The link below is for a quick and easy gluten-free, low-carb, sugar-free alternative that may help you out. It works best toasted or used as a toasted or grilled sandwich or as French toast. I generally cut the muffin into three slices when I make them. It has an eggy flavor, but if you spread peanut butter or another strong flavor (mustard) on it it's not as noticeable. I've been making this little "bread" for a friend when she dines with us because she's diabetic and very carb sensitive. My mother was gluten-intolerant and she made wheat-free cornbread as her bread-of-choice. She would bake it thin, cut into bread-size slices and slice them in half. Because there wasn't nearly as much information and GF ingredients available then as there is now, I think you have an advantage. There is even a GF Bisquick and GF flour mixtures and mixes available in all grocery stores, not just health-food stores or special order, now than there were a few years ago. Even Wal-Mart has a large selection of GF foods. I wish I would have known about arepas when my mother was alive. She would have really enjoyed those for a wheat-free bread. If you can locate a bag of P.A.N. Pre-cooked White Maize Meal you can easily make wheat-free arepas and keep them in the freezer. I make them about once a month just because we like them. They are something different for us on sandwich night. There are also great baked goods you can make with coconut flour and almond flour that will fill that wheat void. I use both coconut flour (Tropical Traditions) and almond flour (Honeyville Grain) to make muffins because they are low-glycemic alternatives to wheat. My favorite cookbooks using these alternative flours are: -The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook - by Elana Amsterdam You will find a lot of her recipes on-line - www.elanaspantry.com -Cooking with Coconut Flour - by Bruce Fife, N.D. and a lot of those recipes are available on-line. Now that I've been making almond milk I have used the moist almond pulp remaining after I blend the nuts and water for making crackers and drying the pulp in my dehydrator and using it in recipes that call for almond flour. Almond pulp (or almond flour) is a good substitute for breading mixes with some shredded cheese like a mixture of Parmesan/Asiago/Romano/Provolone. Great on baked chicken breasts. Do a search on - paleo bread recipes - and you'll find a number of recipes that may work for you. The people eating a paleo diet don't use grains. I sure wouldn't pay $7.95 for a wheat-free loaf of bread!!! There are things you can inexpensively make at home once you find the recipes and ingredients you need. Check King Arthur Flour and Bob's Red Mill web sites for GF flours and recipes. I made Gluten-Free Banana Muffins from King Arthur Flour web site this weekend (used my own homemade GF flour blend). You can do it!!!! :-) -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: One Minute Muffin

The Irish Freckle Bread I make is a yeasted bread. It happens to be my daughter's favorite. From your brief description three things come to mind. Is your flour old? Old flour doesn't make good bread. Secondly, mixing time. How long did you knead the dough? Sticky/glue-like dough is caused by under-mixing or over-mixing. If you didn't knead it enough, the gluten wasn't properly developed leaving the dough sticky. If the dough was over-mixed the gluten strands break down, letting the dough become sticky. And thirdly, the hydration may have been off a bit - and needed a little more flour. Flour amounts in a yeast bread are just good guesses. You may actually need more or less flour than indicated in the recipe. If the recipe called for all-purpose flour and you used bread flour, you would need to alter the amount of flour because there is more gluten in bread flour; therefore it would need more hydration than all-purpose flour (or just use less flour). Gluten soaks up hydration like a sponge. The recipe is just a guideline, you still need to go by the "feel" of the dough and you want a nice soft ball of dough. If this recipe was a soda bread, then I'd suggest mixing by hand and not in a stand mixer. The perfect tool for mixing quick breads is a Danish Dough Whisk (available from King Arthur Flour). Soda breads are quick breads and you want to keep mixing to a minimum so you don't over-develop the gluten strands. -Grainlady

Sue- Is it the wisdom of the ages or science from the experts? This is what I've read from "experts" - I'm just the person sitting behind the keyboard typing after I've gathered a stack of books by my side. According to Shirley Corriher in "Cookwise", salt plays three roles in dough: It enhances flavor, controls bacteria, and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. She even suggests if the water you are using in your breads is soft (low mineral content), you'll want to be sure to add high-mineral salt - which are natural sea salts, not table salt. The minerals in natural sea salt also play into yeast activity. But what is too much salt... As little as 1/3 t. of salt per cup of flour can be enough to noticeably slow yeast growth. Salt can be added intentionally to slow yeast growth. More salt may be added to dough, such as in a bakery setting when you would want to slow down fermentation until the next shift of workers comes on. The small amount of salt we add to yeast and naturally-leavened breads doesn't really give a salty taste, nor does it contribute largely to the daily sodium intake in a normal diet or normal sodium amounts for people who aren't watching sodium intake, but salt helps to bring out the flavor of the fermentation. As anyone who has ever left the salt out of a recipe can attest, bread without salt is somewhat insipid - but that's because our taste is often trained to like salt and salty flavors. Then there's all the hub-bub about when to add salt. I wait to add salt towards the end of the kneading, along with the fat. I only add the fat early if I want a close crumb - or an almost cake-like texture (for sandwich bread as an example - breads that need to hold together when held in your hands and keep spreads from dripping through). The gluten will have an easier time developing, and will develop quicker (meaning you will need to spend less time mixing and kneading) when you wait to add the salt after gluten development. Once you add the salt, the gluten really tightens up. You can actually feel the difference in the dough. Peter Barham in "The Science of Cooking" says "...the salt acts to modify and control the action of the yeast. Harold McGee in "Keys to Good Cooking A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes" and "On Food and Cooking": Salt contributes to a balanced taste and intensifies aroma in bread, but it also affects structure and texture. Salt makes a dough less sticky, and gluten more stretchy, and the finished loaf lighter. In sourdoughs, salt helps control the growth of acid-producing, gluten-weakening bacteria. [So there's that bacteria mentioned by Shirley Corriher as well.] Salt isn't a leavening agent, but it helps control the leavening agent, as you thought. You can make perfectly good bread with very little or no salt at all (other than the naturally occurring salts in water, other ingredients, etc. - there is always a source for some sodium, even without added salt). But as one book pointed out, when it came to taste tests, people liked breads with more salt than less salt. As a person who doesn't use a lot of salt in their diet, I'd choose less salty flavor - so flavor is subjective. When using less salt in breads, you just need to watch the rise because it will be faster than normal. Peter Barham, in his book, intentionally made bread with lower salt amounts to see how little it could actually be, and he came to the conclusion you didn't need salt at all and that the bread tasted fine. "Fine" isn't what most people expect homemade bread to taste like, however. So you can use a long cold rise to develop flavors, instead of adding salt, or as much salt. And there is the old rule of thumb... If you reduce the salt in a bread recipe, be sure to reduce the yeast as well. So if you cut the salt by 50%, reduce the yeast by 50%. I was also taught in cooking and baking classes that a little salt makes sweet things taste sweeter, hence the ever-present "pinch of salt" in things you wonder what difference did that small amount actually make? There are a lot of factors to keeping bread fresh. Choose enriched breads and sourdough, instead of lean doughs. If you want your bread to stay fresh longer add fenugreek or rosemary because these ingredients are antioxidants, "they prevent oxygen in the air from combining with compounds in the dough, thus acting as a preservative by preventing chemical changes in the dough." I add an acid ingredient to whole wheat breads in the form of ascorbic acid, which is another antioxidant you can add to aid keeping bread fresher longer, but also counteracts the effects of Glutathione in wheat germ, which can damage the gluten strands. Yeast also works better in a mildly acidic mixture. But don't add an acid to naturally-leavened breads because they are already acid enough. My personal favorites for keeping bread fresher longer are coconut oil, agave nectar, and chia seeds - and you won't find these ingredients discussed in any books by "experts". Coconut oil was used in commercial baked goods until the mid-20th century because it helped lengthen shelf-life. As a medium-chain fat, coconut oil doesn't go rancid as quickly as polyunsaturated oils. When pressure was put on the market to use hydrogenated fats and polyunsaturated fats, the shelf-life was shortened, foods went rancid quickly, and they had to find new stabilizers and chemicals to use instead of coconut oil. Coconut oil was used for popping corn at the movies and sports stadiums. They popped large amounts long before it was needed and packed into containers to be used later, and using coconut oil in it kept it fresher longer. Nobody likes stale popcorn.... Coconut oil aids in slowing down mold growth as well. Agave nectar does an excellent job of holding moisture in baked goods, as does chia seeds. Both keep moisture in the crumb of breads from migrating through the crust, so they slow staling - which is an interesting read in and of itself. If you are going to freeze your bread, there is a lot of science about using honey in your breads instead of sugar. The honey will aid in keeping the moisture in the crumb, and I suspect agave nectar has a similar quality. Hope the experts have given you the answers you were looking for. -Grainlady

Great information already posted... Here's an expanded version. Flour 101- -The more protein, the lighter the yeast bread - up to a point. Too much protein (gluten) will make bread tough, which is why commercial flour is a combination of protein levels so that it has an average amount correct for different baking needs. -There are two types of protein that make up the gluten group - glutenins and gliadins. This is what we generally call "gluten". Glutenins provide the elastic quality that allows bread dough to expand. Gliadins play a secondary roll by contributing to the viscosity and extensibility of bread dough. -Although durum wheat has the highest amount of protein of all wheat types, the main protein in durum wheat is gliadin, which makes it excellent for pasta, not bread, because of the viscosity and extensibility. This is the type of wheat I use for wholegrain pasta. -Bread flour is highest in the protein glutenins (great for yeast breads), milled from hard wheat varieties. -All-purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheat so that it fits a protein profile that suits "all-purposes" for general baking. A little too much protein for really fine cakes, a little less protein than needed for really good bread. A middle-of-the-road flour. (Source: CookWise by Shirley O. Corriher) Percentage of protein.... Durum wheat - 13-13.5% protein - used for pasta Bread flour - 11.5-12.5% - use for yeast breads, pasta, pizza Northern unbleached all-purpose flour (King Arthur) - 11.7% - use for yeast breads, cream puffs, puff pastry, pasta, pizza Northern all-purpose flour (Robin Hood, Hecker's)- 11.7% - 11-12% - use for yeast breads, cream puffs, puff pastry National brand unbleached all-purpose flour (Gold Medal, Pillsbury) - 10-12% - yeast breads, cream puffs National brand bleached all-purpose flour (Gold Medal, Pillsbury) - 9.5-12% - biscuits, quick breads, muffins Bleached Southern all-purpose flour (White Lily, Martha White, Gladiola, Red Band) - 7.5-9.5% - Pie crusts, biscuits, quick breads, muffins Cake flour - 7.5-8.5% - Cakes, quick breads, muffins, pancakes ------------------------ Whole grain flour can have as much or more gluten than commercial flours. I'm using hard white winter wheat that has 13.1% protein - excellent for yeast breads. I've worked with wheat that had 16% protein levels. It takes more kneading to develop the gluten in high-protein wheat varieties and you won't get as tender a crumb as you do with lower protein levels. I also mill soft wheat for pastry, biscuits, cakes, quick breads; or mixtures of low-gluten flour (spelt) and hard wheat to make "all-purpose" protein levels when I need lower-gluten flour (cookies, quick breads, etc.). For low-gluten "cake" flour, I use a 3:1 mixture of soft white wheat and oats (or spelt) for fine cakes like chiffon or angel food. -Grainlady