In my quest to make nice Gluten Free bread I was able to take another few steps forward.
I concentrated on developing a good starter and had some interesting experiences along the way.
The flours of choice were Sorghum, Buckwheat, Brown Rice and Qinoa.
The starters were set up from scratch. With Quinoa I also used Rye sour for inoculation.
Sorghum: This starter turned out to be very lively. Having never had a Sorghum starter beore I couldn't quite assess the smell. I baked a loaf of Sorghum bread with this, and the horrible smell made it very clear: I had tended a leuconostoc colony.
The texture was not bad - I learned something about handling along the way, and the potato starch glaze worked well.
Tried pineapple juice with the starter, but lost my patience. I will try with freshly milled Sorghum at a later date.
Rice: I had some experiences with rice before, and my findings were similar: easy to start, but hard to maintain.
Buckwheat: I found that buckwheat ferments to something quite acidic while not producing a great deal of gas.
Quinoa: That's the one. A stable culture developed very rapidly. 12 hours after refreshment (100% Quinoa 100% Water 20% Quinoa Sour) the pH is at 3.9. It tastes fruity and sour, with a bit of the taste of raw legumes.
This starter also works very well to inoculate other grain starters.
With this starter I made a bread to test its powers (see main picture):
Bread flour 70%
Quinoa 30% (from Quinoa Sour 100% HL)
Salt 2%
Water 66%
The dough was very sloppy, it was hard to develop any gluten. The Quinoa sour seems to have a lot of enzymes.
I left it to proof for 90 minutes, which was clearly too long. Then I shaped it into a log, panned it and rested it for 40 minutes.
The resulting bread has a beautiful color, regular pleasent crumb and a rich taste.
Great with peanut butter, but also toasted with butter, egg, honey.
Tomorrow I will attempt a GF Quinoa bread.
Cheers,
Juergen
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Hi Juergen,
Looks like you have made much progress here. I'll be interested to see what starch combination you plump for.
Also, what about protein? And that funny binder you've been using; I've never come across that before. If you use psyllum husk, does that mean you omit any kind of bean flour? Personally, I've always liked the idea of including some element of protein in a GF formula. What are your thoughts on this?
As always, best wishes
Andy
Hi Andy,
With respect to starches Ijust follow the recommendations of Glutenfree Gourmand - her breads look lovely. That would be 20% Tapioca + 20% Potato. This worked very well for my yeast-risen tests. I will experiment with different amounts once I have understand this ratio.
Quinoa has a very high protein content (14%, soy beans 17%),. And as it happens, one of my testers/tasters is sensitive to legumes.
My intention for the time being is to get a nice quinoa loaf, and then to move on to Buckwheat.
The binder - that is some crazy stuff. There seems to be a tipping point with respect to the amount of Psyllium where the dough starts to feel like a stiff jelly and becomes hard to shape. I think just below that is the optimum amount.
I'll try that tomorrow, bread made out of quinoa, the two starches, psyllium, salt and water.
Thank you for your interest, and best wishes to you,
Juergen
Jurgen,
Looks good so far! Can't wait to see what the GF version looks like. Keep us posted.
- Greg
Greg, you shouldn't have to wait too long
Thats maybe the most impressive crumb I've seen yet in GF bread. How does it feel in the hand? Still very heavy?
Nice work, Looks like you will get where your going relatively soon
Josh
Hi Josh,
Thank you for your interest and praise.
The quinoa bread is actually a wheat/quinoa bread, I used this to test-run my GF starter, The Sorghum miche has a much denser crumb - partly because I used a bit too much psyllium, and partly because I proofed in a banneton, and turning out the dough might have compacted the lower part before it could set. Also my baking stone wasn't quite hot.
Thanks again,
Juergen
in our multi grain breads, Sadly, plain whole quinoa on sale is at least 8 times more expensive than wheat berries and the colored varieties are twice as expensive as the plain. . We also like YW with quinoa. A mix of quinoa SD and YW might give you a more open, less sour and more fruity crumb,
Canlt wait to see the next quinoa variation.
And if you have to rely on certified GF products it gets even more expensive, and very hard to find.
I thought of yeast water, but one of my tasters can't have it. I parked the jar in my fridge and the thought in the back of my head.
Great to hear from you,
Juergen
can't tolerate YW? What condition do they have?
Hi, This lady has multiple food allergies. She gets really unwell when she has fermented fruit and wouldn't take the risk.
Very exciting experiments, Juergen! reminds me of the high school chemistry lab days :)
So, quinoa did it?! The crust and crumb is very pleasent given so much non-gluten flour added. Quinoa Sour! this is exotic, i love exotic experiments.
Very nice efforts indeed. awaiting the gluten free version.
-Khalid
And it really has that lab feel about it.
I finished the GF loaf this morning. 60% quinoa, 40% starches, 4% psyllium, 130% water.
Here a glimpse of the crumb. Cut while the bread was still hot (bad habit ...):
The bread is slowly deflating while I type this - I'll see later what remains of this wonderful crumb.
Have to think more about how to bake and cool this bread.
But deflated or not, it smells and tastes great. Almost there.
More about this bake later today.
Juergen
/* Update */
What I feared happened: the crumb near the bottom of the loaf is gummy and undercooked. I suppose this wet loaf drains the heat from my oven stone faster than the oven can supply it - I have to work on this.
The loaf is excellent where it got enough heat.
Jurgen,
The crumb looks fantastic, as does the crust. Unfortunately like many GF loaves it falls as it cools.
It looks like you baked it free form as a boule. As you probably know, many GF loaves like to have some support as they bake and cool. I often use a Pullman pan. With this much liquid in the dough, you might think about using support and a long bake at lower temperature.
Thoughts??
I will attempt another quinoa bread tonight, and as you suggested, use a loaf pan and lower temperatures. Thanks a lot for your thoughts. Juergen
Work on it, you should get there.
Beatiful crust color by the way.
-Khalid
I was wondering if the survival of the starter is in direct relationship to the nutrients in the flour food. Quinoa is very balanced as a food where as rice may only be the endosperm. Would brown rice be better? or only hulled cracked rice?
If buckwheat gets acidic quickly, then there might be a overproducing LAB in there, inoculation might need to be less. Or you caught it just before the yeasts start multiplying, Or it needs a buffer... thinking...
The bread looks great. Moisture ... chia ... might be worth mentioning. First it takes on moisture, then gives it up during baking and then sets up. Might help dry out the crumb too.
Mini,
I forgot to type "brown" whenever I use the word "rice", I am very lazy...
I inoculated ground brown rice with my quinoa starter and it behaved very well. I did the same thing for different flours using rye starter. Not so successful. The taste of the pure quinoa starter, and of the rice/quinoa culture was far superior.
The buckwheat case is an interesting one. It did best with instant yeast, but so far seems a bit problematic for a pure single grain sourdough. Buckwheat would be my first choice If I were to make yeasted GF bread, at my current level of experience.
I have chia seeds in my cupboard, but I still want to get a feel for the single ingredients. What you say about the effects of chia sounds very intriguing, I'll think up some more experiments. The list gets longer rather than shorter ...