllium gel below, which absorbs ten times its weight in water!

So the main difference between wheat bread and gluten-free bread comes from the use of those hydrocolloids, which in their name... HYDRO, means they need water to function. The biggest difference is a wheat bread will require about 60% hydration, while a gluten-free bread, in order to activate those HYDROcolloids, needs over 100% hydration.

And that's why if you've ever tried to convert a wheat recipe to gluten-free by simply using a 1:1 gluten-free flour, you've ended up with a super dry flat brick. You didn't give the hydrocolloids enough water to do their job and be able to trap gases. The carbon dioxide, water and ethanol just escaped the dough.

Gluten Replacers

We know that gluten replacers (hydrocolloids) need water to activate. Most of them also need heat to activate, except psyllium husks, which form a gel at room temperature.

Let's think of our loaf of gluten-free bread in the oven. Dough temperature is rising, yeast activity is increasing, carbon dioxide bubbles are starting to push the crumb outwards. However, it's a gluten-free bread, and those forming bubbles are only going to get fully trapped when the hydrocolloids (and starches too) fully activate and gelatinize, at higher temperatures.

And remember, gluten-free breads also have much more water, which evaporates at higher temperatures than carbon dioxide. This extra water that activates the hydrocolloids will also contribute towards oven spring to a much higher degree than with regular bread.

Characteristics of Good Gluten-Free Bread Recipes

Gluten-free bread baking is expensive, so let's make sure the recipes you choose are worth the effort! Let's take a look at factors that indicate a gluten-free bread recipe is a keeper.

Written in Grams

The first thing I want to see is a recipe with ingredients measured in mass. I have an entire post about why we should weigh gluten-free ingredients. The main points here are that different gluten-free flours and starches have different densities, and so volume measurements, especially if you make any substitutions, are going to be off, and difficult to replicate. If you need to substitute ingredients, take a look at my gluten-free flour guide.

Properly Hydrated Dough

The second reason to look for a recipe measured by mass is directly related to my second point, which is to quickly calculate hydration. Dough hydration is the mass of water divided by the mass of flour in a recipe (expressed as a percentage), which we want to see close or over 100%. So if I'm looking at a recipe with 2 cups of water, and 2 cups of flour, I would first need to convert all those values to mass.

Remember that water plays a critical role in gluten-free baking because it activates hydrocolloids and contributes hugely to oven spring.

Lists Individual Flours

If a recipe calls for a 1:1 gluten-free flour mix, especially if that measurement is expressed in volume, it's likely not going to turn out the way you'd love. I like to see individual flours listed, with a reasoning for those flours, and clear substitution options. The recipe should include both gluten-free flours and gluten-free starches. Remember, starches play a critical role in crumb stabilization.

I usually find it a good sign when a recipe includes a homemade gluten-free bread flour formulation. It means that the writer has experimented a lot to find a mix that works for them. Some of these mixes require specialty ingredients.

For example, Let Them Eat Gluten-Free Cake has a bread flour with whey protein isolate. I personally have not found success with whey protein isolate (and it's not a good option if you have a dairy intolerance), but her recipes are highly rated.

Another specialty ingredient gaining traction is deglutenized wheat starch. I've never baked with it, but it's definitely worth looking into IF you know you have no wheat sensitivity. Talk to your doctor first!

My gluten-free bread flour is a whole grain highly nutritious mix that contains gluten-free flours with high water absorption capacity. Here's one of my bakery's best sellers that I bake with it: gluten-free honey oat bread.

Contains Strong Hydrocolloids

What gluten replacers are used? For gluten-free bread, seeing psyllium husks in the recipe is a good sign. Seeing xanthan gum by itself with no other highly synergistic hydrocolloid (like pectin) or specialty ingredients like whey protein isolate, may be a sign to look for another recipe.

Dough Growth

Gluten-free bread will NOT double in size during the proofing process. That's because there is no network to fully trap the carbon dioxide gas produced during fermentation. This network replaced by hydrocolloids only fully activates upon heating. And so if a recipe calls for doubling during proofing, be weary! It could be lacking testing, or simply written by AI. If it's too good to be true, it might just be. Below you can see my gluten-free honey oat bread fully proofed, which is about a 50% rise.

You can certainly get a good rise from a gluten-free bread, but it will be during the oven spring period, when the hydrocolloids are activated and able to trap gases, and water is evaporating and pushing the CO₂ crumb bubbles outwards. The above bread fully baked will reach just above the bread pan.

Dough Handling

If the recipe you're looking at has directions like "knead the dough", run! Kneading is a technique we use to develop gluten, and well... we don't do it in gluten-free bread baking. Furthermore, a good gluten-free bread dough will be very hydrated and too wet to handle. And that's okay! Many good gluten-free bread recipes are "batter" breads, which might make you wonder if you're making pancakes, but will get a beautiful rise once that water starts evaporating during oven spring.

There are a few tricks for recipes that require shaping, like challah, babka, cinnamon rolls, and so on. Look for a recipe containing psyllium husks (or konjac powder), as both these hydrocolloids gel at room temperature, making dough thicker and easier to handle. Recipes with highly absorbent gluten-free flours like oat, teff or quinoa will also do the trick, though they'll need several hours in the refrigerator to absorb moisture and thicken to a shapeable dough. You can also add saturated fats to the dough, which are solids at room temperature, and increase dough handling.

Contains Moisture-Adding Ingredients

A big complaint about gluten-free breads is that they tend to be dry. A great way to combat dryness, is to add ingredients that enhance moisture. Those tend to be fats, like butter, oil, eggs, and sour cream. It's usually a good sign to see them in a gluten-free bread recipe. Especially eggs, since they also add structural proteins.

However, keep in mind it is possible to create a recipe that has very little moisture ad-ins like my gluten-free vegan sourdough.

Conclusion

Gluten-free bread baking doesn't have to be dozens of consecutive failures. Always view recipes through a critical eye. Does the recipe call for appropriate hydration? Does it have a strong hydrocolloid? Are the flours measured by mass?

If I were to end with THE MOST important piece of science about gluten-free bread baking, it's this: water is your friend! Not only does it activate the gluten replacers, but it hugely contributes to oven spring.

If after all that, your gluten-free bread still isn't quite right, check out my troubleshooting guide!