My Gluten Free Sourdough Bread for Every Occasion

As a person with food sensitivity I am very considerate to those like me. But I am aware that everyone can differ in which foods he/she can tolerate. In that respect there is not one GF bread working for all. 

Some people cannot tolerate oats, there is a group of people sensitive to rice. Millet, for most being a very beneficial food, can be not very useful for those with thyroid problems. Some cannot tolerate certain starches. The main binding agents: psyllium and xantan gum both can cause reactions. 

Then there are also grain free/paleo eaters who, in eyes of most bakers can fall into GF category.

The truth is, that if you have the maximum neutral bread that works for the most of your GF consumers, there are less of them than the ones who can eat wheat.

My solution to this problem is: have a template for small sized, easy to make recipe that can be baked to various types of flours, will not suffer from substitutions and is in most cases no fail.

The flours I tested that work well:

• brown rice
• white glutinous rice
• GF oat flour
• buckwheat flour
• sorghum flour
• millet flour
• potato flour ( not starch)

Starches:

• cornstarch
• tapioca starch
• potato starch

Binders

• psyllium husks
• flaxseeds

For fairness have to say that I did not try much to play with binders as psyllium husks nobody complained about any sensitivity to it. 

Since most of the GF binders have their own flavors which if used a lot adds to the final taste, I found mixing a little of each works well in the final bread without being detected.

I usually go with full psyllium husks and my only issue with it that is sometimes is felt in the texture of the bread. Maybe the ground psyllium behaves better.

Sugars

Depends on your taste and the other additives. 

• honey
• molasses, can be date, mulberry,  can sugar. etc
• plain sugar

Flour weight

For a sensitive group of 5 people I found the final flour mix of 200 grams is enough. My initial liquid (mainly water) amounts to 250 grams, but I usually add at least 50 more when mixing, depends on my flour blend and also the additives I plan to add. When adding lets say walnuts, I want to make the dough a bit more moist.

Starter

My starter is brown rice and oat flour mix and proved to be quite potent. It lives in the fridge sleeping for 2 weeks and is ready to use after the first feeding. Have to say that maintaining various starter blends for various flour combinations would be hard having my schedule and the price of the GF flours would not make sense. I am lucky that my oat intolerant friends have no problems with GF certified oat, and I do not have anyone with rice allergies around. So I use that starter everywhere. 

My amount for the above 200 grams of flour is 50g initial starter + 50 grams of oat+brown rice + 50 g water, so 150 in total. I might take some amount of it to store and further feed, 30 g or so, but haven't seen a problem with raising the 200 flour bread with less amount of starter. 

The starter can be taken directly out of the fridge.

Mix of the flours and starches

For the mixing stage, the flours and starches need to be combined well.

My to go formula is 200g of total flour+starch mix. The common rule is to have some amount of protein and some amount of starches to mimic wheat flour. For me, the 130 g of flour blend + 70 g of starch blend works well. 

Each GF flour by itself tastes quite distinct, in combination the overall taste is more pleasing, the variety of flours can be for example this combination of different flours: 30g+30+30+40. 

Again, one time you want to make white looking bread, another time it is dark looking, some additives, some considerations for food sensitivities, so the flour combination can be played. 

So, for example, I can use 60+70 lets say sorghum and millet,  but because I know the millet flour has more starch than other flours, I might decide to cut some amount from my starches, lets say some 30 g and go with 60g rice +100g millet blend, and 40 g cornstarch to keep my 200g total. As long as the taste does not suffer. 

The taste is as important as the catering to your friends with various sensitivities. And the people who can eat everything will also want to enjoy your GF bread. For some reason nowadays, knowing that the bread is GF does not keep the regular people away from it, in fact quite the contrary.

Soaking the psyllium

For 200g flour/starch blend, I use 14 g of psyllium husks. 

250 g initial weight of water.

8 g of salt

12 g of sugars is my minimum. It can go up depending on additives I plan for the final bread. 

Soaking

Some 30 minutes of soaking the psyllium with water is important because if you mix all together the psyllium will not open up as well. So I usually weight the water, add salt and sugar, the starter, pour all over the psyllium and wait for some time, occasionally mixing it.

Then if I see the mix is thickened, I add it over the flours mix.

This way to do not have to worry about mixing the dough much. Just few stretch and fold imitations before you can either mix additives, walnuts, cherries, other nuts, or form and refrigerate.

After adding the wet mixture to the flours mix some 30 minutes to an hour is enough to have ready to shape dough that can be refrigerated for the night.

Fermentation

My usual schedule is to start your whole process around 9 pm, be ready to shape by 10 pm, immediately refrigerate it overnight, and start baking around 11 am next day.

It is very easy to overproof this bread, so keep it refrigerated all the time. If overproofed,  you will notice it to be on flatter side. The taste will not suffer of course.

Proportions

Water almost always be more than the below, you might need some 30 to 50 g more typically. Salt, I can be less if preferred. Usually salt and sugars work together towards the final taste, also depending what additives and what flours you use you want the bread be on salty or sweeter side. Buckwheat likes salty for example.

130 g of GF flours mix.

70 g of starches mix

14 g psyllium husks

250 g water

8 g salt

12 g sugar

Baking

I bake it right out of the fridge in a cast iron dutch oven.

I fully warm it up in the oven to 450 F

20 minutes covered

20 minutes without cover

The 20 minutes is the minimum. If the dough hydration is higher than usual I can go to 23+23, but never tried more than 25 minutes.

Happy baking!