Those are rookie numbers. 12 months is nothing. Try an 8 year gap - after an initial 3 years experience working as a .NET dev.
I lived below US poverty level for 8 years with a CS degree and did the bare minimum of shitty contract jobs because I didn't want to be coding for someone else... eventually I realized I suck working for myself. (and now I have a normal 6 figure dev job)
The main thing you have to have is a story. I lied and said I enjoyed coding products in SecondLife and made tens of thousands of dollars coding inside a videogame, even though the truth was I only made a couple thousand. I also made my contract work sound more important, and went through the various startup ideas I tried and had a good story on why they failed. As long as story sounds plausible, it seems like you learned things related to the work, and you seem like a good person someone will give a shot as contract-to-hire even with an 8 year gap. So I think a one year gap won't be a problem at all, you shouldn't even need to do contract-to-hire.
I lived below US poverty level for 8 years with a CS degree and did the bare minimum of shitty contract jobs because I didn't want to be coding for someone else... eventually I realized I suck working for myself. (and now I have a normal 6 figure dev job)
The main thing you have to have is a story. I lied and said I enjoyed coding products in SecondLife and made tens of thousands of dollars coding inside a videogame, even though the truth was I only made a couple thousand. I also made my contract work sound more important, and went through the various startup ideas I tried and had a good story on why they failed. As long as story sounds plausible, it seems like you learned things related to the work, and you seem like a good person someone will give a shot as contract-to-hire even with an 8 year gap. So I think a one year gap won't be a problem at all, you shouldn't even need to do contract-to-hire.