Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter Recipe

How to Make Gluten Free
Sourdough Starter (Excerpt from The Art of Gluten-Free Sourdough Baking)

(Also free of milk, eggs, yeast, soy, gums & chemical leavener
The steps below might seem daunting just to make bread but with practice it becomes easy.

Here are the basic steps for Gluten Free Sourdough Starter:

• Make Water Kefir (made from a culture)
• Make Brown Rice Starter
• Boost Brown Rice Starter with Water Kefir
• Feed Brown Rice Starter with brown rice flour and water, 2-3 times a day
• Use for pancakes, breads, muffins and pizza dough

Info about Water Kefir:

• Water Kefir is a tasty and potent fermented drink, full of natural probiotics and enzymes. (If you try drinking it start with a small amount at first! It’s really potent)
• Made from a culture and takes 2 minutes to put together
• Ferments in 1-2 days
• Stores in refrigerator for one month
• With care these cultures can be used repeatedly and live indefinitely


Making pancakes will help you get the “feel” of working with a sourdough starter. They take a fraction of the time needed for a bread recipe and
produce tasty pancakes.




Water Kefir Recipe

Ready for use in 1-2 days

Ingredients:
Water
Sugar
Raisins
Lemon
Water Kefir Culture * (purchase from Cultures for Health)

Equipment:
Glass quart jar
Spoon
Paper towel or cloth
Rubber band

Day 1

• Fill a quart jar with water leaving 2 inches of space at the top of the jar.
• Add 2 tablespoons sugar, stirring to dissolve.
• Add 20 raisins.
• Add a slice of lemon.
• Add water kefir culture into the quart jar.
• Cover with paper towel or cloth and secure with a rubber band.

Day 2

• When raisins float to the top, around 24 hours later, use a nonmetal spoon to remove raisins and lemon and discard them.


• In cool weather: Re-cover the water kefir drink with the paper towel or cloth and rubber band and ferment for 6 more hours on the counter.

• In warm weather: Put the water kefir drink directly into the refrigerator.

• Cap and store water kefir drink (along with cultures settled at the bottom) in the refrigerator and use as needed taking care not to pour water kefir cultures out of the jar. They will easily just sit on the bottom until you make your next batch.

• Water Kefir drink is now ready to use for Boosted Brown Rice Starter.

Replenishing Your Batch

• When you have used the water kefir liquid down to about an inch in the jar (with cultures still sitting on the bottom) begin a new batch in a new jar adding fresh water, sugar, raisins, and lemon.

• Then pour the remaining water kefir drink and water kefir culture into the new jar.

• Cover and ferment as above for Day.











*Purchase Water Kefir at Cultures For Health






Boosted Brown Rice Starter


Ready for use in 3-4 days


Ingredients:
Brown rice flour
Water
Water Kefir

Equipment:
Ceramic or glass bowl
Whisk
Cloth or paper towel
Rubber band


Step 1

• Put one cup of brown rice flour into a ceramic or glass bowl

• Pour in 3/4 cup of water and whisk smooth

• Add 1-2 tablespoons of water kefir and whisk again

• Cover with a cloth or paper towel and secure with a large rubber band

• Leave it on the counter away from drafts or extreme temperatures

Step 2

The key to a healthy starter is regular feedings
of brown rice flour and water


How to Feed:

• Feed 3 times daily, roughly every 8 hours.
• Feed with ¼- ½ cup of flour and slightly less water, whisking smooth and covering

• If you know you won't be able to feed it after 8 hours, put it in the refrigerator after feeding. You won't have to feed it for another 12 hours

• After two days put the starter in a clean bowl (to keep the dry starter from mixing with the fresh starter) and continue feeding

• At around 48 hours the starter should show signs of viability
If you don’t see any bubbles or “hilling”, (when the flour makes a hill) you can add another tablespoon of water kefir

• By the third and fourth days you may see bubbles of different sizes and hear a hissing sound when stirring


Your starter is now ready for pancakes.





Gluten Free Sourdough Pancakes


Since buckwheat, teff, quinoa or oat flour will give the pancakes some needed density (a pure rice flour starter tends to be on the thin, soupy side) have the last feeding of the starter be 1/4 - 1/2 cup of one of those flours plus a little less water. Let ferment 7 hours.

Yield: 4 pancakes

Ingredients for 4 pancakes
1 cup boosted brown rice starter (including the last feeding of buckwheat or other flour plus slightly less water
1 tablespoon oil, melted butter or fat
A large pinch of salt
1-2 tablespoons freshly ground flax seed (grind in a coffee grinder)

Directions
Mix oil, salt and ground flax seed into starter
Let sit for at least 15 minutes to allow the flax to thicken the batter.
The batter should be like a thick cake batter.
If the batter is too thick whisk in a little water, a tablespoon at a time, until you get the desired consistency
(The batter can sit for up to 24 hours in the refrigerator. The finished pancakes will be thinner and lighter)
Oil pan or griddle and heat to fairly hot
Spoon or ladle out the batter onto the pan
These take longer to cook than wheat pancakes so flip a few minutes after bubbles show up or the edges start to dry out.
Cook another 1-2 minutes and serve.

You can also cool them on a rack and refrigerate in a container for a 3-5 days. Just reheat them in the toaster.



Resources

Purchase The Art of Gluten-Free Sourdough Baking


Other Books Available

Lacto-Fermentation Through The Seasons – Fermented vegetables are a homemade probiotic-rich condiment. A year’s worth of recipes for making your own fermented vegetables starting in spring, moving through summer and into fall.

Intestinal Recovery – Recipes and techniques to slowly and gently help repair the digestive and immune systems.

Highly Digestible Beans – Technique for making the most easily digestible beans possible. 4 recipes included.




Contact me:
glutenfreesourdoughbaker@gmail.com

Copyright 2012 by Sharon A. Kane

Soaking Gluten Free Grains and Flours for Optimum Digestibility

I first learned about soaking grains for optimum nutrition and easy digestibility from Sally Fallon’s book, Nourishing Traditions. I tried her suggestion to soak brown rice for 7 hours before cooking. I noticed that the finished rice was softer and smoother but I did not notice any difference in the way I felt. After a few weeks of diligent soaking I had a busy day and skipped the soaking step. I was clearly aware of the rice “being worked” in my stomach. There was a roughness to the digestive process. I realized that the soaked grains digested smoothly and effortlessly where the unsoaked grains took work and energy for digestion.

Soaking is a process that mimics the natural germination cycle in nature. A fully mature grain plant has plump grain seeds after a long and bounteous season. The grain seeds are essentially little packages of nutrients protected in a hard shell called a seed coat. The seed’s mission in life is to reproduce and needs certain conditions to germinate. A grain seed left on the stalk of a spent plant, or on the ground, withstands extremes of temperature and moisture. Each seed needs a specific temperature and amount of moisture to allow the seed coat to soften, absorb water and then move towards germination. This process fosters nutrients to become available to get ready to feed the newly germinated sprout until it has its first pair of true leaves and can make food through photosynthesis.

When we soak grains before cooking or eating we mimic this process, allowing the grain to move towards the germination process enabling those nutrients to become available for us to eat. We can allow the grains to soak all the way through to germination and eat them as “sprouts” or we can eat them shortly before germination as cooked whole grain. We can also apply the principles of soaking to ground up grain, or flour, with similar results. When we “soak” flour in water for 7-8 hours, the bacteria and yeasts in the air and on the flour predigest the flour, thus fermenting it. This is known as the sourdough process. One of the byproducts of the fermentation process is carbon dioxide, which leavens the bread.

As I began to understand the process of soaking I realized that most currently available recipes and retail breads are not made this way. The bread ingredients are assembled as quickly as possible and depend on the added yeast or baking powder for a quick rise. Some gluten free recipes also utilize the carbon dioxide in sparkling water to enhance the rise. These methods foster a successful rise but allow little or no soaking time meaning that the finished breads will not nearly be as digestible as they could be. They might even be harmful to people with highly sensitive digestive and immune systems.

The sourdough recipes in my book, The Art of Gluten Free Sourdough Baking, are structured to allow proper soaking time in the starter phase and again in the rising phase fostering premium digestibility, good taste, good texture and long shelf life.

Boosted Brown Rice Starter Gluten free, Casein free

Prep time: 5 minutes
Fermentation time: 3-4 days

Start with one cup of brown rice flour and put it in a ceramic or glass bowl
Pour in slightly less than one cup of water and whisk smooth
Add 1-2 tablespoons of water kefir and whisk again
Cover with a cloth or paper towel and secure with a rubber band
Leave it on the counter away from drafts or extreme temperatures

Feed the starter, with 1/3-1/2 cup of flour and little less water, roughly every 8 hours, 3 times a day, for a total of four days, whisking smooth and covering. If you know you won't be able to feed it after 8 hours, put it in the refrigerator after feeding. You won't have to feed it for another 12 hours if it's in the fridge.

After two days put the starter in a clean bowl and continue feeding. (change the bowl so that the dried out starter that clings to the sides of the bowl stays out of the living starter)

After about 48 hours the starter should show signs of viability.
If you don’t see any bubbles or hilling you can add another tablespoon of water kefir

By the third day you should see small bubbles especially during stirring

By the fourth day you may see bubbles of different sizes and there may be a hissing, bubbling sound when they come up from the bottom of the bowl

It should take about 4 days for a brand new starter to be ready for cooking. It may take less time in warm weather and more time in cold weather. With a little practice you will get to know when your starter is ready.

You can store a small amount of starter, ¼ - ½ cup, in the refrigerator for next time. Feed it every 2 weeks by taking it out of the refrigerator, letting it come to room temperature, feed it with a small amount of flour and water, whisk and refrigerate again.

If you plan to make sourdough products a few times a week you may want to use an ongoing starter kept at room temperature on the counter. When you’re ready to cook/bake, remove a small amount ¼ - ½ cup of starter and put it in a clean bowl. Feed 2-3 times a day with roughly equal amounts of flour and water and whisk smooth. Cover and set it aside to continue fermenting. This will be your starter for your next batch. Proceed with your recipe with the remaining starter.

Free Starter Recipe Download!