Tearing the end off a crunchy French baguette on the way home from the boulangerie or dunking a flaky pastry in a morning coffee. A distant memory for those of us who follow a gluten free diet. Some things just can’t be recreated without gluten (although gluten free brownies are delicious and often better than the fully loaded, white flour varieties).
A good, chewy sourdough is a precious thing and I think I may have found the answer for those who are gluten free.
Fed up with rubbish and/or ridiculously expensive shop bought gluten free bread, I set out to make something that would do justice to my avocado and poached eggs. Finally, with a little inspiration from Naomi Devlin’s River Cottage course, I think I may have cracked it.
While this recipe might seem time consuming, it’s more a matter of patience than elbow grease. As the saying goes, all good things come to those who wait…
Gluten Free Buckwheat sourdough
Makes 1 loaf
Ingredients
Night before
- 150g Sourdough starter*
- 100g Rice flour
- 140g Buckwheat flour
- 300ml Water
On the day
- 125g Gluten Free Plain flour (I use Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose flour)
- 60g Ground linseeds
- 50g Molasses
- 1 Tablespoon Psyllium husk & 1 Teaspoon Salt dissolved in 60ml water
Method
- This loaf is best started the night before you want it. Mix the sourdough starter, rice flour, buckwheat flour and water together in a bowl. Cover and leave to soak overnight, in order to start breaking down the grains which make them more digestible.
- In the morning, mix in the plain flour & ground linseeds. Stir through the molasses plus the psyllium mixture until the dough has turned the colour of ginger cake.
- The dough should be the texture of a fairly firm cake batter. Grease a 1lb loaf tin with butter and sprinkle with some extra ground linseeds. Pour the dough into the tin and smooth the top a little. Leave to rise in a warm place for 3-4 hours.
- If you need to create a warm place for the loaf to rise, set your oven to its lowest temperature for 10 minutes and then turn off before placing the loaf inside.
- When nearly ready to bake, set the oven to 200°C (remembering to first remove the loaf if you had it in there to rise!)
- When the oven is up to temperature, carefully place the loaf on the middle shelf. To help create a crispier crust, you can place a tray of hot water on the bottom shelf to create some steam.
- Bake the loaf for 20 minutes before turning the oven down to 170°c for a further 45-50 minutes. If the loaf looks like it is becoming too dark on top, simply cover with some tin foil.
- Remove the loaf from the oven and take out of the tin using a cloth to protect your hands. Tap to bottom of the loaf to check if it is ready – it should sound hollow. If not, return to the oven without the tin for an extra 10 minutes.
- Leave to cool completely before slicing. The loaf is best eaten on the day or sliced and stored in the freezer, ready to pop straight in the toaster when needed.
* To create a gluten free sourdough starter, Naomi Devlin has a great recipe using rice flour in her River Cottage Gluten Free book. Alternatively you could simply use 100g good quality live natural yoghurt & 50g rice flour in its place.
Ros Bates created 'A Manner of Eating' to provide recipes & resources for those with food intolerances. She is also Head of Nutrition at Healthy Start Holidays.
