Can You Bake Bread Free Of Wheat, Gluten & Yeast?

Bread, the staff of life, can be more of a bane for people who are sensitive to wheat, gluten or yeast. Fortunately, brands of gluten-free breads are increasing, and some are yeast-free. But baking your own bread usually is cheaper and fresher. Some tasty possibilities include Italian "piadina" flat bread, Brazilian Pao de Quejo and breads made from almond, rice and bean flours. All are wheat-free and leavened with baking soda, baking powder or both.

Piadina

Italy is home to the three "P"s -- pasta, pizza and piadina, a flat bread that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Piadina is wrapped around ingredients including cheeses, cold cuts, salad and sweets. It can be prepared in an iron skillet. Gluten-free ingredients may include white and brown rice flours, tapioca flour and guar gum to make the dough stretchy, which is what gluten does for wheat dough. Gluten-free breads also use a product called xanthan gum to replace gluten.

Brazilian Pao de Quejo

Pao de Quejo is a chewy, cheesy tapioca flour bread that is formed into small balls or bread sticks and takes about 15 minutes to bake. It is also known as chebe, and that is the name of a bagged mix brand sold in natural food stores. Aside from tapioca flour, pao de quejo contains eggs, shredded cheese, butter or oil and seasonings. It is tasty served with soups, chilis, salads and dips.

Almond Flour Bread

When finely ground, unpeeled almonds or "blanched" almonds with the skins removed sometimes are used as the main flour in gluten-free breads, such as food writer Jana Amsterdam's Bread 2.0. Almond flour, also known as almond meal, creates a rich, dense bread. Jules Shepard of the Jules Gluten-free website says that almond flour isn't suited to delicate baking. It is an expensive ingredient, so Shepard recommends grinding your own. It takes a cup of shelled almonds to make a cup of flour. Shepard prefers grinding almonds that aren't peeled, because the skins are nutrient-rich.

Rice and Bean Flours

Cookbook author Bette Hagman, who died in 2007, didn't limit her baking to the gluten-free basics of rice, tapioca and potato flours -- all of which are highly refined. To add more texture and nutrition to gluten-free breads, including yeast-free recipes, she experimented with bean flours and other alternatives. Hagman's Yeast-Free Zucchini Cheese Bread from "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread" calls for her four-flour bean mix. This combination of garfava bean flour, sorghum flour, corn starch and tapioca flour can be purchased online or through natural food stores, or you can mix them yourself.