Gluten Free Baking & Living: A day devoted to bread!

Just recently I had the wonderful opportunity to go along and review a gluten free cookery course. An actual proper gluten free course! A whole day with a bunch of people who understand!

Gluten Free Baking and Living has set up classes throughout the UK (not just in London!) to teach people new ideas, recipes and ways around being gluten free. I decided to try the bread course. I don’t know about you but the thing I miss most about being GF is fresh white bread. Hot out of the oven and crispy crusty and the butter just melts….. Impossible with GF I hear you cry! A couple of weeks ago I would have agreed……..

The course is held at the Lloyd Williamson School in London by nutritionist Deborah Thackeray and she holds a variety of different style courses throughout the country not just London!  Ours was devoted to bread. The day started with tea & coffee and we had a taster of what was to be made. First comment on this is that I never truly though I would taste bread like that again! Deborah gave us all a huge selection of recipes. Tried and tested by herself so pretty much guaranteed to work. Along with the selection of breads we were to make that day (baguettes, brioche, seeded, sour dough) she also included a nice selection of bonus recipes.

Look! Fluffy springy bread!

One of the main things I loved about this course was the sheer diversity in the recipes we covered. We made breads with yeast and breads without. Rather than just using the same flour we were taught and shown a variety of different blends and techniques to achieve the different styles of bread. The ingredients also were good priced ingredients which could be found throughout rather than a specialist expensive shop somewhere.

After the baguettes, sour dough and seeded bread in the morning we had a rather nice gluten free (of course) lunch, was shown an impromptu demonstration on making corn tortillas and you can imagine the chat when you meet up with fellow gluten free bakers! One of the main points raised at lunch time was that this one of the best courses and gave you the most information for money that we had all individually been on.

The afternoon was started again with a demo and the making of the brioche bread to take home to rise. The day was scattered through with useful tips aside from the recipes and blend knowledge. I won’t pass them all on to you but did you know it best to let the dough rise slowly and not fast as you would gluten bread? And of course most importantly, make small loaves - gluten free doesn’t last as long as who wants to waste all that hard work? You can of course though batch bake and freeze.

This truly was a course worth the money, Deborah has excelled herself with this course and I am already searching through my diary to see when I can book myself on for more!