Hey, hang on there, sourdough isn’t easy, and bread without gluten isn’t easy either.
Well, it’s a bit like driving a car – when you begin learning it is not easy, especially if you are learning to drive a manual car with gears and a clutch. When you get the basic skills of changing gears and steering and braking sorted out, then the co-ordination needed for reversing, especially reverse parking it becomes easier, until you don’t have to think about each action or process – you just do it!
So, making sourdough bread without gluten is a bit like driving: it can be a bit daunting at first, but as you become familiar with the co-ordination of ingredients, temperature and time it becomes easier. As you build your skills and understanding it becomes a simple process, and you begin to wonder why it seemed so daunting.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a good bit to learn, and many skills to develop, but with a bit of guidance it really is easy to bake delicious bread without gluten, using the simplest of ingredients.
Preparing a sourdough starter (the stuff used to inoculate the dough and initiate fermentation) is as easy as mixing flour and water, then letting it ferment. Then as it begins to ferment you feed it, and use a simple process to refine and mature the culture.
When you have a mature starter culture you take a small amount to inoculate a simple dough.
Fermentation takes time, so this when you leave the dough to do its thing. When the starter has transformed the dough you shape it, let it ferment a little longer, then bake it.
The general process for making bread applies to bread made with bakers’ yeast as well as to sourdough bread, and even, in a modified form, to soda bread.