I’ve been playing around a fair bit lately with gluten-free flour blends that are closer to “whole grain”, and less reliant on starches. From a nutritional stance, its always preferable to have fewer refined ingredients happening in one’s food, and quite frankly, some of the carb counts on some of the fluffier gluten-free breads can be a little alarming.
I’ve also been noodling around with sourdough starters, aiming for creating a nice wild-yeast starter that could be used for slow-rise breads with that perfect tang to them, and ideally increased digestibility due to all that enzymatic breakdown that happens with the delayed ferment.

One of the bigger issues with many of the gluten-free whole grain options out there, are that they bake up quite densely — not really a desirable texture in something you are likely to be eating on a daily basis. I’ve tried quite a few options, including the GEMS flour blends developed by Wendy Turnbull, and found that while the taste is quite good, both hub and I weren’t really keen on the texture — a lot of these flour blends, the GEMS included, rely very heavily on brown rice flour, which, even when finely milled, don’t result in the crusty exterior I know and love in breads, and when not superfinely milled, can be a bit sandy in texture.

So when last month, Dr. Jean Layton put up a post about her sourdough starter, I pulled out the mason jars and got burbling!!! On closer inspection, she has put a lot of work into developing her sourdough flour blend, to have the same composition as hard white winter wheat! and while it had some brown rice flour in it, it also has other flours like sorghum and millet and sweet rice, and some garfava and white bean for protein! I figured since I had mixed up a few kilos, that I’d also try it out in an egg and dairy-free loaf form, and see what the result was like.

As a little teaser, this is the interior of one of the FAIL loaves!
The interior is moist yet tender, and the crust … well its CRUSTY!!!!

I’ll post pictures and a recipe for the SUCCESS version tomorrow! From the FAIL loaf, we made a few tweaks, adjusted the hydration levels a bit, switched to chia seeds, and played with the baking temperature — This is a more nutritious, plain-jane loaf that will satisfy!!!  Stay tuned