Baking Bouchon - Recipe 100: Gluten Free Brioche

This is the first post I'm writing from Korea.  We've been here a few days now and I'm still a bit fuzzy and disoriented and unable to sleep through the night, but I know I'll become more clearheaded soon.

Some things are a little bit different and most things are a lot different as evidenced by what happened the first time I logged into Blogger from our hotel room and saw this...

Yeah, I can't read that.  I especially can't read the part that tells you where the drop down button is to change my default language from Hangul to English.  Ten minutes later all was well, but I had a panic attack for a minute.

I still have a few more recipes left that I prepared before our departure from the States so we'll talk about those most of this week before I tell you about our long trip here.

This is almost the last recipe in the bread chapter and the second to last recipe in the whole entire Bouchon Bakery Cookbook.  I'm not at all surprised that the breads lingered toward the end of this baking experience because there are so many of them in the cookbook but I am surprised that they included a Gluten Free bread.  I shouldn't be because what I didn't know is that the bakery developed a Gluten Free Flour blend that is sold at Williams Sonoma which I was supposed to use in this recipe but did not because it comes in bags larger than I required for this recipe and I didn't want to waste it when I moved.

In my limited Gluten Free baking experience, I've found that using Gluten Free Flour blends is the easiest way to execute GF recipes but there are really large differences between the different blends so you can to find one you like.  I've had good experience with the King Arthur Flour blend and have heard good things about Pamela's and Cup-4-Cup (the Bouchon blend at Williams Sonoma).  For this recipe I bought the Betty Crocker blend which isn't my favorite but was all the store I went to had.

The dough for these brioche rolls is totally different from the dough used in regular brioche.  I used to get freaked out making GF stuff when the batter or dough looked weird but I've come to expect it now and just wait and see what the end result looks like.  I've also found that GF batter and dough doesn't not taste nearly as good as glutenfull batter and dough which is probably good because I don't eat so much of it.

These baked up pretty nicely....

They also tasted pretty darn good.  Not exactly like brioche but more like a dinner roll.  They've also got coarse chunks of salt sprinkled on top which add to the savory, dinner roll feel.

My only complaint about these was that they did not store well.  I left a few in a tupperware container on my counter overnight and the next day they were very dry and crumbly.  However, I gave most of these away to my Gluten Free Friend (I delivered them to her in a giant plastic baggie in a restaurant tempting her to take one out and eat it during the meal.  She didn't, but I kind of wish she did) and she stored them in the freezer.  She said they reheated really well and didn't get all dried out so I guess the freezer is the key.

Enjoy!
Julie