New Mum’s Food Adventures

I have had an awful time with gluten free starter. Either it gets contaminated or now my newest issue it stops bubbling and rising. Feeding it more doesn’t help. Warm area makes no difference it just lost its rising. I’m going to try adding an apple slice to see if it helps.

So I bought some starter online made with brown rice. I’m feeding it brown rice flour or a mix of brown rice and white rice. It took 48hrs to become active. It smelled like a yeasted bread when it was ready. Today I used the discard to make a discard bread loaf. I forgot to add salt. The results were acceptable. Not the most attractive loaf but edible so that’s all I ask really. But it needed the salt for flavour. It really did.

I should have added a teaspoon of salt. I put in my mixing bowl 150 grams of gluten free starter from the recently reactivated sourdough mate starter, 50 grams of potato starch, 200 grams white rice flour, 20 grams of pea protein, 20 grams psyllium husk, 2 teaspoons xanthum gum, 30 grams maple syrup, 1 standard 7gram yeast sachet, 20 grams neutral oil in my case macadamia nut oil and 300 grams of water.

I put everything in this order and mixed by spoon before using the stand mixer. It’s a cheap low budget mixer and it does ok but needs lots of help. I finished off the mixing by hand in the bowl and used a bowl scraper to really get in there and make sure everything was combined. The ingredients of gluten free do tend to stick to the bowl edges a lot and need to be worked in.

Then I went my hands, shaped, plopped in a proofing basket that had some rice flour and I proofed hoping for the best. It went ok. I probably could have proofed a bit longer but oh well. Next time.

I feel like the pea protein makes a huge difference to the end result. I’m sure whey isolate would work just as well but the pea protein is unflavoured powder was cheaper. It cost half the amount and I don’t have to worry about dairy allergies.

It’s not the starter to blame. I just need to keep trying and practicing. So far I’ve made really good sourdough discard bagels. With those I add sorghum flour and they do really well. I wonder if it’s because they’re smaller.

The sourdough mate gluten free starter was fabulous. Worked fast and well. But I eventually forgot to store it in the fridge, forgot to feed it and it succumbed to mould. But entirely my fault. It was fabulous though. Best GF starter I have ever used.