Claire’s gluten-free sourdough bread
If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll remember I wrote about a buckwheat sourdough recipe that I made to replicate my favorite single-ingredient gluten-free sourdough bread from a brand called Pacha. In that post, I also wrote about another gluten-free sourdough recipe that I had been wanting to make, but had been a bit too intimidated to attempt it. My dear friend Claire had made this bread for me when I was so sickly pregnant with my twirlies. Her bread was one of the few things I could and actually wanted to eat! She actually got this recipe from a website called Bakerita, so neither she nor I can take credit for it. It’s an excellent recipe that the baker apparently tested quite a bit before she shared it. But since Claire made this bread for me first and introduced me to the process of making it, I attribute the bread to her and call it “Claire’s gluten-free sourdough.”
After finally attempting to make it for the first time myself, I can proudly say, I have mastered the art of making this fine gluten-free sourdough bread and it is indeed a true staple in our house. In fact, I make a loaf almost every week now. My kids love it! I usually save the whole loaf for them, and maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll sneak an end piece or two for myself. After I bake the bread, I slice it as thin as I can, which is actually a bit tricky since it’s so deliciously crusty, and then put it in a silicon storage bag and place it in the fridge or freezer. I take a few slices out at a time as needed to make my kids sandwiches. They especially love grilled cheese or peanut butter and homemade jam. The bread is even fantastic just toasted and eaten alone or a side to a meal or for sopping up soup. You can’t go wrong!
I will admit, to make this recipe is quite a process (sometimes it takes me two to three days), but it is worth it. It takes a lot of time and patience. There are a handful of ingredients, each of which I now keep in stock in my pantry. First, you need to make your own brown rice flour starter or get an already-made starter from someone. It’s simply brown rice flour and water, that’s it. Once you have a starter, then you need to feed it to activate it. It can take several hours for the starter to activate, depending on the room temperature. Once your starter is active and bubbly, then you can make the preferment, which is essentially equal parts active starter, brown rice flour, and warm water. Warm water is key! If the water is too cold, it can stall and even retard the fermentation process significantly. The recipe from the Bakerita website calls for not-quite an equal-ratio preferment, but I just find it easier to measure out equal parts for the starter, flour, and water. Once your preferment is bubbly and ready to go, again this can take hours or even overnight, you are ready to make the dough. And once the dough has had significant time to rise and ferment, it’s time for the oven! Almost an hour and a half of baking in a dutch oven, not to mention the one hour of preheating your dutch oven prior to even putting the bread in the oven, then you have a magnificent loaf of bread. Whew! I know it sounds like a lot, but again, once you taste it, you will have the most amazing, I-can’t-believe-it’s-gluten-free bread moment ever. Even your gluten-eating friends will be blown away! The crust, the chew, the crumb, the aroma, the iconic sourdough tang. It’s the real deal. Trust me.
Since the recipe and method for this bread is quite elaborate, I will direct you straight the Bakerita website, where the curator of this recipe perfectly details the step-by-step process. I will list out the ingredients below, and you can refer to the Bakerita website for the details and quantities.
Ingredients:
brown rice flour
tapioca flour
potato starch
sorghum flour
sea salt
psyllium husk (whole)
honey or maple syrup (I use honey)
olive oil (optional – I actually omit this)
