Gluten-Free Baking Tips from The Sisters Behind Breadblok Bakery

Meet Breadblok, a new Los Angeles spot helmed by two young sisters who have adapted their family’s longstanding recipes to create a wellness focused, health forward, modern day bakery that’s a little bit of Provence in West LA (the bakery is in Santa Monica).

Sisters Chloe and Celine Charlier are the women behind Breadblok, along with their father and stepmother, making it a family affair. The globetrotting family often convenes at their farmhouse in Provence, where the sisters grew up eating gluten-free because their grandfather has Celiac. At Breadblok, their first culinary business venture, they have taken dietary needs to a new level: all products are organic, refined sugar-free, soy-free and gum-free.

Select loaves, including the ever-popular Chestnut Sourdough (our fave!), plus vegan Shortbread cookies (you won’t miss the butter) and Everything Crackers are available for nationwide delivery via the website. Tack on the airy rustic meets beachy minimalism bakery and café in Santa Monica and the result is an impressive early run for a family that truly lives and breathes a healthy lifestyle rooted in European sensibility with a dash of California wellness.

We asked Chloe and Celine to share a few gluten-free baking tips with us. As everyone's baking in 2020, especially during the holidays, we could use a few tips. Baking is a precise science and learning to make gluten-free goods that aren't dense or gummy is a rare art. 

Common GF Baking Mistakes:

+ Not sticking to the measurements. Gluten-free baking is not forgiving!

+ Not measuring gluten-free flours by weight. Get a food scale 

+ Substituting any gluten-free flour for any recipe that calls for wheat. There are a variety of gluten-free flour options that apply to a variety of recipes.

+ Making substitutions that the recipe does not call for.

+ Using just one type of gluten-free flour. Different grains are useful for different recipes!

+ Creating your own gluten-free flour blend. It's possible, but precision is necessary.

+ Not adding a starch!

Gluten-Free/Natural Baking Tips:

+ Swap out coconut oil for butter to make cookies dairy-free.

+ Some good flours to use for holiday cookies: white rice flour, brown rice flour, sweet rice flour, oat flour, almond flour.

+ To make natural food coloring use: beets (red), turmeric (yellow), spirulina or chlorophyl or matcha (green), cocoa (brown), strawberries or raspberries (pink), carrots (orange), activated charcoal (black).

+ To make recipes healthier, use cane sugar alternatives: we love coconut sugar, maple sugar and syrup, date sugar, etc.

Storage Tips

+ Gluten-free breads should store like normal bread

+ Breadblok’s breads do not have preservatives or additives, so we recommend keeping a whole loaf on the counter for 3 to 4 days and slicing and freezing thereafter. If the loaf has already been sliced then we recommend freezing after 1 to 2 days.

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