Mary Thompson - Gluten-Free Sourdough Baking: The Miracle Method for Creating Great Bread Without Wheat

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Patrick and Lucile, my parents, for teaching me so many life skills, and to my two clever and gorgeous girls, Steph and Sam. Love ya!

When you are on a gluten-free diet, your greatest quest is for really good bread and baked goods. This quest has led me on a fantastic journey of gluten-free sourdough, which is a safe and healthy choice for people with celiac disease, gluten intolerance and other dietary concerns.

I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2010 after struggling with extreme fatigue. Eating gluten-free at home was not a big hardship for me, but it involved a steep learning curve. I had to educate myself about living gluten-free and understand how glutens like wheat, rye and barley appear not just in bread, but also in sauces and packaged foods of all kinds! I also had to learn to watch for cross contamination at home. I started off with a nutrition class offered at the hospital after I was diagnosed and I did some research online. I also purchased a book called Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide by Shelley Case, which I found had the most accurate and detailed information.

Since then, both my daughters have been diagnosed with celiac disease, in addition to some of my other family members in New Zealand, who also inherited it. My eldest daughter and I created a blog, acoupleofceliacs.com, and an Instagram page, @acoupleofceliacs. These outlets allowed us to transform many of our favorite family recipes into gluten-free versions and share them with others. My daughter has since shifted her career into photography; meanwhile, I have fallen head over heels for sourdough.

Sourdough is easier to digest because of its long, slow fermentation process, and I put that advantage to use by making wholesome and nutritious gluten-free sourdough in my own kitchen. Homemade gluten-free sourdough is better for my celiac disease than the highly processed breads I used to eat. I was thrilled to have been given the opportunity to write this cookbookit allows me to share what I have learned with others so they, too, may enjoy wholesome gluten-free baking.

It still amazes me that it is possible to bake bread with a combination of just flour and water as the leavening agentand make it entirely gluten-free! When we mix gluten-free flour with water, the starch is broken down into sugar, creating wild yeast and lactic acid that is then transformed into sourdough bread. A sourdough starter, or culture, has the power to raise dough without the use of commercial yeast to create gluten-free bread that is not only visually appealing but also tastes amazing.

Baking sourdough may seem intimidating at firstbut once you taste gluten-free sourdough, you will not want to go back to commercial bread, which contains many added starches and gums. You do not need much to start: a kitchen scale, a couple of bowls and a combination of gluten-free flours.

When you bake gluten-free sourdough, you will not experience the dry, fall-apart grittiness often found in other gluten-free breads, because the sourdough fermentation process helps smooth and bind the dough to create the type of baked goods we yearn for. Sourdough is known for its tangy flavor, but with modifications to the temperature and fermentation times, you can produce sweeter doughs to bake impressive gluten-free versions of artisan loaves, buns, crackers, muffins, cakes and more!

Food is a way to connect with others for both physical as well as emotional nourishment. For me, bakingespecially with sourdoughhas also become a creative outlet. I just love trying new recipes, decorating loaves and experimenting with different flour combinations. The entire process of sourdough is very comforting and satisfying.

I hope this book will inspire you to dive into the gluten-free world of sourdough baking. With this miracle method of making bread, and the simple and consistent steps detailed in these pages, you will soon be enjoying the gluten-free bread you have dreamed about.

After all, the best bread is made in your own kitchen with the ingredients of your choice. It simply does not get any better than that!

Gluten is the protein found in wheat, rye and barley, so you will not find those grains here. Gluten provides the stretch and structure needed for baking, so to re-create that missing structure, we need a combination of at least two or three different flours and binding ingredients like psyllium and flaxseed. It is difficult to obtain optimal results with just one type of gluten-free flour, which is why I use multiple kinds of gluten-free flour in every recipe in this book.

If you have already been purchasing gluten-free flour, then you have probably discovered its high cost. Sometimes I go to two or three different stores for a particular gluten-free flour, because each store sells a different selection of flour for a different price. I also look online for sales and buy whole grains to mill, which is definitely more cost-effective. When I consider purchasing a packaged flour blend, I prefer the first one or two ingredients to be whole grains and not starches, due to starchs low nutritional value. For example, Anitas Organic Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour specifies oat flour and brown rice flour before some starches in the ingredient list. The best gluten-free flour blends are a combination of heavy to lightweight flours, a starch and a binder. Heavyweight flours include buckwheat, brown rice, teff and nut flours. Medium-weight flours include quinoa, sorghum, oat and millet flours. Lightweight flours include white rice flour and starches. Binders, as I mentioned earlier, include things like psyllium husk and flaxseed. How these items are combined will create different textures, flavors and densities for the finished bake.

Different types of flour absorb water in different ways, and once you are more familiar with the properties of each flour, your sourdough baking will become more intuitive and it will be easier to accomplish spectacular results. You will see how each flour responds to different amounts of water, fermentation time and temperature. Or, if you do not want to worry about these extra details, just follow my recipes, which have been specifically developed to account for each flours properties.