Gluten Free Sourdough Bread Recipe

A long (long) time ago, I promised that this website would host recipes of the non-software kind. Today, I'm ready to share this gluten free sourdough recipe I've been refining for the better part of a year. This is a mishmash of like two or three different sourdough recipes I've used for gluten free bread, and to my taste, this includes the best bits of all of them.

I'm not a hardcore baker, so I will freely admit that this a fairly inexpert, and perhaps even lazy recipe by some standards. But, it is also simultaneously the source of the best bread I have ever eaten, pre-and-post gluten. You could easily serve this bread to gluten eaters (as I have) and they won't know the difference.

The bread is chewy but not sticky, moist but not soggy, dense but not hard, has a tough crust without being crumbly or razor-sharp (which many gluten free breads struggle with). Plus, it has just the right amount of loft to make this a decent sandwich bread (though, admittedly, this is a low bar for gluten free bread. If you have a particularly ravenous sourdough starter, this might be a different story).

Notably, this recipe does not explicitly call for rice flour. I find that although rice is convenient for the structure of a loaf (and certainly a cheap way to make a starter), it really does nothing for the flavor. A lot of gluten free bakers I know are adamant about rice flour being the only suitable replacement for wheat flour full stop. I'm inclined to agree on some fronts. Rice is a dead ringer for the structure of gluten and is the easiest on-ramp into gluten free baking if you're coming from glutenous baking.

But let's call a spade a spade. This is not made from wheat flour. It doesn't behave, look, or taste like wheat flour. So let's not pretend that a stand-in for wheat flour is our only option. Traditional baking is ruled by the capricious whims of gluten because that is the only substance you can reliably use to do certain things.

However, gluten free baking is its own thing, with its own rules, and its own culture. There are tons of different flours you can use to achieve different textures, flavors, and forms that you simply can't achieve in traditional baking. If you (like me) don't like an overly ricey taste or that signature rice-like graininess in your breads, you're free to leave it out. I think you'll be happy you did.

The oat, sorghum, and chickpea flours are an exceptionally flavorful blend while still giving the bread plenty of structure, so I hope you don't feel the need to add rice. The secret is in the oat flour and the starch. If you use nothing else, baking with only oat flour and some sort starch will still yield a great loaf.

Ingredients

• 259g sourdough starter (or ~1/2 cup starter + 1/2 cup water + 1/2 cup flour to create a "preferment", fermented for 4+ hours prior to starting this recipe)
• 90g potato starch (or tapioca starch or corn starch)
• 100g sorghum flour (or brown rice flour)
• 100g chickpea flour
• 100g oat flour
• 412g water, warm (110 deg F)
• 12g honey (or sorghum syrup or molasses)
• 15g olive oil (optional, makes the crust a bit softer)
• 10g salt, coarse
• 15g xanthum gum

Instructions

Measure and mix all ingredients together. You can use a bread mixer if you must, but hand mixing with a good spoon, scraper, or dough hook is fine too. 

Let stand for 20 minutes to allow flour to hydrate. This recipe has no gluten, so the most dough-like consistency comes from letting the flour get a little stiff. If you don't wait, the dough will remain the consistency of soft butter and will be difficult to manage later.

Either in the bowl, or on a heavily floured surface, kneed in extra flour and mix to form a dense ball of dough. This part is sort of up to your own interpretation. You're trying to get a ball-like dough that can hold it's shape without relaxing into a puddle.

You can kneed the dough by hand if you want, but it is very sticky and will require a lot of flour to handle. Mixing it in the bowl allows you to just use a spoon and fold in just as much flour as you like. I like to aim to add just enough flour so the dough starts to hold its form, and then stop. Ideally, the inside should retain some of the moisture while the outside is free to get rather leathery, which makes for a great crust. You could even powder the outside before covering it, if you like.

 If you have a bread bowl or a bread form, this would be the time to transfer the dough to that form and let it sit there until baking time. Cover the bowl and let sit for at least 4-6 hours. However, I strongly recommend you let it sit either overnight or for a full 24 hours for the best flavor.

At baking time, preheat the oven to 500 degrees Farenheit. If you have a dutch oven, put that inside the oven, covered, and allow it to get hot while the oven reaches temp. If not, you can place a baking pan with cast iron pan in the oven and allow that to get hot (at bake time, this solution will require a large cover to trap the moisture, think a roasting pan or metal bowl).

When the oven reaches temp, turn the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper, score the dough using a sharp knife or a lame (which helps it rise and gives it that distinctive "peasant loaf" look), and then quickly transfer both the dough and paper to the preheated pan or dutch oven.

Once the dough is in the oven, reduce the heat to 450 degrees, and bake for 50 minutes. If your bread isn't quite as brown as you like by the end of this, you can cook for an additional 20 minutes or so.

When the bread is done baking, turn off the heat, crack the oven door open, and allow the heat to naturally disperse until the oven is cool, about 1-2 hours. Remove the bread from the oven, allow to cool to room temperature, then cut and serve.