READERS TAKE NOTE: Although I am a THM Certified Lifestyle Coach, not every recipe on this blog reflects this or fits the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan. This is an earlier post prior to my THM days. I am currently working on adapting some of these recipes to fit the plan.

Is there a bowl of sourdough starter sitting on your counter waiting to be turned into baked yummy-ness?

If you missed my recent post, Authentic Sourdough Just Like Great-Grandma Used to Make, or if you just haven’t had time to start your starter, you’ll want to save this recipe and give this wonderful bread a try.  If your starter is ready to go, you can make this bread today.

There’s no kneading involved and only a short rising time.  It’s all done in the mixer so you can overcome your fears of making homemade bread.

A friend of mine, after tasting my bread a few times, really wanted to try this herself so I recently walked her through the process via phone and text.  The result is this beautiful loaf!

Her husband loved it and now they are enjoying bread while pursuing one of their health goals – getting inflammatory foods out of their diet and enjoying better gut health.

When I touch on the topic of health, I always like to remind you of this: I am not your doctor! While there is no gluten in this bread flour, there is rye flour in the starter offered at the link above. It is my understanding that the sourdough process breaks down the gluten in the rye flour, making it null and void, so to speak. However, if you have celiac disease, you will want to consult your doctor before using the rye starter.

If you’ve tried to go the gluten-free route at all, I’m sure you identify with the title of this post.  You’d think that restaurants and the folks who bake things to be sold in stores would be the experts, wouldn’t you?  Yet, every single time, the menu item or the store-bought loaf always seem to have the same common problem – utter and complete nasty-ness!  Dry as a bone, its tasteless particles, if they can be broken, shatter into dust upon contact with the teeth or knife.  The result:  Repulsion and fear.

Why do I mention fear?  It’s only human nature to think that if the experts can’t do any better than this, anything we try at home on our own is bound to end in disaster.  Surely they know all the secrets to a moist, chewy, tasty slice of bread!  We’re afraid of failure.

Fear no more!  Let’s bake bread that is so tasty that your biggest problem will be waiting to slice it till it’s completely cool.

First, let’s mix up some gluten-free flour blend.  I suppose you can use a premixed type found in most stores, but this is cheaper and so simple, so why would you do that?  Also, using this mix will ensure that there are no added weird ingredients and that the recipe turns out just the way I’ve been making it.  If you want to veer from the path, do it later on after you’ve mastered the recipe.

I’ll give tips and tricks as I go, and at the bottom of this post you’ll be directed to FREE printables for the flour blend and the bread.

I like to give credit where credit is due, so I offer a huge thanks to Jill Nystul over at “One Good Thing by Jillie” for getting me started on making my own flour blend.  Mine differs from hers in a couple of ways, because I’ve removed white potatoes and corn products from most of my recipes, but I have to admit to trying another blend offered by “experts” who have a highly rated cooking show and Jillie’s beat theirs hands down, even with my changes!

There are three ingredients, used in equal parts.  I make bread, pancakes, buns, flatbread and pizza dough with this all the time now, so I stir up a big batch in a large canister.  To have just enough for experimenting with this bread, you’ll need the following:

Gluten Free Flour Blend

1 cup brown rice flour

1 cup tapioca flour (the package may say “tapioca starch”)

1 cup arrowroot powder

Quinoa is a complete protein and quinoa flour can be used to substitute for part or all of the arrowroot powder.  I’ve used this before when I was low on arrowroot and it is really tasty.  However, it is also super expensive, so I usually skip it.

Now let’s make bread!  I started with this recipe by Nicole Hunn over at glutenfreeonashoestring.com.  I found it to have issues (such as falling in the middle as it cooled) so I experimented for months with rising times, baking times and substituting and adding ingredients until I got past all those bumps in the road.  I knew this basic recipe was one I wanted to work with because of one stellar quality – it did not taste like cardboard rolled in sand.  Thanks, Nicole, for getting me started.  Without you, I might still be toastless!

Here’s my tested and perfected version:

Gluten-free Sourdough Bread

Ingredients:

3 cups gluten-free flour blend

2 teaspoons xanthan gum

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons bread-machine yeast

2 tablespoons raw honey

3 tablespoons refined coconut oil, melted and cooled

1 cup “fed” rye sourdough starter

1 ½ cups warm milk (or milk substitute of your choice) at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Instructions:

1.  Generously grease a 9X5” loaf pan.  Set aside.  (I use a Pampered Chef stoneware pan)
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix the flour, xanthan gum, cream of tartar and kosher salt.  Stir.  Add the bread-machine yeast.  Stir again.  Add the honey, coconut oil and sourdough starter; mix on a low setting to combine.
3. Reduce the mixer speed to the lowest setting and add milk, pouring in a slow, steady stream.  Once all the flour mixture has incorporated into the liquids, beat the ingredients on at least medium speed for 4-6 minutes (I have a KitchenAid and I set the speed on six for five minutes).  The dough will be sticky and thicker than cake batter, but not as thick as cookie dough.
4. Scrape the dough into the greased loaf pan and smooth the top with a spatula or damp fingers.
5. Allow the dough to rise, covered, in a warm humid place for 30 minutes.  It will do most of its rising in the oven, so don’t expect it to expand as much as wheat breads you might be used to working with.
6. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 
7. Bake the loaf in a preheated oven for one hour.  Use the convection setting if you have that.  It should develop a light golden brown crust on top.
8. Remove the bread from the pan immediately and allow it to cool on a wire cooling rack until completely cool.

The dough consistency may seem weird to you if you are used to baking wheat bread.  The shorter rising time and longer baking time, along with a lower baking temperature may seem a little different, too, but humor me and do it exactly like this the first few times and then you can play with all these aspects if it is not turning out exactly the way you want.  Remember, when it comes to baking, altitude, humidity and finicky ovens all play a part in the perfect loaf of bread.

Here’s a photo of the dough once my friend got it into the pan and ready to rise. I kept getting nervous little texts and photos asking if everything was coming along all right. She did everything to perfection!

A bit of advice about cooling the bread.  This bread is so fabulous when it is fresh that all I want to do is eat it warm and buttered.  However, its softness and loftiness is so easily squashed by even a good bread knife that I force myself to leave it alone for a few hours before nipping off a slice.  Then, I refrigerate the loaf to firm it up before putting it into the slicer (as shown in the first photo) and slice the whole loaf at once into perfect slices.  I put a few in a container in the refrigerator (after I’ve had my little bread feast) and the rest of the loaf goes into a freezer container with pieces of waxed paper between each slice so that I can pull some out for toast or whatever as needed.

I hope you enjoy this fabulous bread and get into the habit of making it every week or so for your family.

If you’d like to switch things up a bit and turn your sourdough into something more akin to buns for hamburgers or English muffin style rounds, you might try this idea that popped into my head.  It works great and gives me a change from ordinary sliced bread.

Purchase ten large stainless steel baking rings.  You want them to be the desired diameter of your finished “bun”.  Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and then with the rings that have been sprayed with coconut oil baking spray.  Fill the rings with equal amounts of your sourdough bread dough, let rise 30 minutes and before baking 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  The dough is thick enough not to creep out from under the rings while baking.  If the buns give a hollow sound when you tap them in the middle with your finger, they are ready to come out of the oven.

Here are my buns and the rings I use, which are about 4 inches in diameter.

Happy baking and don’t forget the butter!

Still have questions about bread or sourdough starter?  Leave a comment and I’ll try to help you out!

Share the bread and this post with your friends!  They’ll love it, too!  Let’s all get healthier together!

Pancakes made with this sourdough starter are AWESOME!  Smuffy says they’re the best I’ve ever made him! Another recipe for another day.

For more about my health journey and my thoughts on how not to just survive, but thrive, check out my Thrive! page. 

For your FREE printable recipes, CLICK HERE!

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