Now let’s move on to the Complete Sourdough Lab. I’ll tell you more about it and how you can learn when the doors will open again.
Pull up a chair. Lean in a little more… I want to tell you a little story…
My own gluten-free sourdough story with its failures and triumphs.
The first time I made my own gluten-free sourdough starter from scratch was…
… an interesting science experiment to say the least!
I had watched my son bake delicious wheat-based sourdough bread countless times since the beginning of 2020 and I couldn’t get the thought of an artisanal, delicious gluten-free loaf of sourdough bread out of my head.
“What if I could recreate the delicious sourdough bread of my childhood in Germany?”
You should know that I had baked artisanal sourdough wheat and rye bread for many years in my early 20s and into my 30s. Then life got busy, and I hardly had time to bake even though it was a great way for me to relax and be creative.
when I learned that My husband and I are gluten-intolerant, I made it a priority to learn to bake gluten-free, delicious and good-for-us food again.
I discovered again how much I loved to bake and how much I truly missed it. It was time to find pockets of time to play around with gluten-free baking. In the Spring of 2021, when my son baked regular sourdough every week I decided it was time to bake with sourdough again, too. This time it was going to be with gluten-free sourdough.
I took a bit of my son’s wheat starter and fed it gluten-free flour. Using my science and math mind I figured that oat flour is closely related to wheat and if I cut and fed it often enough, the wheat content would be small enough that it would not bother me, even though it would never be 100% gluten-free.
O.M.G. I was in sourdough experimentation
and baking heaven.
But… I never really got a good loaf of gluten-free sourdough bread. I underestimated the science of fermentation and working with wild yeast. The breads never came close to what I envisioned and my starter eventually died. It didn’t have a viable mix of wild yeast to flourish in gluten-free flour.
It was time to jump all in and start a 100% gluten-free starter based on what I knew from years ago.
I soon learned that gluten-free and wheat starters are completely different animals.
I needed a different approach.
I needed to look at creating gluten-free sourdough starters as an experiment in wild fermentation. It was the birth of the Alchemy of Flour and learning how different gluten-free flours behave in fermentation and baking.
Walter, Hugo, and Alfred were born.
Walter, Hugo, and Alfred were my starters made of different flours. Yes, I actually named my starters to keep them apart and have some fun along the way. They were kind of like little children, alive and growing, developing personalities and minds of their own.
They helped me learn firsthand the different behaviors of the various flours.
Which flours give wild yeast a great environment to grow?
How do various flours perform in a loaf of bread?
Which flour is best for what type of bread like sandwich bread or country boule?
How do these flours influence taste and what structure/characteristics do they bring to the loaf?
How likely is each flour to attract bad bacteria and eventually kill the starter?
I learned how to create a foolproof, gluten-free sourdough starter using the wild yeast in my environment, how to keep them alive over a long period of time, and how well they created the perfect loaf of gluten-free sourdough bread.
I was back in my element of sourdough baking.
I started to recreate the different sourdough breads of my past using gluten-free flour.
My biggest joy was when I managed to create a loaf of country bread that tasted just like the German sourdough bread I grew up with.
