Overbaked?

Back in my wheat days I had put some dough in a warm oven to rise and forgot about it until whatever movie we were watching (a couple hours later!) mentioned bread which reminded me of my now over-risen dough.  It was easy enough to punch it down, reshape it, and let it rise again but this wouldn't be the last time I'd forget something in the oven, but strangely in my latest escapade I have discovered a strange secret peculiar to gluten free baking.  We made pizza the other night, my regular bread recipe makes too much for a thick 12" crust so I either use the extra for breadsticks or in this case I put it in a small, greased stoneware mixing bowl and planned to make a round 'artisan' loaf.  We finished baking the pizza and headed downstairs for a movie night and I put the mixing bowl in the oven at 350 and set the timer for 25 minutes, but I didn't hear it go off.  Nearly two hours later, after the show, with a sinking (and rather panicked) heart I knew what I had done.

I bake a full batch of this dough for about 45-50 minutes this was 1/4 the volume and twice the time but strangely the oven wasn't a smoking disaster as it would have been with wheat bread.  In fact the bread was very edible when it had cooled.  The crust was a little dark and a tad thicker but the crumb was actually very nice, especially as this recipe tends to be a little gummy, the extended bake time actually improved it!  I googled it but found nothing of use on over baking gluten free bread so must submit my own theory that the dough is incredibly moist that it takes much longer or hotter temps to actually burn it to a crisp than traditional wheat bread.  I am not proposing that we should over bake gluten free bread as a common practice, but rather can honestly say that when baking gluten free yeast bread, if you aren't sure if your loaf is done, baking it for an extra 20 minutes to be on the safe side isn't going to hurt it much at all, whereas a wheat loaf might burn on the outside and still be raw in the middle, the gluten free loaf can handle a lot more abuse and still be delicious, but if you under bake it, it will be completely inedible so err on the side of burning!