New Mum’s Food Adventures

Here is my most recent loaf. I substituted the flour for Well & Good plain flour in a recipe by Melanie Persson who wrote a book called “The Very Hungry Coeliac” a book I highly recommend for gluten free cooking. I noticed her bread flour recipe and I know by the way well and good plain flour behaves that it might work. I unfortunately didn’t have all of the ingredients to use her bread flour blend and live in a country town with poor supplies so I gave it a shot with Well and Good. Great results! My only issue was I definitely needed to let it proof more the first time and the second and probably need a bit more liquid, but I went strictly by the times and measurements in the book to see if it would work. But I still consider this a success. Tasted good. Slice was flexible and strong but it wasn’t gummy. The crumb was soft like bread and it had a bready flavour to it. I also didn’t score my loaf and as you can see it cracked on the side. I sometimes like to let the bread explode out or crack where it wants too. So if you’re wondering why you should score gluten free loaf, this is why. It’s the same reason for wheat bread. The steam builds up and finds somewhere weak to escape.

The main difference in this recipe was using high temperature and steam. I have made similar recipes with the same ingredients with the same amounts using well and good plain flour before and the results were garbage. But I never tried preheated high temp baking like sourdough for regular bread without a Dutch oven. It worked significantly better.

So my next test is to use this for a sourdough loaf. Or a sourdough discard loaf. I think flavour wise a discard loaf would probably taste better.

My only conclusion is that the starches were fluffier because of the high temp and the internal steam was able to do its job right. So now I kind of want to do more experiments. Reading the recipe and seeing I had used the same amounts previously surprised me. But it did confirm for me that I had the wrong technique. That in mind I will keep experimenting and posting my thoughts and findings.

If you are new to gluten free baking you really should try to get a copy of her book. There’s an incredible amount of recipes that are easy to follow. All of them delicious!

I’m still adventurous and will continue to experiment but as always I’ll only post what actually works when I figure something out.