Adventure 7: Garbanzo flour bread!

OK, so I think I have this figured out! Basically, to make a good loaf of bread, you need about 2.5 cups of flour; 1 cup of liquid; 1 tsp salt; 1 T olive oil; 2.25 tsp active dry yeast; and 1 T molasses. The liquids (minus the molasses) go into the machine first; then the salt; then the flour; then the yeast, and finally the molasses covers the yeast to help it activate. The yeast also needs wheat gluten to do its thing, so some wheat flour is necessary.

In this particular loaf, I used 1 cup of garbanzo flour together with the 2.5 cups of regular all-purpose flour. Buttermilk was the liquid I used. Setting 11 on my machine is just for the dough; so once it was done, I let the bread rise for about 20 minutes. By then I was getting really hungry, so I fired up the gas oven to 450, popped the bread in, after 5 minutes dropped the temperature to 400, and baked it for another 25 minutes.

I discovered another couple of useful tricks: Just before leaving the dough to rise, I coated it with flour. Just before popping it in the oven, I drizzled some olive oil over the loaf... It came out delicious with a nice soft brown crust. Highly recommended.