The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread Cookbook Review

Kayleigh here. Seems like it's about time for another cookbook review: this time, The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread, by Bette Hagman. If you are anything like us, then you have one tried and true bread recipe, and you find yourself using it over and over again, since you do not want to go through a string of failures again finding out a new recipe. Clearly, the writer of this cookbook was cut from a different cloth, since she has made the effort to test and compile hundreds of different recipes for all sorts of bread varieties, from hearty, distinctive Rye and Sourdough recipes to inspiring and rut-breaking Irish Soda Bread and Chocolate Cherry Loaves. If you have the hankering for the vast array of varieties a gluten eater has at their disposal, then boy is this a book for you!

Hagman starts you right off with a Q+A session, covering quite many common issues with gluten free baking, from bread machine quirks to water-to-flour ratios and how to combat differences in brand behaviors. And as if this was not useful enough, she follows it up with quite a comprehensive list of flours, covering how they taste, what they are best used in, and even what other flours pair well with them! No longer does the sea of GF flours seem so daunting, with this list as your guide!

Another interesting quirk to this cookbook is that nearly every recipe has multiple versions for different sized loaves. Built as a guide for the oven baker as well as the bread machine user, each yeast bread contains instructions for both, noting the differences in cook times and behaviors quite thoroughly. I think it is fabulous, since it opens me up to baking at a friend’s house that may not have the same fancy kitchen setup as we do. It also makes recipe swapping easier, for the same reason!
Out of all the recipes we've dog-eared in this cookbook, our favorite so far is the cinnamon swirl bread. We added a cup of raisins to the cinnamon ribbons in the loaf, and baked a beautiful, fragrant loaf of bread worthy of toasting, spreading with Nutella or butter, and enjoying in your pajamas on a cold winter morning. In fact, this is the first gluten-free bread we've been able successfully make french toast with, as most other attempts have yielded crumbly, wet piles of disappointment. Not this cinnamon bread- it held up to the battering, gained a lovely crust and moist interior, and stayed in one piece when taken from pan to plate- fabulous!

Jason here. This cinnamon bread was absolutely delicious. Kayleigh has been the one who has persevered and made bread after bread, trying to find recipes which are enjoyable. Each time I feel the bread gets slightly better. What started as dry, dense, and bland, as slowly become flavorful, light, and fluffy. I know for sure that the various bread making books which we have picked up, or had gifted to us, have done wonders. I for one really enjoy the desert breads like the cinnamon bread we made from Hagman’s book.

Unfortunately, we cannot link to a blog or website for the author, as she has since passed away, but she does have several more cookbooks available for purchase, covering everything from comfort foods and desserts to more healthy dishes and baking tips- all lovingly researched and written long before gluten-free lifestyles entered the public spotlight. We cannot speak for the other books yet, but we highly doubt you can go wrong with Hagman's creative culinary concoctions!