I have always loved bread. It felt warm and comforting and I loved the way it made my house smell to make it. Then I learned that my body cannot handle gluten and after much searching, I pretty much gave up on bread. I can only handle a few kinds of grains anyway, and our town sure doesn’t have any stocked and ready for us.
But I have this tendency to lie in bed at night thinking up recipes. Figuring out ways to make foods plant based or gluten-free so that I can have them again. Sometimes my ideas are stellar. Sometimes they don’t work at all. Such is life.
But the Cast Iron Focaccia Bread? We knocked this one out of the park on the first try! And it’s all simple grains that my body does not falsely accuse of being gluten. Its a win for all of us!
**You could probably sub out any kind of flour you’d want. This is my special high-maintenance blend but go ahead and use your own GF or regular blend!
Dry Ingredients:
1 ¼ c brown rice flour
½ c coconut flour
½ cup almond flour
1 TBS sugar
1 ½ tsp xanthum gum
1 ¼ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 ½ cup almond milk, lukewarm
1 packet active dry yeast
Oil of choice, to coat the skillet and your hands to work dough
Seasonings of choice: We used garlic powder, Himalayan salt, cracked pepper, oregano, basil and rosemary.
Mix all dry ingredients. Warm almond milk so a drop is warm on the inside of the wrist, not hot or cold. Gently combine 1 cup dry ingredients with warm almond milk and yeast. Just stir gently to combine – lumps are just fine. Let sit for 30 minutes. Small bubbles will form.
Add remaining dry ingredients and mix for two minutes in a Kitchen-Aid mixer, or by hand until the dough is combined. Let set another 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 375.
Coat 2 cast iron skillets with oil. Add seasonings of choice directly onto the oiled skillet, then press half the dough into each skillet with oiled hands. Top with more seasoning.
Place both skillets into the oven and bake 20-25 minutes, until the tips of the edges are brown. The top will NOT brown, only the bottom will.
Turn bread out onto cooling racks. A fork handy may be useful to careful encourage the bread to come out.
The Plant-Based Path 
Can you make it without the xan thum gum? what can be used in its place?
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You could replace with equal amounts of agar agar or flax seeds (but twice that amount of water). I think a store bought egg replacer would work as well. I haven’t tried these options for this bread yet but it has worked with other baking. Let me know if it works out!
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