Gluten Free Focaccia Recipe

This morning was a bit of an odd morning.  As always, Mike gets up first to feed the cats. LOVE that! And he turns on my work computer for me.  LOVE that even more. The morning was off to a great start, just like every morning, and there were no telltale signs at this early hour that anything would be different today than from any other work day. That is until I tried to connect to my work's VPN.  While we did have Internet connectivity at the house, enough to run our personal computers, it was not a strong enough connection to allow me to connect to, and stay connected to my office's VPN.  Sigh!

Now, I am not a network guru, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that the weather was likely responsible for our super fast Internet connection being super slow. Blizzards can do that.

So what was I going to do.  Well thankfully I was able to get an email through to my managers.  Hopefully they had Internet connections and were able to receive it.  Since I can't work, and Mike had the day off for President's day, we decided to play.

Sitting in the living room drinking my morning shake I asked Mike what he would like me to bake and he responded, most enthusiastically, sandwich bread.  I wasn't really surprised since this was the last of the 3 hurdles to living a gluten free life that we had initially identified when we first started this 30 day challenge.

So I turned to Google and began searching for sandwich bread recipes.  I found a bunch of interesting sounding recipes, that I will post about at a later date, and the pictures looked promising as well, but I ended up not making any of them.  Why?  Because they all contained sorghum flour and I have not been successful at locating sorghum flour locally. Maybe an Internet order sometime soon will correct this issue.

Not wanting to disappoint Mike, and not being willing to admit defeat so easily, I started thinking about other types of breads that can be used to make sandwiches. Focaccia immediately came to mind.  More Googling revealed several promising recipes, which I adapted to meet my needs.

To start with, most of the recipes were primarily made from Gluten Free All Purpose flour.  I didn't have any on hand because I had used it all last week, but that didn't stop me because I had the ingredients I needed to make up my own GF AP Flour and that's just what I did.

Gluten Free AP Flour blend.


3 cups brown rice flour
1 cup potato starch
1/2 cup tapioca flour/starch
Mix it all up and put in an air tight container.

Focaccia.


5 Tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 Cup warm water
2 packets of quick rise active yeast (I used 4.5 teaspoons SAF)
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 1/4 Cup GF All Purpose Flour (recipe above or use your favorite blend)
Seasonings and or toppings of your choice

Grease a 9 x 13 in pan with 2 Tablespoons of the Olive Oil.

Combine the flour, salt and sugar in a bowl. Mix well.
In a mixer, combine the warm water with the yeast and add 1/2 cup of the flour mixture.
Mix well and let sit until it is bubbly and smells yeasty. about 15 minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients to the mixer, with the exception of your chosen toppings, and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Spread the batter into the pan.
Let rise for an hour.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375.

Just before baking, drizzle the dough with olive oil and add the toppings of your choice.
Bake until light golden brown, about 30 minutes, but watch it since all ovens cook differently.
Cool for 5 minutes and enjoy :)

Note: Toppings I used.  On half the pan I drizzled extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled pizza seasoning (Williams Sonoma). On the other half I spread homemade pesto mixed with enough extra virgin olive oil to make it easily spreadable on the delicate dough.

Later today I will attempt to turn the focaccia into sandwiches.  Grilled chicken, fresh mozzarella, pesto compound butter and mixed greens.  Sounds good and if it tastes good we will let you all know.

Have a great day!