Gluten Free Sourdough Tips and Tricks

I have officially joined the movement of those who discovered the joys of homemade sourdough bread during the Pandemic of 2020, but mine is special….it’s gluten free!

Our entire family eat gluten free, and you can ready why here. This has made it so that I have not baked bread, or bread-like products, in 6 years.

To say I have been excited with the results is an understatement! This momma LOVED baking bread prior to my childrens’ diagnosis.

It was literally my hobby, self-care, stress management, whatever you want to call it, when my husband was active duty military and I was a stay at home mom, for the first 5 years of our marriage.

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How to Find a Starter?

I found multiple ideas for starters, and settled on one here because I had initially gone looking for ones that would pair well with my Trim Healthy Mama lifestyle as well as our need to be completely gluten free for our kids. I also sell dried bits of my mature starter, named “Brice” (brown rice) through this link.

I liked her idea in the blog post, but It took 10 days for my starter to fully activate, and that was only after I had started making some changes to my methods.

1. I quit using the scale.
2. I also needed a larger amount of starter, because we are a family of 9, so I was not discarding anything to build my supply.
3. I felt the starter was too thick based on previous experience with wheat ingredients, and I just began to eye-ball it. My preferred consistency is like pancake batter, and this proved to be optimal for my gluten free starter as well.
4. I came across a comment on another sourdough starter recipe that mentioned feeding the starter half of the amount of its volume every day for optimal happy fermenting action, so I increased the amount or decreased it by the day. Again, eyeballing it, knowing that my vessel is 8 cups total.

All of these changes have created a bubbly counter top friend that helps me look like mother of the year to my children, who have not had this much “bread” in many years.

If you are looking to create a Gluten Free Sourdough Starter, please join the waiting list for my next workshop here!

The Perfect Gluten Free Loaf

I had also used my Pinterest account to collect ideas for my new counter top friend in anticipation of the day it was mature enough to use.

I tried this recipe that was proclaimed to be Trim Healthy Mama compatible, and we liked it, but it was very dense with a very tough crust, possibly user error but we moved on to the next recipe just in case.

The next recipe I found has become our favorite to date, and you can find it here. You can also find my Gluten Free Baking Flour Blend for this recipe, just click the linked words.

Here are some extra things I learned that helped the loaves successful.

1. One batch of this recipe fits perfectly into two size small Silicone Challah pans. I do a lot of our breads in these pans due to their easy-release nature with gluten free ingredients.
2. I cook it for 40 minutes inside the silicone pans, and then for another 40-45 minutes flipped right-side up on a baking sheet to evenly bake them.
3. Let cool completely before you cut into them.

Getting My Groove

As with any new skill you want to build upon it as you become more comfortable.

By two weeks of practice, and working out my feeding schedule for my counter top friend, I had decided to branch out into Crackers, English Muffins and Banana Bread.

My feeding schedule is…..

**1 cup of brown rice flour and roughly equal parts of untreated water, mixed to a pancake batter consistency and added to my half-gallon glass mason jar twice a day. But, as mentioned above, I will eyeball the volume and vary the amounts as needed.

**If it is trying to jump out of the jar I transfer the amount I need to make my next creation into a bowl and add ingredients according to the recipe instructions and let it do its thing overnight so it is ready to bake the following day.

I am making about 3 gluten free sourdough creations every week, trying very hard to keep them as close to an E meal on the Trim Healthy Mama plan as possible.

You can find my highlights about this on Instagram too, along with any of the sourdough creations I have done recently.

Thank you so much for stopping by!

If you want to learn more about my family, what I do as a Trim Healthy Mama Lifestyle Coach, or how to cut down your cooking time you have come to the right place.