And we have bread!

I was all set to have a weeks, months, years long saga of the quest for gluten-free bread that would have the taste, feel, appearance of wheat, rye or otherwise gluten-y bread.

Two weeks ago I started a gluten-free sourdough starter (brown rice and water).

One week ago I made a loaf of sourdough from this recipe.

You see all the ingredients in that? Yeah, it wound up, uh, gummy.
Sourdough Experiment Part 1 - gummy bread, an alternate view
(according to the comments, Annie likes gummy bread so I wish she had been here to eat it) It also wound up short with a fallen dome because, I guess one of the drawbacks is that gluten-free bread is, uh, short in stature and doesn't keep a nice domed top.

This week I decided I'd try a Bette Hagman honey sourdough recipe from this book. For among other reasons, it's one of the only recipes I've found that doesn't use ricotta cheese (I don't understand ricotta's role in it either...), and is entirely lactose free.

Me, not being much of a baker, decided I could make it better, too. Ha! The arrogance of naïveté. So, I omitted the egg replacer, the gelatin, and subbed 1/3 cup of water for the 1 and 2/3 cup water, and after mixing everything for 3 minutes, I added 2/3 of a cup of room temperature club soda.

I plopped it in a greased pan, let it rise for an hour.

(I may have forgotten to mention the last loaf didn't rise at all and that there was a decided lack of air bubbles in it and it was just gross. but the crust was okay!)

Then I baked it for 60 minutes at 350 degrees, and LO! There was bread.
Gluten Free Sourdough Experiment #2 006

It was the height of the pan, and it didn't fall down. It was airy, the crust was, well, crusty, like sourdough should be.
Gluten Free Sourdough Experiment #2 008

Now, it's not perfect. I'm hoping that the starter will get more sour the more I use it because, frankly it wasn't sour at all. Next time I'll try either drastically scaling back or omitting the honey because it's a bit more sweet than I can handle. I'm oddly encouraged by this, and hope that in future endeavours, scaling back the wet ingredients will improve ALL of the scratch baking... because every last one has been gummy. (If you're curious, I used a gluten-free flour mix that was 3 parts brown rice, 3 parts sorghum, 2 parts potato starch, 1 part tapioca starch)

I'm just looking forward to cinnamon toast for breakfast tomorrow morning.

You know, if I had a toaster...

(ps - i went to a bridal shower yesterday and they had personalized M&Ms! I also figured out how to work the macro on my new camera, so woo!
Jackie's Bridal Shower 002)

5 comments:

Bryony Ramsden Monday, April 14, 2008 2:41:00 am  

Wow. That top loaf looks like solidified vomit :S Clearly I am not a gummy bread eater. Last loaf - it actually looks like bread! Mmmmm. When you get a good recipe going I need it ;)

jess Monday, April 14, 2008 8:00:00 am  

whoa, that's amazing - it's bread!

maitai Tuesday, April 15, 2008 2:31:00 am  

YUM. me so hungry.

jay are Friday, April 18, 2008 2:41:00 pm  

yeah, I'm hungry too. yummy bread---and aren't we glad that it doesn't matter if the bread looks pretty? as long as it's not gummy, it doesn't matter how it looks. good job! send some my way.

cici Friday, April 18, 2008 8:33:00 pm  

This is great. I am also trying to be all gluten-free. It gets tough. I haven't made bread yet. Thanks for sharing that.

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