2020 was the year that everyone rediscovered baking, and especially sourdough baking. Thousands of pictures of bread flooded my feeds. They looked good, but there was a lot of other stuff going on in my life during 2020. Like becoming an accidental Mexpat.
For me, 2021 has become the “Year of the Sourdough”. Why now? Well, the motivation was initially a suggestion/request from the Basha. Then it was the excitement of getting back to baking bread – which I did A LOT of as a poor graduate student. Lastly, as I started to research it more, it was the pure science of the process. There are lots of variables! Each can be tweaked to produce slight differences until the perfect combination is found FOR MY ENJOYMENT!
Long-winded science explanations aside (for now), I made a fully gluten-free starter in January and was off and running (blindly, and with scissors!). Although I followed the process (I have no affiliate links – this is just FYI), my starter was like cookie dough.
My first trial loaf of GF sourdough bread was a medium success (which for the first loaf is really a HUGE success!). I used a recipe specifically for GF sourdough – clearly written, with a “timeline” of how/when to get it done. It was easy and the final product looked beautiful.
The only problem was that the crumb was very gummy. It wasn’t really great to eat unless you toasted it first. That said, it didn’t keep us from devouring the entire loaf in 3 days!
And so I’ve been inducted into the crazies that grow wild yeast cultures for fun and noms. My biggest problem since I began this adventure has been what to do with the discard, because, let’s face it, I can’t throw away perfectly good food. These are my working solutions thus far (caveat: none of the following are written as GF recipes, however they have worked well using GF starter and BRM Gluten-Free 1-to-1 baking flour (blue label))
- Sourdough pancakes – delicious, fast, fluffy, freeze well
- Herb crackers – crispy, but can stick in your molars
- Cheese crackers – the Basha calls these “artisan Cheez-its”
- Sourdough lemon cake – my fav so far! Easy and soooo tasty
Those pancakes are really good.
The lemon cake was good too, needs more lemon. And maybe bacon.