How the late Bob's Red Mill founder avoided selling out to a food giant and instead transferred ownership to his 700 employees
How the late Bob's Red Mill founder avoided selling out to a food giant and instead transferred ownership to his 700 employees
Aww, I love their weird flours!
I have a Gluten Intolerant relative so I tried baking with their GF flour once, I can never get the stuff to rise with yeast but I came pretty close once by letting it sit with water long enough to form a sourdough.
Great for breading fried foods, though. A little fish or eggplant rolled in egg and then rolled in flour then thrown in a pan full of butter then covered in salt and pepper 10/10.
It's definitely tricky. I've had the most luck with quick breads like pumpkin or zucchini leavened with baking powder, but the recipes always need tweaking or you end up with a loaf pan of wet oatmeal with a leathery skin on top even after baking it for a couple hours. Sometimes I have to finish them in the microwave (in a glass loaf pan).
Sometimes I think we've invested too much into GF flour and nothing into a GF Yeast Strain.
I thought GF stood for girlfriend until I thought about it a bit more.
My GF is GF, so today I made GF waffles for my GF GF.
Yeast has no gluten naturally...
By gluten free yeast strain I was referring to a bacterial culture that works in gluten free flour. As I explained before, the gluten free flour doesn't rise with yeast, because the bacteria cultures used in breadmaking are suited for turning wheat and similar grain starches into sugars and alcohol.
I could be totally wrong, maybe the lack of gluten to capture carbon dioxide put off by the yeast's processes is the problem, or maybe it's an issue with the ratio of binding agents to water, but I have a feeling we could make a more specialized strain for various flours if we tried.
I see what you mean, and sorry, I hadn't previously associated your two comments as being the same person.
I think that your second hypothesis is more or less correct. The long gluten chains give the dough the elasticity to stretch and contain the bubbles.
I've heard other people say that a sourdough works better, as well. You have a good point, maybe some combination of a yeast and a bacteria that act more symbiotically together could be beneficial.
I'm not sure how the bacterial action that creates sourdough improves a gluten-free bread, though. It seems intuitively unlikely to me that it would be by breaking anything down, as we want more elasticity that, in wheat based breads, comes from building up the long gluten chains by kneading.
Maybe it is the bacterial bodies themselves? Xanthan gum is very commonly used in gluten-free flour to help it hold together and have more elasticity. Xanthan gum, as I understand it, is derived from the mash made after fermenting sugar with a specific bacterial strain.