September 12, 2011 - 12:10pm
Anyone has tried using rice gluten and rice flour to bake?
Cant find an answer anywhere.
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Anyone has tried using rice gluten and rice flour to bake?
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The Fresh Loaf
A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.
Rice has very little flavor; why add it to breads? Rice flour is best for dusting a couche.
Jim
Allegedly, rice flour is used to substitute for a portion of bread flour for Vietnamese baguettes that are used in Banh Mi sandwiches. I've never been able to find a reliable recipe for these baguettes. When we attempted substitutions of 30% rice flour for bread flour in baguettes, the results were not pretty. Rice flour is very resistant to incorporating water (which is why it's primarily used to flour couches, so that dough will not stick to the linen), and the mixed doughs in our test attempts were grainy, indicating that even after a fairly long mix the rice flour had not fully incorporated the water.
The baked baguettes had a grainy texture and the flavor was off-putting. We ended up using traditional baguettes for our Banh Mi sandwiches.
Larry
When you tried using rice flour, were you using it by itself or mixed with another type of flour?
I use brown rice flour for the starter for many of my gluten-free sourdough breads. The sourdough process gives it some lift but I usually have to add a spongier flour to it and use flax seed to create the structure for it to rise properly. I consider brown rice flour a neutral base flour to which many other flours and flavorings can be added.
At least not the same kind as in wheat flour. Rice is considered a gluten-free food for those with gluten allergies and sensitivities. The "gluten" people sometimes refer to in reference to rice is the gelatinous starch when it is really overcooked. I believe some rice varieties are refered to as "glutinous" meaning "like glue" but not meaning gluten.
As for incorporating it into bread and cakes, I believe it may be used to decrease the protein content of the final product-kind of like using corn starch or cake flour for the same reason to tenderize the chew. I wonder if it is rice starch that is used for this as opposed to rice flour?
Are there asian bread or dough recipes that use rice flour? Is it used as a roux or mash instead of dry? It definitely has no flavor to contribute so must be added for textural reasons.
Gluten (wheat) is a complex of two proteins. Rice gluten lacks on of the proteins, it is what makes sticky rice sticky and hard. I do not know if this protein alone has any function like wheat gluten though.
In your original question, you say rice gluten and rice flour, do you actually mean glutinous rice flour and rice flour?
Sticky rice is sticky because of amylopectin, a carbohydrate and not a protein.
According to txfarmer here there is a use for rice flour in bread. In her quest to respond to Eric Hanner's challenge for New Orleans Po-Boy bread, she substituted, or perhaps added, 10% rice flour "To make crust very thin and crispy". I have not tried it, but I remembered the thread when I read this question. Perhaps she will see this and can answer your questions.
OldWoodenSpoon
You can make a fermented (sourdough) steamed rice bread...technically I am not sure they will be considered bread, they are called "idlis" from South India. You take a mixture of rice and white lentils, soak them and grind them together to make a batter. The batter is fermented overnight with just some salt and will rise beautifully at room temp. There are idli moulds available for moon shaped idlis but you can steam them in small round containers too. A breakfast staple in South India, it is healthy, nutitious and absolutely divine! It is generally had with a coconut chutney or relish of some sort.
I have also made dosa with rice flour, love south indian food.
Rice does not have gluten, period.
Bread made with rice flour has been becoming quite popular in Japan in recent years. It started some years ago when some bakers added small amount of rice flour in to regular wheat flour bread to add some texture similar to Japanese traditional rice cake (don't ask me why....) . After the huge price hike of wheat grain price in the global market in 2008, combined with rice producers' concern about declining demand for rice, fueled the pupularity of rice flour bread.
You can even buy rice flour specially blended for bread making, all of them used to have added gluten in the early days.... until in 2001 when one of universities research lab managed to discover the way of producing bread by applying the method of .....(brace yourself).....plastic foam formation. Since then, many of commercially made 'rice breads' are made from 100% rice flour without addition of gluten, using this method.
But for home bakers, using specially blended rice flour with wheat gluten plus some additives is the only way to make rice breads. They even have a new bread machine specially designed to make rice breads (can make wheat flour breads, too) now, but you still need to add some gluten or use special rice flour for breadmaking in the machine.
lumos
Oh, I love it! Having worked a few years in "plastics" I can see some fun here... visualise squirting out future bread dough much like canned polyurethane insulating mounting foam! The little dough boy biscuit can comes with a nozzle!
I think one of the main methods (pure speculation here) might include making a gel (wall paper paste) from heating water and rice flour.
Mini
(Yes, I had a great time wandering in the Dolomites and Tyrol all week, wonderful weather and lots of pictures! Wanted to stay longer!)
Gosh, plastic foam and wall paper paste.......Your guessing about the method is losing my appetite for rice bread even more! :p
and look at the method. I could describe honey as insect secretions and milk as hormone induced gland oozings but... in getting back to plastics, they can have internal structures too, some, much like gluten. Basic wall paper paste is flour/water roux or thickened water using flour or starch, making a good glue, and gluten is not far from glue in concept. (Something has to hold everything together while gas bubbles are baking.) Water thickened with rice flour (cooked to paste) might be a good place to start building a non-gluten gluten like structure.
All I have to do to bring your appetite back (hopefully) is to get you to think about cooked rice, getting lightly roasted and browned on the bottom after the water has been absorbed. Picture it, smell it... those slowly formed slightly caramelized crunchies... the best part of re-heated rice.
I got some red rice... and what about wild rice? Black rice? Brown rice tastes much like wheat.
Yeah, I understand the theory and mechanism that made it possible. But I've never keen on this Japanese idea of adding rice flour to bread only because they wanted texture like rice in bread. (that was the whole point for them. Nothing to do with gluten-intolerance because that's very rare in Japan) I want my bread to be properly bread-like. Not rice-like. So mixing that with the thoughts of plastic and wall paper glue just gave me........another justification to hate it. :p
Love red rice and black wild rice. Waitrose (my fav supermarket) sells a bag of mixed rices with brown basmati, red Carmague rice and black wild rice. It's so nice and nutty. My favourite accompaniment to spicy Indian food.
Once was for a sourdough baguette: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23875/36-hours-sourdough-baguette-rice-flour-b%C3%A1nh-m%C3%AC-inspired
The other time was for New Orlean Po-Boy Bread recently: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24960/new-orleans-poboy-bread-it039s-all-eric039s-fault
Both times rice flour was only 10% of the total flour, and the effect was obvious: extra thin and crisp crust. For the baguettes (first link above), I find the crumb was extra delicate - as many holes as other similar baguettes I make, but walls of holes were very thin.
In summary, I use rice flour (<10%) for texture, not for flavor, because it really doesn't have any strong flavor.
as rice flour has much less than wheat. If you're watching dietary carbs, that can make a big difference if more than 10% wheat is being replaced.
rice may have less carbs, but eating it sends my blood sugar through the roof! But wild rice is not as bad, and as long as I am careful I can eat some brown rice, but regular rice (dosen't matter basmati, jasmine plain old supermarket) kills me, and so does any other carb rich white thing. Flour, potatos, pasta!