Hi everyone. I am new here. I've chosen the user name Pasqual because of a georgeous wee story we have here at home for the kids about Pasqual and the kitchen angels. I have been doing my own organic wheat sourdough at home. I know very little really but I made my own starter on the window sill and did my own no-knead bread succesfully. It was so easy. We all love it but I have discovered I have to go gluten free. Is it possible to do a gluten free sourdough??? I know there is something called backferment and here in NZ I can buy a gluten free backferment loaf. It is sooo expensive. I need to make our own. I find sourdough baking easy and tasty, I did a sourdough pastry too. Also I have looked into how much healthier naturally fermented baking is because of phytates. I have had bad health for a long time and am extremely magnesium deficient with low iron and am breastfeeding so good nutrition is now really important to me. Is the only way to go for gluten free grains back ferment or can one do a regular sourdough?? How do I find out?? What do I do??? If I have to do Backferment what is it exactly and where do I buy it. Help, help, help. At the moment I am craving some bread, living off potatoes!!!
We can't afford to buy the gluten free loaves anymore as hubby is a full time student and we are living off borrowed money. Can anybody help??
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Replies
Andrew Whitley's Book Breadmatters has a section on rice "sourdough". I have tried it for one of my customers.
Martin Prior
Pasqual,
I haven't made gluten free for a long time but we used buckwheat flour. made my own sourdough from buckwheat flour. As I said it was a long time ago but you might like to try buckwheat. the dough is almost batter like and we scaled the units with water not dusting flour.
Good luck with it.
Pasqual,
You should be able to make a gluten free sourdough. It will come down to what type of levain you start.
I don't have it in front of me as I've loaned it out, but if you can find a copy of Dean Brettschneiders book called "Baker" (he's a NZer so it should be in the library if your library is reasonably well stocked) he has a version of gluten free levain and breads. I can't remember for sure but I think it uses a rice flour levain.
Good luck.
Regards
Matthew
Quite right, Matthew. Page 100, Dovedale Foods, Dovedale Gluten-free Rice Millett Bread. Not that easy to find from the index because it's under "Dovedale" and not "Gluten-free".
Pasqual, I just bought "The Gluten-free Gourmet Bakes Bread" by Bette Hagman, Owl Books, ISBN 0-8050-6078-2, a Canadian book but you could probably get it in NZ. There was some discussion on Bread Bakers Guild of America about gluten-free bread and someone of note said they had been using recipes from this book and most people didn't even realise they were eating non-wheat bread. Bette Hagman has been working on different mixes of mainly bean flours for a number of years and reckons they are getting pretty good.
I eagerly turned to the sourdough section only to discover she uses yeast in the starter and yeast in the final dough. She too recommends white rice flour for starters. I haven't even started tracking down the different ingredients yet so I can't comment personally. But if I had a gluten problem I would get my little hands on this book and start experimenting.
Good luck,
Mick