Sourdough Loaves

You might think that a podcast is the wrong medium to appreciate something as visual and tactile as clothing, and you would be right. But when I'm doing yard work or walking somewhere and have mental bandwidth to spare, I nonetheless enjoy listening to "How to be Fabulous" with Charlotte Dallison, which is about vintage clothes.

"The approach with this business of mine is to get more people wearing more vintage," Charlotte said in her April 14 episode, talking about sustainability in fashion. "But...I think rather than telling someone who's used to shopping at Zara, for example, that they suddenly have to wear totally secondhand and vintage, it's more just about incorporating a bit more, and a bit more and a bit more....If everyone did that, it would have a far bigger impact than a select few--a smaller set of people--being totally carbon-neutral."

That is the same strategy I employ with this blog. While it's a fact that plant-based diets are more sustainable than diets based on meat and dairy, I don't expect or ask anyone to give up meat and dairy. It's an admirable choice, sure, but not any more realistic for most people to make that total commitment to vegetarianism or veganism than to commit to never buying new clothes. 

On the other hand, committing to eating LESS meat and dairy as a percentage of our food intake is not unrealistic at all. Every person who cuts back is contributing to a solution. Not only that that, but they're making it more normal for others, and incentivizing food producers and restaurants to offer more plant-based options. 

Earth Day is April 22, this coming Saturday. Will you embrace the occasion, and resolve to cut back on animal products in your diet? 

Even better, enjoy your plant-based foods in "pre-loved" clothes! An increasing portion of my wardrobe is secondhand. For more on my interest in thrifting, see this blog post.

But enough about secondhand bags and loafers, let's talk seductive baguettes and loaves, which you need to make your vegetarian sandwiches and to serve with yummy vegan dishes like spiced chickpea stew, which I made again tonight. 

After recently dipping my toe into gluten-free sourdough baking (not literally, obvi; that would be disgusting) with flatbreads, I took the plunge with a sandwich loaf: "Gluten Free Sourdough Bread" (Gluten Free On A Shoestring). I chose this recipe because it did not call for yeast. It feels pointless to painstakingly parent a sourdough starter, and then make a bread that also contains an ingredient that could get the job done without the starter. I used 1:1 gluten-free flour as suggested, and therefore no xanthan gum.

While it didn't need yeast, there was one important ingredient to this bread that the recipe left out: TIME. I started making it in the evening and wasn't interested in staying up late to bake it, so after mixing it, I covered it and stuck it in the fridge to slow down the rising process. This is a standard bread-making trick, but I wasn't sure it would work on my gluten-free sourdough loaf. It was worth a shot, though.

This was my dubious expression when I put it in the fridge overnight, wearing a secondhand sweater, of course

The next morning, I put the pan on the kitchen counter and waited for the dough to return to room temperature, and commence rising. Four hours later, I was still waiting. So I made my toaster oven just barely warm, and I popped it in. About half an hour later, it was finally starting to rise just a smidge. I kept the toaster oven warm and gave it probably another hour or two in there. While it could have risen more, at that point my patience ran out and I baked the darn thing.

The result? The taste was fine. The texture was a little gluey, and the cornstarch (which I used instead of tapioca starch) was discernible, which I did not like. The bread did look like it was supposed to, which was gratifying, but in the end I was still on the hunt for a good gluten-free sourdough bread recipe that does not call for yeast.

Pimento cheese sandwich, eaten in honor of the recent Masters golf tournament in my--you guessed it--secondhand shirt.

Enter "4-Ingredient Gluten Free Sourdough Bread" (What The Fork), which is also vegan--a bonus.  

Hats off to the author of this recipe for not only acknowledging that it will take eons for your bread to rise, but also for giving you a schedule of what should happen and when it should happen. I actually left mine in the fridge much longer than 12 hours, and that created no problems.

There were three outstanding things about this bread. One, it was fantastically beautiful.

Two, the bread starts, per the recipe, with unfed sourdough. This means there is no waste of sourdough, plus you get excellent, strong sourdough flavor. Other recipes I have looked at mostly call for ripe (fed) starter.

And three, the crust was perfection, thanks to the dutch oven and the ice cubes that made steam (which was also fun). It was so crispy, yet not too tough to chew. I have never made a bread, gluten-free or otherwise, that had such a wonderful crust.

The one problem with this bread was that the innards were dense. Here are my theories about why:

• Maybe I should have cooked it hotter or longer. I used the convection oven function, so maybe the recommended temps/times work better without the convection. UPDATE: using non-convection made no difference.
• The recipe calls for 1:1 flour, but maybe it would be better with regular GF flour plus xanthan gum.
• I was surprised that the recipe did not call for letting the dough rise more (at room temperature) after shaping it into a ball, before putting it in the oven. If I shape it and then let it rise again on the counter before the oven, would that help? UPDATE: nope, this didn't help.
• Maybe this particular combination of ingredients is just never going to be what I want it to be with any GF flour. In my (non-sourdough) favorite GF bread recipe, there are eggs to give it more structure and therefore more airiness.

I will continue to experiment, and to make comparisons between things like vegan sourdough starter and vintage starter jackets.