Loafers,

I have done much research on TFL and all over the web (two weeks)and I am not seeing the solution to my quest. I have the Hamelman bread book on reserve at the library and I hope it will teach me a lot about how to design a proper recipe, as I see it is often referred to on TFL & elsewhere by skilled bakers. 

My wife is increasingly gluten sensitive (GS) and I am trying to emulate a sourdough secret recipe from Bezian's Bakery in San Fran which has a long acidic fermentation, from a week to a month. As a result of at least a 24 hour fermentation, the peptides in gluten are rendered harmless to GS people. Bezian claims that he has people with Celiac Disease eat his bread, and they report no problems. (We are not Celiacs) I have a strong suspicion that if I am able to produce a largely gluten free (GF) sourdough, then my family will be able to tolerate it just fine. An Italian study used a very controlled collection of  lactos & yeasts and I believe it was 70% GF flours (like rice flour etc) and 30% rye flour. It seems like a good idea to use mostly or all rye flour because it is not wheat and it contains far less gluten.

Can you give me any pointers on what might be a good start on a 1 week to a 1 month long fermentation sourdough recipe using all or mostly rye flour? I am quite lost in the forest in this regard.

I have two starters in process, and one pair of loaves under my belt > worst bread I've ever made! (the recipe didn't call for a cover, it seems like it would be useful, and it didn't spring much in the final rise, had no oven spring, and took a colossal amount of effort and time) I've begun using ideas from sourdoughbaker.com.au The Medium Rye Old Dough recipe does ferment for over 24 hours, but not for a week and more. 

I have had great luck using the 5 Minute Books. And these breads are intended to store in the fridge for a week or more. I wonder if a rye version of their standard recipe might do the trick, but I have my reservations (can't remember why not at this time). 

I welcome your ideas. 

Thank you

anemic in Grand Rapids 

Sorry for the delay. I thought I would have a chance to post day two right away. I am now in day three of the creation of the starter. So let's catch up!

Day 2

This is how my starter looked at 30 hours from the initial mix of 300g flour 300g water. I stirred it 5 times over the 30 hours. In the first 12 hours i had left the bowl, covered, on my pellet stove. It got up to 90 F, this was initially thought of as a mistake by me. So I moved the bowl to somewhere at room temp. Then over the next 28 hours it was alive with activity so awesome. So hopefully over the 30 hours you've seen activity similar to what is shown above. If it takes more time than 30 its ok, this is what you want it to look similar too before going on to the next step.

Feeding

You should have 600g of starter mix. Take 300g of this mix, add 150g of flour, and 150g water. I had just poured a glass of a nice weizen-bock and mixed the water with the yeast sediment in the bottle. I figured the more the merrier, yeast wise. Then mixed it up until well combined (No chunks of dry flour). To look like this.

Day 3

Here is how it looked at around 12pm today before I mixed it up again (not adding anything). Updates to come

So here we are...baking again. Thank God. Seriously. Grocery store bread really does suck. Eating that crap through my entire pregnancy almost killed me. Since the bouncing baby boy is now sleeping a lot better than before, baking once again commences.

This was a riff on Eric's Fave Rye. I forgot the sugar and caraway so it isn't really right. I plan on making it again.

This was my final formula for my everyday, I-need-something-tasty-that-I-can-be-lazy-with bread. The write-up on my new and improved blog is on my new and improved blog.

Next up I'm hoping to tackle San Joaquin Sourdough and some bagels. All this week.

Maybe a little too ambitious?

Sometimes I see recipes using room temp fermentation for 12-24 hours and other times I see cold fermentation for 12-72 hours. Is there a benefit to using a specific one or is it a matter of preference? I mainly bake with freshly ground whole grains and am wondering if one way will work better than another, and do they achieve the same results or different?

Thank you.

I was concerned that my success with the whole grain hearth bread that I posted about early last month was just a one-hit wonder. Thankfully, it seems I can repeat it. Here's a few loaves that have come out of the oven in the past weeks: