Gluten-Free Eaters Still Need to Read the Label - guest post by Mira Dessy

I first met Mira Dessy at the Weston A. Price conference in 2011. She is warm, friendly and extremely knowledgeable about what is in our food. She teaches people how to read food product labels. Her book, The Pantry Principle, came out in 2013 and she asked me to review it. 

I was happy to review it but I didn't think I would learn anything new. Since I make very careful choices around food, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about what was in my food. I found her book thoroughly researched and magnetic. In fact, I did not want to put it down! 

I was surprised when I learned a whole lot of new information especially around product ingredients that are less than transparent like "natural flavors". What I learned was that I could not trust anything that had natural flavors.

Mira graciously offered to write a guest post about why Gluten-Free Eaters Still Need To Read The Label.


Gluten-Free Eaters Still Need To Read The Label by Mira Dessy

More and more people are finding that they do better on a gluten-free diet. This may, in part, be due to the overabundance of gluten in the modern diet. After all, if you start your morning with a bagel or a bowl of cereal, follow it up with a mid-morning muffin as a snack, have a sandwich for lunch, a cookie for your afternoon snack, and a bowl of pasta for dinner you've consumed a considerable amount of gluten, and simple starches. Combined with the changes in our modern, hybridized, high-gluten wheat (since most gluten eaters tend to eat wheat) this can have an overwhelming effect on your system and may even potentially lead to a sensitivity to either wheat or gluten.

For those who need to avoid gluten, and the grains it comes from (barley, rye, wheat, and spelt), it has become much easier to enjoy many traditionally wheat-based foods such as cereals, crackers, and breads.  Amazingly, there are more grains that do not contain gluten than there are those that do. Some of the more common ones include rice, amaranth, oats, and teff.  It is important to note that although oats do not inherently contain gluten, they are often grown near, stored and/or transported with gluten. A person with a severe reaction to gluten should purchase certified gluten-free oats.  

Many companies are catering to this growing segment of gluten-free eaters and creating products that the consumer can enjoy.  Unfortunately many of these products, although gluten-free, are not great choices as they are often formulated with unhealthy ingredients.  They are also typically very low in fiber and therefore don't support the health of our gut.  After all, processed foods are still processed, even if they are gluten-free.  This makes these processed items a less-than-optimal choice for a balanced and healthy nutritional plan.

Just a few of the items often found in gluten-free processed foods can include:

• Canola oil – one of the most genetically modified crops, this highly refined, bleached, and deodorized oil is not a healthy choice.
• Corn products – dextrose, corn starch, ascorbic acid, and a wide variety of other items all made from corn are not a good choice due to the fact that corn is another highly genetically modified crop.
• Starches – these are non-nutritious refined carbohydrates, such as potato starch or tapioca starch, which are used to help balance the flours; this is because gluten-free flours don't have as much “sticky” factor.
• Soy – also highly genetically modified, soy is also phytoestrogenic (meaning it provides plant-based estrogens) and goitrogenic (meaning it can have a negative effect on thyroid health).    
• Gums – xanthan gum and others are used, again, as a binding or thickening agent.  Many of these gums have the potential to cause intestinal discomfort and, if possible, it's best to avoid them.
• Sugar – frequently gluten-free products may come with added sugars to make up for the change in mouthfeel that happens when we switch from gluten to non-gluten grains.  Added sugars may have a negative impact on blood sugar, digestion, and overall health.

In order to avoid these negative ingredients and to enjoy healthy and delicious gluten-free foods, it is important to learn how to read the label.

Look for products that are made from whole grains if possible (not all gluten-free products are available with whole grain flours since the extra fiber can affect the rise).  Choose items which have as few ingredients as possible and all of those from whole foods rather than chemicals or additives.  Remember, just because it's gluten-free doesn't mean it's not highly processed.


Mira Dessy is the author of The Pantry Principle: how to read the label and understand what's really in your food. 


Mira is a Certified Nutrition Educator and a Real Food Advocate and speaks frequently on how to navigate the grocery store’s mammoth packaged food stock, to decipher confusing food labels, and to choose healthy foods. Her motto is “Eat well to be well.”
She can be reached at:
miradessy@email.com
http://thepantryprinciple.net/

Free September Newsletter

September Newsletter is out!! Click here to read! This month's topics: Lacto-Fermented Cucumber Relish Whole Grain Sorghum Frozen Tomatoes Congestion Buster Bread Crumbs & recipe for GF meatloaf

The Imperfect Loaf

Truth be told, I still make imperfect loaves of bread. With sourdough there are so many variables it is nearly impossible to achieve duplicate results from batches to batch.

Some variables that affect the finished product are:
*the fineness or coarseness of the grind of the flour
*amounts of water
*ambient humidity
*ambient temperature
*the slightest variations in measurements

With practice I have gotten to the place where I can make adjustments to the starter and batter as I go, correcting what might go wrong.

If I haven't made a specific recipe in a while I may have an imperfect loaf the first time around and a perfect loaf the second. I recently made my Mock Rye Bread using a refrigerated starter instead of a room temp starter. Refrigerated starters can be deceiving as the chilled starter may appear thicker than it truly is. This one seemed too thick so I added more water to the starter to make it the texture I remembered it should be.

The loaf rose but not as much as I had remembered it rising. When I sliced open an end of the loaf, the texture was a bit dense. The holes were not as large as they should be.











I continued slicing as I wanted to freeze some and found the closer I moved to the center of the bread the wetter the top was. That's when I realized the batter was too wet and I made a mental note not to add as much water next time.












Some pieces near the center were almost squishy.
I continued slicing and lay the slices on a rack to dry out for a day. Then I froze half of them and stored the others in a container lined with a cloth. They toasted up fine, the taste is great albeit a bit dense.












You can see that the tops of many slices came apart. I saved those pieces, let them dry out and dropped them in the bottom of a bowl of soup. Perfect!

Pancakes! New Video!

Here is a pancake video demonstrating how to make pancakes that are free of gluten, dairy, eggs, soy and yeast. Being sourdough they do have a slightly mild-to-medium sour taste so in my opinion they are perfect as a savory grain accompaniment to a meal instead of bread.

Click here to see instructional videos!

Same Recipe-4 different results

A few people have written to me about how their gluten-free sourdough breads don't seem to rise properly. Come to find out that using different grinds of flour foster very different results.

I use home milled flour brown rice flour. When I first started home milling I ground it once on the finest setting on my Kitchen Aid Grain Mill attachment. It came out fairly coarse and gritty. Then I learned about grinding twice, once on medium and again on that same finest setting. The flour was finer but still on the coarse side. My initial recipes were based on this coarse and less coarse flour and produced excellent bread.

I learned that the people having trouble were using store bought flour which is much finer than my home milled. Some of them were able to switch to home milled and got much better results. But certainly there are many, many people who will never mill their own flour for all sorts of reasons. I figured I better do some trials with home milled flour to see if I could learn how to compensate for the much finer flour.

I made 4 starters using a different grind of brown rice flour for each:
1. Once ground
2. Twice ground
3. Bob's Red Mill with added rice bran
4. Bob's Red Mill

Here's a photo of the breads after baking. Look at the differences in height.


I'm analyzing the taste, texture, and crumb of these breads. Hopefully, I'll be able to make some recommendations in the not too far future. So much to learn...

Honey Cake was a success!

My dad's birthday celebration went well and the gluten-filled honey cake was pronounced perfect by the family. Glad I still have the touch...even though I couldn't touch it. :-)

Moving forward into finishing up testing a whole bunch of recipes. That's my equivalent of summer reading.


Coconut Biscuits

The Lineage of my Gluten-free Sourdough Starter

When people think of sourdough starter lineages they often think of the famous San Francisco or Alaska starters originally brought over from Europe. I imagine the people who brought starters along with them were courageous people looking for a better life. I imagine they dehydrated their starters in the old country and carried small amounts of it in pouches or tiny clay pots carefully tucked into whatever belongings they could carry with them in the boats. When they got to the land of opportunity it is said their bread starters took on a new flavor, the flavor of their new locale. Hence the fame of the San Francisco or Alaska sourdough flavors.

I first learned to make sourdough using an old-fashioned 7-day rye bread recipe. It was a goopy, no-knead recipe that produced a rich, malty, dense loaf. The starter was built over seven days, yielding a giant bowl of sponge-like starter. When it was time to assemble the breads rye flour, water and salt were incorporated into the starter. This “goop” was then spooned into the loaf pans as this bread did not stand up by itself, it needed “walls” to hold it up. It was so sticky that the less handling involved, the better the finished product.

When I began to work with gluten-free starter possibilities I used this spongy, goopy technique as a guide and after a year of many failures, had great success while incorporating a few important changes through trial and error:

• extra daily feedings to prevent spoilage
• boosting and preserving it with a bit of an old fashioned fermented drink, water kefir.

I found the starters to be rather delicate and did not regularly store well. I found that I could easily begin a new starter so using it up was never a problem. In fact, I found the fresh starters resulted in breads having a consistently fresh taste while the stored refrigerated starters often carried some “off tastes” I associated with over-fermentation. The over-fermentation also seemed to result in less than satisfactory leavening.

This sponge-goop technique is very different than wheat sourdough techniques that benefit from extensive kneading and shaping. Unlike their rye counterparts traditional wheat breads also stand up, rise and bake without the support of the walls of a loaf pan.

Some seasoned wheat sourdough bakers have had poor success with my technique when they apply their years of experience with wheat sourdough to my rice starter. They expect to take a small amount of starter and knead large amounts of flour into it, shape it, let it rise and bake it. My technique, however, is the opposite. I grow a large amount of high-moisture starter by feeding it at least twice a day. I then stir in a small amount of flour and pour or spoon it into a loaf pan or muffin tin. From there I let it rise and then bake it.

I think the main reason the wheat technique doesn’t work for my recipes is that my technique was originally derived from the 7-day sourdough rye sponge-goop technique which is really quite different than the wheat technique.

One definition of lineage is “the descendants of one individual”. The descendants of the San Francisco and Alaska sourdough starters are available for sale and supposedly retain some of that “genetic” material referring to the local bacteria and yeasts that grow in the starter. When one purchases those starters they know the lineage of their starter.

I don’t sell starters, I sell a technique. I think about my technique as a “technical” lineage, much like a technique or practice handed down from teacher to student, or master to apprentice. My “technical lineage” is a descendent of the 7-Day Sourdough Rye Technique.

I am deeply grateful for the people willing to try my technique because in addition to feeding ourselves we are also keeping alive a technique that could easily be forgotten in these modern times. We keep it alive by learning it, practicing it, feeding our families with it and teaching it to others.

We successfully unite the past with the future when we reclaim an old-fashioned technique like 7-day rye sourdough and successfully, and palatably, use it to address the modern dietary challenges of gluten intolerance.

Happy Accident-25 lbs of Teff Flour-Part 2

After last week’s fabulous teff pancakes I continued building the starter even though I sorely needed a break from bread baking. I was busy and thought it would be a good opportunity to practice growing starter in the fridge as this would cut the feedings from 3 times a day to twice.

The starter grew beautifully with a mild aroma. I would take it out for about an hour in the morning, feed it, let it sit another hour or so and put it back in the fridge for 12 hours. I’d repeat the sequence at night before bed. I noticed some thickening and some small bubbles but nothing dramatic.

I had been thinking about creating bread that was mildly sweet without any sweetener beyond 1 teaspoon of stevia powder. I used small amounts of carob and maca (a malty flavored root) and used buckwheat flour for one loaf and shredded coconut for the other. I also used coconut oil for the fat. The batters were rich looking, like cake batter. The aroma in the kitchen was heavenly and the resulting breads were fabulous. Sweet without any added sugars, so no blood sugar spikes. The bread is satisfying and the taste is complex. I found the taste getting sweeter each day.

My daughter, who named Sourdough Bread #1 “Mommybread” said this Teff Carob bread was the best ever and I should make it exclusively. Forever.

Grain Mills for Gluten Free Seeds and Grains

I’ve been wanting to try a new grain mill for 2 years and just recently bought one and wanted to share about my grain mill experiences.

I started off with a Kitchen Aid grain mill attachment because when I started baking I already had a Kitchen Aid mixer. This attachment is excellent for large grains like rice and buckwheat but cannot grind small gluten free grains like amaranth, quinoa and teff. These tiny grains just fall under the grinding worm and sit there.

The rice flour wasn’t nearly as fine as store bought but my breads were still good thanks to the long sourdough fermenting periods. Then I learned, from someone on this forum, to grind once at medium and then again on fine. Much, much better!
I like the Kitchen Aid but I can only do 3 cups of rice, twice, before the machine gets very hot and needs to cool off. I don’t mind that, just have to plan my time accordingly.

I used a Krups coffee grinder for my small grains, which did an excellent job. The downside is that only ¼ cup can be ground at a time, which was fine initially but now I bake in 4 loaf batches and need large quantities.

Then I tried a Barista coffee mill for the small grains which was bigger, fancier and with a larger capacity. I was happy with that for a good while but lately noticed the grind isn’t as fine as when I started. I think the blades must be getting dull.

After a year of reading blogposts about grain mills I finally purchased the Blendtec Grain Mill. It grinds the small grains really well, excellently in fact but I had to dig out my chain saw ear protectors because of the high decibel level. As it finishes grinding it sounds like a plane taking off.

It also makes a bit of a mess as it sends flour out through small vents and slots, much messier than my other mills which hardly sent any flour out at all. Now when I use it I cover it with a cloth to contain the flying flour. Beyond that it seems to be an excellent machine. I can grind many cups of grain, and the holding basin holds about 20 cups of flour before needing to be emptied.

I continue to use my Kitchen Aid for rice and buckwheat but will use the Blendtec for the others.

Growing Sourdough Starter in the Refrigerator for a Milder Sour

Growing starter in the refrigerator is said to minimize the sour taste of sourdough. It also enables us to reduce the feedings from 3 times a day to twice. I find my starters ferment very quickly these days making me wonder if I have enormous invisible colonies of yeast and bacteria in my kitchen. I also ferment water kefir, milk kefir, and kombucha so I assume there is quite a bit of activity going on.

A friend of mine, Peggy, likes to tinker in the kitchen. She experiments with many recipes and techniques and documents them in great detail. She tried growing a starter in the refrigerator, something I haven’t had time to see all the way through.

Here are her notes:

“I decided to go with a simple loaf of bread using quinoa and sorghum flours.
I had a small amount of rice-sorghum-teff starter left over from making multigrain bread and fed it for four days with alternating and equal amounts of quinoa flour and sorghum flour. I chose to use these because they were what I had on hand. I also was going for a lighter colored bread.

I gave it a little boost with 1 tablespoon of water kefir to perk it up on the second day.

After 24 hours of feedings I put it in the fridge because it was very bubbly and soupy! I didn’t want a strong sourdough flavor this time as I just baked two batches that were strongly fermented.

I continued to feed it 3 times a day continuing to keep it in the fridge.

36 hours later, I removed it from the fridge because it looked flat and dead But four hours later, when I next looked at it, it was furiously bubbling away!!! I had been deceived by the chilled mixture. I fed it and returned it to the fridge.
8 hours later when I took it out to feed it, it was actively bubbling even though it was so cold. I think it liked the fact that I had taken it out that first time for a few hours.”

She said that the finished bread had just enough sour taste to let you know you were eating sourdough. Not overpowering at all!

Water Kefir in the gluten free starter

I recently received this question:

“ In your Gluten-free sourdough starter you use Water Kefir to boost the starter.
Is it possible to start the Water Kefir culture from scratch at home?
Or can I leave out the Water Kefir entirely and still get a successful sour dough starter?”

My answer:
I use water kefir because I had a lot of spoilage in my rice starters before I used it. It acts as a preservative while quickly boosting the bacterial/yeast activity.
After the initial purchase the water kefir culture can live indefinitely with at least monthly feeding and refrigerated storage. You buy it once and use it for all your starters that you begin fresh.

Water Kefir is known in the fermenting community as a living potent drink that gently introduces probiotics, enzymes and vitamins into the digestive tract. This is good news for many people who have taken antibiotics as well as people with unresolving intestinal issues. Making the drink costs pennies and sipping a couple of ounces daily will begin a gentle process of detoxification and repair.

I chose Water Kefir as my booster because it is dairy free, (I’m allergic to all milk products) but one could use Milk kefir, Milk kefir whey or home made active Yogurt.


Order Water Kefir culture at:
Cultures For Health