Gluten-Free, Egg-Free Brown Boule

I have been making bread for a while, mostly from this recipe (video), which in turn is adapted from this one. But I'm starting to feel comfortable enough with gluten-free bread (I wasn't that good at making bread before I learned I was gluten intolerant, so my repertoire was pretty limited) that I want to experiment and play. Another blogger recently talked about making crusty boules, so I looked up how to do that. Of course, I couldn't stop there; I wanted to also try making a brown bread.

The photo you see above is of the dough right before it went into the Dutch oven, but it didn't rise a ton more while baking, so the finished loaf didn't look a whole lot different. But it was tasty, rustic, and actually quite crusty! (You can see a finished slice here.)

INGREDIENTS
6.5 oz. buckwheat flour
1.5 oz. tapioca starch (potato or cornstarch would probably also do; I wanted something to lighten the buckwheat)
7.25 ounces Bob's Red Mill all-purpose flour (I like this for the higher protein content from the bean flours)
15 grams psyllium husk
1.5 t salt
1 packet yeast
1 cup water
3 T brown sugar
4 T olive oil
3 "eggs" worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer
1/2 c walnuts, broken up

Heat the water in the microwave for about 45 seconds, or until it's like warm-but-not-hot bathwater. Add the sugar and yeast, stir, and set aside to foam up. Mix the flours, psyllium husk, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer, just enough to incorporate them. Add the olive oil, "eggs" (follow the directions on the package, including the part about adding water), and yeasty water, pausing between addition to let things blend. Study the dough -- if it slumps like in the video above, you're almost done. If not, add water, a little at a time, until it's pretty wet. Once you're there, add the walnuts, just to incorporate them.

Put the dough into a large buttered bowl, cover it loosely with plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge for at least 8 hours or up to 24 (seriously -- the longer you wait, the better the flavor from the yeast). On mine, the top dried out a little partway through, so I sprayed it with a little water but I'm not sure that's necessary.

When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 500F (or 550F if your oven will do it) and put your Dutch oven in (make sure to take off the plastic handle before you include the lid!). Preheat everything until it comes to temperature.

Take out the bowl and gently turn the dough onto a lightly floured piece of parchment paper, large enough for the dough plus some extra on the sides to grab onto. Shape it lightly if you need to, but try not to mess with it too much -- it should already be boule-shaped from the bowl. Sprinkle the top with flour, cut some slashes into it (if you want), and drop it -- parchment and all -- into the Dutch oven. Put the lid on and bake for 15 minutes, then take the lid OFF, drop the oven temp to 450F and bake for another 15-20 minutes. Take the bread out of the Dutch oven and immediately put it on a rack to cool.

Notes: this made a very seriously dark loaf. Next time I might cut back on the buckwheat and use more light-colored flour. The texture was good. The crumb was fine and I didn't have any big yeast-bubble pockets, which I'm finding is the case when I use psyllium. However, when you have a loaf like this that doesn't have the support of a bread pan, it needs to be firmer, and the psyllium helps with that. I'm still playing with psyllium, trying to find the right amount that holds the dough together without it preventing those air pockets.