I’m gluten intolerant and so is my son. Food sensitivity is a common thing for us Neurodivergent types. I happened upon an article in the Guardian which explained how many people with a gluten intolerance can cope with eating Sourdough. As far as I can tell, this is because of the type yeast involved and the length of time it takes to prove. This means that pretty much all of the gluten protein has been fully digested by the yeast.
Sourdough is in most supermarkets and is as cheap as gluten free bread, but it in many supermarkets in my part of the world, it’s usually sold out by lunchtime. So I decided to figure out how to make it myself. I thought I would share this with you.
There are four phases to making sourdough:
- The Culture that you keep in the fridge
- The pre-ferment
- The sourdough proving
- The baking.
Sourdough Culture
Looks like this. I bought mine from The Little Bakehouse in Launceston, which came in a Kilner Jar. Which is far better than keeping it in a plastic tub.
The culture needs feeding with equal parts of strong bread flour every few days. The picture shows hungry culture which has a layer of clear brown fluid (known as hooch) on the top. This is ready to make preferment. If you don’t want to make any preferment, then stir the fluid into the culture and add 50g of flour and 50g of water then pop it back in the fridge.
Preferment
Mix the following in a bowl:
120g hungry sourdough culture
120g warm water
100g strong bread flour
Leave it open to the air for at least 12 hours until it looks like this
Proving the Sourdough
Put the following in the hopper of your breadmaker:
150g preferment
400g strong bread flour
220g water
6g salt
Find the setting on your breadmaker that is for mixing the dough only. Mine is a Panasonic and it’s the pizza dough cycle. That runs for 45 mins. Then leave the dough to rise for around 12 hours.
Baking the Sourdough:
Once it has risen, use the bake only setting for around 60 mins and you will get a lovely, dense loaf like this:
