Easy Sourdough Gluten-free Bread

When I moved to the D.R., I decided that my gluten-free sourdough days were behind me.  I just couldn't handle the stress or commitment of dealing with starter or everyday baking.  So I took a four year break.

But lately I've started baking some pretty great desserts in my little toaster oven (because it doesn't heat up the house) and I decided to dream big and try some bread again.  I still have my kefir--in fact, I have a new batch that isn't so tart and I really love it.

So I thought I'd try my sourdough recipe with kefir in place of starter.  I mix the kefir, oat flour, yucca flour, a gluten-free flour blend, a little flaxmeal, 2 eggs, 2 T sugar, 1 t baking soda, a dash of salt, and a half stick of butter in a glass dish that just fits in our toaster.  The consistency is knead-able only with a spoon but not a liquid.  Then I let it rise a few hours (or all day, if I'm gone) and then bake it almost two hours.

And it tastes AMAZING!  We loved it so much I made three batches just this weekend!

Gluten-Free Sourdough, Take Two

My bubbling and active sourdough starter.

So I'm back to making the sourdough bread again.  I gave it up a year ago because I couldn't handle the sourdough smell while I was pregnant.  I had to throw away the starter.

I've had mixed results.  The starter is good, active and not too sour.  And it was easy to come up with that again: one part flour, one part water, a little sugar, a little kefir.  But since I stopped for a year and didn't write down any measurements for making the actual bread when I was in the swing of making it . . . I am finding it very difficult to get going again.

I baked five different days so far.  Day one was moderately successful, a little flat but tasty.  Days two and three weren't cooked all the way through.  Day four was amazing.  Day five I left the house while it was cooking and didn't get to turn the heat down partway through, not the best.  So what I need to do this time is actually measure, really, and record it in the blog so that I can replicate it if I take another year long hiatus.  I also realized that any readers who actually wanted to try to make the bread on their own probably found it really annoying.  My apologies if anyone else found it as annoying as I did the past two weeks to try to figure out what Val meant by "a little bit" or "almost kneadable."  That is the most difficult part of all of this: how close to "kneadable" to get the bread.  If I was using wheat, kneadable would be the way to go.  But typically gluten-free gets dry and choky unless you keep the dough pretty moist.  Interestingly, though, I keep letting the bread be too wet.

I will press on, and I will share measurements when I have them.

Saying Goodbye . . . to Homebaked Bread

It's official, we've given up on the sourdough for the duration of the nausea portion of the pregnancy (if not for the rest of the whole thing).  Owen threw it out for me this morning.  It had gotten to where I couldn't feed it anymore because the smell was too oppressive (just typing that line caused an alarming wave of nausea to pass through me).  Store-bought gluten-free bread is disgusting and really expensive, but it looks like it's that or a bread-free diet for now.  I did find that heavy nasty rice bread makes great french toast for some reason.  So I've turned about two loaves into that.  Then I just heat it up in the toaster when I want a piece.  Yum.   

The Sourdough Saga Continues

I'm actually getting into a real routine with the sourdough bread.  Every other morning, while the kids are eating breakfast, I mix some kefir and oat and brown rice flour in with some of my starter--and a little flax meal.  I add one egg, a little baking powder, a little sugar, a little bit of salt (I know, measurements will come one day, really, I'm just not a very measury person and have been lucking out with not measuring).  I stopped adding a drizzle of olive oil because it's just so moist that I don't need to.  And I stopped adding xanthum gum because I forgot once and couldn't tell the difference.

Then I let it rise.  Some days I let it rise once, sometimes twice.  It depends when I want to bake it and whether I remembered to transfer it to the loaf pan or let it rise in the bowl (if it rose in the bowl it needs to rise again when I transfer it).  Today I let it rise twice and it took until about 4:00 until it was nice and high and ready to bake.  My dough is about doubling in size now when it rises, which is a huge improvement from my initial attempts.  It really improved exponentially when I added sugar to the starter and when I started covering the loaf pan with a lid while baking it at 450 degrees for the first half hour before baking it uncovered at 350 the second half hour. 

I'm about at the point where I think I'm going to stop buying any bread, for anyone (including the gluten eaters) because this tastes so good, is easier on digestion (the yeasts added to breads are much harder on the stomach than the natural yeasts "caught" in sourdough starters or kefir, and Micah complains of his stomach hurting if I give him too much wheat), is healthier (I'm grinding all the steel cut oats and sweet brown rice myself in the coffee grinder so it's all whole grain flour--plus I add flax meal), and does not require me to drive to the store.  Just trying to pitch the sourdough bread to any who might consider doing it, it's really good!  I can't imagine how good it would taste with wheat flour, yum!

Sourdough SUCCESS! It rose!

So the missing ingredient was . . . sugar!  I looked at a couple of websites on getting sourdough to rise (regular, not gluten-free like I did) and I found some helpful suggestions:

• add sugar to the starter
• only add a tiny bit (but don't skip it) of salt
• leave the starter/sponge out in a bowl overnight (I covered it with a towel)
• cover the bread when it's baking at 450 degrees for the first half hour, then uncover for the last 15 to 30 min.

I once again did not measure, but I used the following ingredients:

starter (I added some of the flour and let it sit overnight)
kefir
oat flour
brown rice flour
little bit of sweet sorghum flour
little bit of flax meal
2 eggs
baking powder
a few teaspoons sugar
pinch salt (1/4 teaspoon?)
pinch xanthum gum (to make it stick together, gluten-free)

Today's loaf makes a hard knock on the outside, and a soft, moist inside.  It rose this time, which is a first really, and I attribute that to the addition of the sugar.  I didn't add enough flour to where it was kneadable, I left it pretty moist and used a spoon for my "kneading" and to transfer it to the bread pan.  I poured the starter into a bowl last night, turned on the oven till it was a little warm then shut it off, and put the bowl in the oven with a damp towel overtop. 

In the morning I added all of the other ingredients (including the eggs) and then stirred the mixture in the bowl and let it sit for about 2 to 3 hours.  Then I transferred it to a buttered loaf pan and let it sit another 1 1/2 hours in the slightly warmed oven with a towel overtop.  I covered it with a glass lid that almost fit for the first 1/2 hour and let it bake uncovered for the last half hour.

If interested in replicating this, you will be pleased to find that I intend to measure and post the measurements next time!  :)  The only part I will not be measuring is the starter.  That you just need to play around with (like I did) and try to get it to bubble. 

Just put one part flour, one part water in a jar.  Add a few teaspoons of kefir (I use dairy kefir) and a pinch or two of sugar.  2 to 3 times a day add more flour and water (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup, rotate between buckwheat, sorghum, brown rice or sweet brown rice, oat, etc.--I really like the texture of my flours and I have been grinding them myself with a coffee grinder for about 30 seconds (buy one that holds as much as possible if you plan to get one for this purpose)).  If your starter doesn't seem active enough you can add a little sugar or kefir to the starter.  Stir with wood or plastic when you add the flours.  Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! 

Obviously if you can eat wheat use at least mostly whole wheat flour and this will taste unbelievable.  You would want to add enough flour to knead yours.  And you can skip the xanthum gum.  Lucky you!

For you gluten-freers, this is a great loaf.  Way better than what you buy in the store, and it keeps like wheat bread.  Great for eating fresh with butter and jelly or for toasting.  Happy baking!

Sourdough Bread: Attempt #3, Result--Tastes good, flat

Well, I can't get it to rise . . . but it tastes good now.  I started using only flours I know taste good (like brown rice, amaranth, sorghum, oat) and just a little bit of buckwheat.  I'm still not measuring anything.  And I've been adding an egg (this time I tried 2) and a little baking soda.  So I can't really get it to rise at all, but it's moist and it tastes really good.  So that's a major improvement.  I'm using about a cup of kefir each time, too.  I'm still brainstorming ways to make it rise, and then it will be perfect (and gluten and added yeast free), or as close as gluten-free can get.

Still in Search of the Perfect Sourdough . . .

Well, I still haven't found it, exactly.  But I feel like I'm on the right track.  I started using about (as of now, I'm not really measuring--so if I actually find a winner, I'll have trouble replicating it) a cup of kefir (that thin yogurt-like stuff I'm growing on my counter), a half cup of starter, a cup of coffee-ground sweet brown rice, 1/2 c sweet sorghum flour, and 1/2 c coffee-ground oat flour.  I also added, for good measure, a little shake of xanthum gum (it helps hold together gluten-free recipes), one egg, about a teaspoon of baking powder, and, oops, today I forgot the salt.  So it didn't really rise much, if at all.  But at least when it baked today it rose incrementally.  And it tastes great.  So even though potato flour makes it rise more, I'm going to avoid it.  There's nothing yummy about the smell of potato when making toast.  Anyway, today's loaf at least made some pretense of rising.  I will keep you posted.