October 28, 2013 - 10:59pm
Baking with Rice Flour
A colleague of mine was on a job in India for a while and he was telling me about some bread he ate there that was made with rice flour. Seeing as rice is highly available over there and very cheap, they mill it and bake with it. But he also said that this bread wasn't really up to standard as a 'bread'.
I found rice flour in surrounding supermarkets but I've hesitated to experiment with it because of this note. Does anyone here have any baking experience with rice flour? Does it really produce different results (in a good way)?
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Hi, Aly
Rice flour does not contain gluten, and makes the dough weaker when added with wheat flour. The resultant bread with rice flour added will have a softer crumb and thinner crust. It will also reduce the volume of the loaf that you seek to make. If it is a flat bread you plan to make, as with Indian breads, then that won't make much of a difference , except that the dough will not be very elastic.
One final word about rice flour. It can be non-gluteneous, or glutenous (sticky when cooked). Both can change dough properties when added, in different ways. So, experiment and find for yourself.
-Khalid
There are many ways to prepare rice to come out bready. Some methods include milling and first steaming the rice, sometimes into a mass and then grating it to make the crumb. Shaped with a second steaming gels the crumbs into sticking together without the use of leavening. Try searching using rice cake instead of rice bread.
Thanks a lot you guys. Helpful stuff. That tiger bread looks really cool. The crunch on the outside sounds like a cool addition to a loaf.