This recipe is a couple days late for Thanksgiving but bookmark it for Christmas and be the bread delivering hero of your celiac and gluten-intolerant friends!

I love stuffing. Or dressing. Whatever it is you call it, I like it even more as a leftover than I do when I eat the initial meal. Then I can add even more gravy and there’s no one there to see me do it and judge. Best.

The idea that my incredibly gluten-intolerant friend has not had stuffing in years made me incredibly food sad. And since she was awesome enough to invite my family to join her family in a potluck Thanksgiving, I decided to bust of the big guns. I was going to bake GF break and make stuffing the way grandma would probably have made fun of me for taking the time to do. (Grandma was all about the Stove Top©)

After googling and reading through a ton of GF recipes, I discovered FINALLY….GLUTEN-FREE BREAD THAT DOESN’T SUCK on OneGoodThingByJillee and that was my starting point.

First up, I have to reiterate that I am notoriously bad at following recipes. This is why I’m usually a much better cook than a baker. I do recognize that baking is a science and you shouldn’t screw with it but I wasn’t smart enough to take the recipe grocery shopping with me. End result: I didn’t buy everything I should have and had to fudge it.

What I messed with was her Brown Rice Flour Blend. I used:

  • 1? cups brown rice flour
  • 1? cups all purpose baking flour
  • 1? cups cornstarch
  • 1 tablespoon coconut flour

All good! Not to say that her way doesn’t taste better – it probably does. I’m just saying that this worked really well too.

Other than that I followed her bread recipe as directed** and ended up with two beautiful loaves of slightly-flatter-than-usual-but-otherwise-perfectly-ordinary loaves of bread.

**Okay, it wasn’t exactly as directed. I didn’t have 1 tablespoon of gluten-free egg replacer, but since she mentioned later that you could replace the 3 eggs with 9 Tbsp. water and 3 Tbsp. ground flax seed, I chose to interpret that as conversely I could replace the egg replacer with 1tbsp ground flax seen and 3 tbsp. water. I don’t know how reliable that science is, but the bread turned out. They also cooked about 13 minutes faster than her recommended cooking time. It may be I just have a hot oven, but keep an eye on yours in case.**


It tasted just like real bread too! A little heavier than normal but if someone would have given me a sandwich made out of it, I would never have guessed. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like delicious bread either.

Next up, after I let the bread cool overnight, I cut the loaf into small squares about 1/2 inch big, tossed them on a couple baking sheets and threw them in the oven at 320° to toast, stirring occasionally, until I had completely dried out breadcrumbs. A little brown is fine but make sure they don’t burn. If you think the inside of your breadcrumbs are still damp but they’re crisping up, drop the heat on your oven and put them back in. Damn breadcrumbs equals mold. Not festive.

You can make those breadcrumbs as far ahead as you want though because once they’re dried, they’ll last. So that means this can be done in November for a dinner in December if you’re super proactive.

Time to make the stuffing! Warning: this is not healthy. If you wanted something healthy, you probably shouldn’t be reading a recipe that’s main ingredient is bread.

  • Breadcrumbs from about 2 loaves
  • 1 large onion, finely diced
  • 1 large shallot, finely diced
  • 6 stalks celery, finely diced (I really like using the inside with the leaves. Tasty and they’d just go to waste otherwise.)
  • 350g of mushrooms or almost a pound, sliced
  • 1/2 lb. salami or sausage
  • 3 tbsp. chopped garlic
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage or 2 teaspoon dried
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth (or, even better, you can sub in some drippings from your turkey instead. Liquid gold!)
  • 1 cup cream
  • 2 large eggs

I cook out whatever meat I use first, so that way I can use the grease for my veg. See. I told you this wasn’t healthy. Consider yourself warned.

I used salami, diced up super small, almost like it had gone through a meat grinder. You can use sausage, just take it out of the casing, or whatever you like, really. One with a bit of spice and grease really helps the flavour. You can skip this step to keep it veggie too, of course.

Once it’s cooked, remove from any grease or drippings and set aside, and use that grease to start cooking your onion and shallots. If your meat was healthier than you’d intended, add some oil or butter. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally so they don’t brown. You want them to be translucent.

Add your mushrooms and continue to cook, still stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes.

Add celery and garlicand continue to cook, still stirring frequently, for a final 3 minutes.

Add to bowl with bread; stir in herbs, salt, and pepper. Drizzle in half your broth (or drippings) and toss gently. Let cool.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Whisk the rest of your broth and eggs in a small bowl. Add to bread mixture; fold gently until thoroughly combined.

Add to two greased baking dish, cover with foil, and bake for 30 minutes, then uncover and cook for another 10. A thermometer inserted into the center of dressing should register 160°F.

For all you traditionalists crying, “It’s called stuffing because you should bake it inside the turkey!” I get it. I know. It tastes so delicious that way.

But my husband is a chef and, as much as he will defer to delicious almost every time, the once exception is food safety and he give cooking stuffing inside the bird a big ol’ no. Stuffing inside the bird can mean that neither of them are cooking all the way through, letting salmonella and campylobacter bugs to survive the cooking process. And before you think that’s an overreaction, twenty per cent of ALL food poisoning outbreaks are poultry-related.

But if you use the lovely pan drippings instead of broth you’ll be getting the same delicious outcome.

And, yes, you read that right, this makes two dishes worth. Because not having enough stuffing for leftovers would just be wrong.

Filed under: bread, Christmas, food, gluten-free, recipe, stuffing, thanksgiving