Can Milk Street Bread Recipes Be Made Gluten-Free

Dear Milk Street folks,

I love your show, and bought the Milkstreet Cookbook. My wife is gluten-free, and one of my dearest goals is to make her some GF versions of your great exotic bread recipes. My baking efforts are falling flat -- literally.

I have tried 3 times on Palestinian Turmeric bread (pg 688), with your recipe, using King Arthur GF Measure for Measure flour or Bob's Redmill All purpose GF flour. My instant yeast is fresh (tested with a blooming trial, cup of water and sugar -- it bubbled up), and the following variations:

1. Straight recipe, GF flour. Yeast straight in with flour. Bread did not rise in either stage. Bake result, flat, brownie/biscuit like density. Tasted okay, but dense.

1. Recipe, added 6 tsp of Xanthum gum (guessed at it). Same other parameters. Same result.

1. Recipe, researched correct amount of 9 tsp xanthum gum (slightly more than Bob's Redmil xanthum gum package recommends at 1.5 tsp per cup of flour), AND bloomed the yeast in 1 cup of water and tsp of sugar, as part of the 1 and 2/3 cups total water in the recipe -- so did not change ratio. ALSO, put it in a shut off oven that was set to warm, and put in when oven temp was under 100 degrees, to try to get yeast to grow in a hotter environment. SAME RESULT. Sigh...

German Style Winter Squash Bread (pg 544)

1. Per the recipe, WITH xanthum gum AND bloomed yeast added. This time, SOME rising of dough -- but sideways, and so loose it obliterated the braiding. ALSO, put it in a shut off oven that was set to warm, and put in when oven temp was under 100 degrees, to try to get yeast to grow in a hotter environment. Result -- a WIDE, flat brownie/biscuit density. Sigh...

So, is this a Lost Cause? Are these recipes undoable with GF flour? Have you tried any GF versions of any of your recipes? I love the cookbook, and have made some other non baked stuff that was great, but this is my real quest for my wife, to bake something fresh for a woman who has endured Schaar package bread for most of her life. She is both applauding my efforts, and wishing I would give up on what is so far mostly a waste of time and flour. Do you have any secret ingredient combo that will make these top shelf GF flour brands actually RISE?

Thanks so much for any help you can provide, or for letting me down easily and telling me to forget it, it's undoable (hope not!). -- Bob Kalinowski

Photo of flat Squash bread(left) and version 3 of flat Turmeric bread (right).