Like just about everyone else in the age of covid-19 lockdown we are using all our time at home to experiment with sourdough. But we decided to one-up everyone and try to make it gluten-free. It’s been interesting to say the least. Gluten is an integral part of sourdough. Gluten is what makes those wonderful big bubbles in your loaf. So finding a way to get a nice fluffy loaf is a challenge. Added to that we arent shopping around for lots of different flours to try out blends right now or buying a new dutch oven. We like to make things hard for ourselves in this family, what can I say?

So let’s start with starter. We are capturing wild yeast and fermenting that flour. We are using Bob’s red mill 1 for 1 all purpose flour. It’s easy to source and gives consistent results. Add 1 part warm water to 1 part flour in a clear container. The classico pasta sauce jars are great because they have measurements right on the side making it easy to see if your starter is growing. I’ve found gluten free flour does not double like standard flour does. But I does get bigger! And bubbly. It also doesn’t float in water no matter how active your starter is so this little trick doesn’t work. Guessing your starter is done by how bubbly it is seems to be the gluten free way. Its basically impossible to kill a starter. Liquid on top? Feed it. Smells funny? Feed it. Unless there is mold just keep on going! When I started out I meticulously measured my discard and feedings but by the end I was eyeballing it. Ain’t nobody got time for precision measurements in this house, we wing it over here. Just making sure of a 1 to 1 flour to water ratio for feeds.

Ok so moving right along to the bread making portion. I have yet to find a good recipe done are yet again experimenting. I added flax seed to my first loaf as a binder in place of the gluten … not good. The texture was awful and really not even remotely bread like. It was gummy and uncooked and awful. There is xanthan in the flour blend so I really didnt need it and should have known better. So next loaf I just did the very simple flour, water, salt, starter. It looks like bread! But it’s pretty dense, it didnt rise a whole lot and is a touch under cooked. But hey its edible and that’s a vast improvement. I’m also cooking it in a cast iron wok with a cookie sheet as a lid. So definitely going to look into a dutch oven or combo cooker once restrictions lift a little. I also promise to update once I’ve got a workable actual sourdough like bread. And hopefully one without tons of strange ingredients.