Whole Grain Gluten Free bread...attempted in a Zojirushi bread machine

Profile picture for user sdean7855
sdean7855 on 13 Dec 2024 at 12:23

I have successfully made GF brown rice flour/potato starch bread from the book recipe that came with the Z. Virtuoso.  This Rx and ingredients do not form a dough ball during kneading but instead a thick putty with two domes...over the mixing paddles. Ingredients:

  • 1-1/2 cups (360mL) milk
  • 150g or 3 large eggs, beaten 
  • 1 Tbsp. (14mL) apple cider vinegar 
  • 3 Tbsp. (39g) vegetable oil 
  • 3 Tbsp. (60g) honey 
  • 1-1/2 cups (222g) brown rice flour 
  • 2-1/3 cups (327g) potato starch 
  • 1 Tbsp. (8g) xanthan gum 
  • 1-1/2 tsp. (8.4g) salt 
  • 1 Tbsp. (8.5g) active dry yeast

 

However, my wife wants whole grain.  The Z Rx does include brown rice flour, but a whole lot more potato starch. I put together my variant with whole grain flour using  these dry ingredients:

o    3/8 cup (1.5 oz) whole oat flour
o    3/4 cup (3 oz) brown rice flour
o    Scant ¼ cup (1 oz) tapioca flour
o    2T (.5 oz) flax seed meal
o    .28 oz xanthan gum
o    1 cup (4.2 oz) sorghum flour

and these wet:

o    17.5 oz lactose free skim milk
o    1.4 oz. Olive oil
o    1.8 oz honey/2.3 oz sorghum or 4 oz maple syrup, see note!
o    1  jumbo egg, beaten
o    1 Tbsp (.4 oz) apple cider vinegar
o    .2 oz. salt (dry, but mixed w/ wet)

The Z procedure is to add the wet first, then the dry and then make a divot in the island of dry and put 1Tbsp of dry yeast there.  It does fall some.  With my Rx, I have tried both 3 and 2 tsp without discernible difference.

So I made my GF WG (whole grain) pretty much the same way.  It rose nicely, fell slightly.  When the bread was finished, I did the usual of banging the pan upside down.  Loaf didn't come out.  After much banging it finally did....as a wad of uncooked innards atop an outer crust.  Tasty, but not bread.  The crust made excellent crackers.

Second time around, I took the pan out of the bread machine and put it in a 350 oven for 30 minutes, It sank/fell a lot.  Getting the loaf out of the pan was difficult, but it came out as a loaf...with a doughy center.  Tasty, though.

My question:  Does anyone have suggestion as to keep the loaf from falling and cook its innards properly ?  It seems to me that the innards, while rising nicely, don't cook in a timely manner.  While I wish I could just  fire the RX off in the machine and get a loaf, I'd be perfectly happen to have it prepare the dough and then cook it in the oven if that would prevent the falling

Help, help, it's a hearable Hooroloaf, said Pooh!

 

 

 

it looks like the wet ingredients outweigh the dry by a factor of 2 or more.  In other words, that looks like a formula for some type of pudding rather than bread.  It's not surprising that the insides are still raw or gooey after the crust is fully baked.

For comparison, this recipe (which I have not made) is more than 100% hydration but by a smaller margin.  You may want to try increasing the flour components, or decreasing the liquid components, until you get a texture that is more to your liking and that will bake all the way through.

Paul

Huh.  I told of two attempts, but there was an earlier one with less liquid.  It was too dry and never smoothed out in the baked, ended up as a knotted mess.  Wheat is so forgiving, so malleable, so learnable from....this mix of whole grains if it works at all would have do be dead-on in a sort of sweet spot to work half as well as wheat do so effortlessly.

Another thing: as this Rx was kneading, even at the end of the machine's knead cycle, there were small (blueberry sized) lumps in the dough that when poked at had dry flour within...I guess I'll try some hand knead with less liquid

It over proofed. Gluten free bread has a very narrow time of being perfectly proofed for a good bake. It's less forgiving than wheat bread when it comes to this. It'll appear to have gone ok until the bake. At first all will seem to oven spring a little and hold its shape then half way through the bake it'll collapse. 

Without dissecting the actual recipe, and without knowing the full method when it comes to forming the dough and fermentation time, the best advice I can give is a gluten free bread needs one rise only and it is far better to err on the side of caution getting it into the oven sooner rather than later. 

Make the dough in the bread machine on the dough only cycle, transfer into a loaf pan and bake it as soon as it has puffed up a little and has a dome. No need for doubling like a wheat dough. And don't score the dough either. 

When forming the dough mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly first, then the wet ingredients before putting them into the machine in the correct order be it dry or wet ingredients first etc. 

Wow, thanks for these two posts that strike to the heart of things. With that and guidance from some recipes at glutenfreerecipebox.com, I'm about to try yet again.  Thanks all!

Suggestions were that my dough was too wet and overproofed.  Also that I ditch the bread machine, use a Kitchenaid mixer and the over.  Which I've done.  So I cut the hydration way back, then got a dough more of the consistency of my wheat bread....but it didn't rise at all and came out all lumpy, in the sense that it didn't expand and smooth out.  Sigh I made a number of tries with successively more hydration and gradually more rise.  Finally got enough hydation that, on proofing for 25 minutes at  80degress, it did rise . Baked it for 40 minutes at 375, inside temp got to 208+, but it didn't really bake into bread and had started falling somewhat before it came out of the  oven When it came out, it didn't feel firm (if anything quivery) and  immediately began to fall. When finally cooled for 2 hours, it had no cellular structure at all, just collapsed pudding.

See here for pictures, and here for the Word document recipe of my latest try.  I am now using silicone bread pans.

So I'm stuck here not understanding this:

  1. If I reduce the liquid, the bread doesn't rise, doesn't expand into the pan, it stays as a a clumped mass.  OTOH, it at least has some cellular structure
  2. If I increase the liquid, eventually the dough does rise, but it doesn't bake into a structural cellular matrix,  just collapses into a gummy brick.  The only cellular structure, very limited is around the edges.

So these questions:

  • Why aren't the innards baking into a coherent and structural mass when the liquid is increased
  • Why isn't the dough rising/expanding when the liquid is decreased.
  • Should I try this as a quickbread with baking soda and powder????  If so, with more or less liquid.
  • I wonder....most of the GF recipes use some or a lot of starch, tapioca, potato, etc.  My wife's diet cannot have that amount of starch...I am using all whole grain flour except for a very little bit of tapioca starch.   Can this not be done with all whole grain flours?
  • My thanks to the person suggesting buckwheat which I like (and get the most gorgeous Unifine BW flour from Azure Standard), but my wife doesn't like buckwheat.

In the words of Sgt.  Schultz, I know Nozzink!

 

Hi sdean,

I've been thinking about your problem and would like to offer some thoughts:

1) I think this mix might have too little binding capability. The only binding flour you're using is tapioca starch (1/10 of flour mix), so that might be difficult to support the oven rise. Brown rice, sorghum and oat flour give structure, but not the gel-like capabilities that corn, potato and tapioca flour do.

2) Only about 1/5 of the original zoji recipe contains "gel-capability" flours, but it also contains 3 eggs. Is there a reason for reducing this to 1 egg? The eggs would really help with the rise of your updated recipe, especially if you stick with the same process and remaining ingredients (i.e. I would reduce the amount of water added then).

3) Bobs of unmixed flour in your batter: I might venture a guess here that tapioca starch is the culprit. Try missing your tapioca starch separately with water, forming a slurry, before adding it into the mix. 

4) Exploring omitting starches: oat has quite some binding qualities, but it needs heat, or a good soak, to activate that. This is an avenue you could explore. 

Looking forward to your updates. 

Lin 

It seems like I need to be more frank.  I've said before the things I can't have in the bread and people have said, but just try my recipe as if I was being difficult.  Which this situation is, trying to make a whole grain, gluten free, starch-free bread.  So I'll explain my wife's situation for whom I'm trying to make a bread she can eat.

My wife, age 74, has a for-real doctor diagnosed auto-immune neuropathy resulting in brain fog and narcolepsy, Her condition doesn't have any magic bullet, just things amount to a fighting retreat..  Every 2 weeks she has a daylong infusion of immunoglobulin which helps somewhat  AND on top of all this she had GI tract parasite damage when young and has both lactose and gluten intolerance.  Doc has told her that other than the infusion, the only thing that seems to help is a strict Mediterranean diet (which means differing things to different people)  but for sure a lot of restrictions : little to no starch, minimal eggs (a few a week), no sugar, no fat other than limited olive oil, lactose free skim milk, whole grains, no gluten.  Oh, and she dislikes buckwheat, but is maybe desperate enough that she might eat it.  I will try the

Previously she has eaten Berlin Bakery's Sourdough Sprouted Spelt bread but I was unable to get anywhere making that myself.

This is why I have such a cockeyed recipe..

SO I have questions I need help with  (as opposed to telling me what you do that works...with ingredients I can't use).  Please help me with my questions.

  1. I am coming in as a newbie to matter of binding, gels, emulsifications...just throwing stuff together and hoping it works.  I see other discussions where these matters are discussed at a high level, but I am still adding 2 and 2 while all you people are using algebra.  Please point me at something online that explains what goes into making gluten free bread and how everything works together.  I have been making my own wheat-barley-buckwheat bread for 10+ years, where everything, due to the magic of gluten and the Zojirushi bread machine, everything just works,  Gluten-free whole grain starch free bread is whole 'nuther more demanding and cranky matter.
  2. Thus I need to know what ingredients work together.  I have had a miserable time of maybe 5 successive tries with a yeast leavened bread....With the previously detailed RX, if I made the dough wet enough that it would actually rise (25 minute proofing), it would begin to fall at the end of the 40 minutes in the oven and be a gooey pancake (with a  little bit of rise around the edges of the bread pan) after cooling 2 hours.  If I made the dough dry enough that it resemble that of my wheat bread, it never rose or filled out the pan.  Neither was anything useful as bread.  Mind you with the heavy starch Rx that comes with the Zoji bread machine, I could make a brown rice flour and starch bread just fine, but my wife cannot have heavy starch
  3. The recipe ideally would be starch-free, gluten-free, modest olive oil (only), modest honey or maple syrup, lactose free, one or no eggs.
  4. Please answer this question directly. Do baking powder/soda have more lift than yeast?
  5. I have no problem get the  lumps out with my KitchenAid mixer.
  6. Please tell about heat or soaking with oat flour....or any other whole grain flour or mix thereof.

Signed: Desperate in upstate NY.

I will trying the buckwheat flour YouTube.

 

 

Please answer this question directly. Do baking powder/soda have more lift than yeast?

Yeast has more rising power than baking soda/powder. But if the dough or batter can't wait long enough before degrading, the baking s* might be a better choice. I would favor baking powder over soda, because with soda you have to use an acid and if you don't get the relative amounts of soda and acid right you might end up with some un-neutralized acid.  For most people this would be fine but perhaps not for your wife.

Good luck!

TomP

I'm not sure how you can avoid starch.  Basically, if it isn't protein, fat, or cellulose it's starch.

And please do not feel desperate. Would love to help. 

A couple of questions before I try to mash a recipe together and try it out. 

1. You mentioned your wife liked the sprouted spelt loaf. That has gluten. I suppose spelt cannot be included anyway, isn't it?

2. Ideally no starch, but does whole grain carbs work well without restrictions? E.g. A 80-20 oat/brown rice bread would be acceptable? Are there carbs she takes very well to? 

3. What is the ideal bread crumb and how is the bread eaten? I.e. is this generally going to be toasted, so a tighter slightly crumbly texture is fine? Or are you looking for a bread that is still somewhat elastic, mainly eaten fresh? 

Lin