It’s sourfaux not sourdough!

merlotgran

I find the texture of gf and ordinary sourdough almost identical whereas regular bread and gf versions are different. Gf is drier and more crumbly and can sometimes have a chalky texture. A lot of recipes recommend adding an egg but you have to be careful not to end up producing bread flavoured cake!! If I ever need to add egg I only use the white.
Gf bread also takes longer to bake and the top longer to brown.

Sometimes it’s a labour of love! 😂

I once made a GF loaf (not SD) for a dinner guest, the recipe I used was American, it said to add mayonnaise.
I did and she stated it was the best she had ever had as it was not dry.

I used to love baking with semolina but sadly I can no longer tolerate it. My other regret is having to ditch spelt bread because it is not entirely gf.
It has a lovely nutty flavour and being low in gluten suits people who suffer from bloating.

skate

I wonder what on earth we all ate before the craze for sourdough swept in? Some people of my acquaintance seem to think that eschewing ordinary but good quality baker's bread in favour of sourdough somehow makes them a superior type of human being. A touch pretentious, methinks!

I have discovered a food staple that I can safely eat, enjoy and make myself.
It does not make me feel superior in anyway, just grateful that I can eat freshly baked bread that I really enjoy.

It has also sparked an interest in bread making, I love to bake bread it is so cathartic.

NotSpaghetti

Home made sourdough uses a starter saved from the previous dough and it is treated to fresh flour and water (daily in most cases) to "feed" it.

Yes, the first batch is grown from just flour and water (usually but not always it will have some salt in) - but after that a traditional sourdough Baker will keep some dough back to start the next batch.

The clue regarding your cafe bread is the yeast. Sourdough would've have that.
Semolina flour yes. If it's southern Italian style sourdough it might well have some yellow semolina in it as almost all artisan breads in Puglia do.

This, by the way is my absolute favourite bread - using semola rimacinata flour (re-millled durum wheat semolina flour).

The starter, is not saved from the previous dough and never contains salt!
Salt would kill the bacteria that forms the wild yeast.
When making sourdough you have to allow the dough to “autolyse” for around an hour before adding salt.
Salt is never added to the starter.

Home made sourdough uses a starter saved from the previous dough and it is treated to fresh flour and water (daily in most cases) to "feed" it.

Yes, the first batch is grown from just flour and water (usually but not always it will have some salt in) - but after that a traditional sourdough Baker will keep some dough back to start the next batch.

The clue regarding your cafe bread is the yeast. Sourdough would've have that.
Semolina flour yes. If it's southern Italian style sourdough it might well have some yellow semolina in it as almost all artisan breads in Puglia do.

This, by the way is my absolute favourite bread - using semola rimacinata flour (re-millled durum wheat semolina flour).

merlotgran

^I note that I am not alone in finding the modern mass produced loaf, inedible and prone to stick in my throat^

Google the Chorleywood Bread Process. It has a lot to answer for.

Yes, I learnt about that some years .

What I find significant is that a child I loved bread, straight from the baker on the corner, In the 1970s and 80s I found I ate less and less bread because i din't really enjoy it. For a long time I just thought it was tatse changing, as they do.

Then I looked at the list of ingredients on the loaf of bread I bought in Sainsburies and, come the internet did some searching and found out about the Chorley Wood process.

Fortunately, at about the same time, wemoved to a village with a superb artisan baker and for 25 years I was back to eating the bread I enjoyed. Sadly the baker, already over retirement age, did not survive COVID, but he trained several young bakers who set up businesses.

However since we moved I am living in a bread desert. Personally, I do not like sour dough but that is all I can get, but I keep looking.

BlueBelle. I have to eat gluten free bread so rather than eat a mass produced, terrible tasting loaf, full of additives and costing nearly £4, I have spent ten years perfecting recipes that work for me. Sourdough is the hardest so my slavish devotion has definitely made me a bit precious about it.
Maybe I need to get out more! 😂

Bellasnana
Personally, I can’t understand how sourdough has become the ‘in’ thing. I think it’s horrible and yes YABU. Toast is toast, why waste it when half the world is starving?

I m with you all the way absolutely horrible stuff but it seems to be considered superior

I told him it was simply flour, water and salt.

Flour / water (minus the salt) made wallpaper paste in my house

Can’t stand sourdough and why on earth do people want to eat it and be so precious about it
I don’t think you were right to complain it’s sounds very

I note that I am not alone in finding the modern mass produced loaf, inedible and prone to stick in my throat

Google the Chorleywood Bread Process. It has a lot to answer for.

I wonder what on earth we all ate before the craze for sourdough swept in? Some people of my acquaintance seem to think that eschewing ordinary but good quality baker's bread in favour of sourdough somehow makes them a superior type of human being. A touch pretentious, methinks!

In the discussions about UPF(Ultra Processed Food). bread has been described as the ultimate UPF, where the number of direct farm ingredients is so small because all of it has been processed and changed.

Adding a sour dough starter to the collection of denatured ingredients needed to make the modern loaf, does nothing to make it any more acceptable and, as Sago has made clear, it means those who only eat genuine sourdough bread because for health reasons, are at risk of damaging their health.

I note that I am not alone in finding the modern mass produced loaf, inedible and prone to stick in my throat.

I find the texture of gf and ordinary sourdough almost identical whereas regular bread and gf versions are different. Gf is drier and more crumbly and can sometimes have a chalky texture. A lot of recipes recommend adding an egg but you have to be careful not to end up producing bread flavoured cake!! If I ever need to add egg I only use the white.
Gf bread also takes longer to bake and the top longer to brown.

Sometimes it’s a labour of love! 😂

Mojack26

Yes you are....

Why?

merlotgran

Allira

Thank you merlotgran

I don't have my large cast-iron pot (I suppose it was a Dutch oven) any more because I just couldn't lift it empty, let alone with anything in it.

Allira Check out Pullman loaf tins on Amazon. They have lids and are lightweight.
DD uses hers a lot so she can slice and freeze bread for toast.

Thank you merlotgran.

Sago it’s important to use gf flours that are nutrient dense so they can produce a lively culture.
Brown rice flour is the best and sorghum flour is also good. Buckwheat flour is also recommended but I found it less responsive and the starter didn’t have a pleasant sour smell.

If I'm paying for sourdough bread then that's what I expect, not something with a load of other ingredients.

Monica Thank you for the reply, I love the science behind SD making so presumably the starter is active and full of bacteria just missing the gluten.

Are the loaves a similar texture?

Allira

Thank you merlotgran

I don't have my large cast-iron pot (I suppose it was a Dutch oven) any more because I just couldn't lift it empty, let alone with anything in it.

Allira Check out Pullman loaf tins on Amazon. They have lids and are lightweight.
DD uses hers a lot so she can slice and freeze bread for toast.

Sago

Merlotgran What is in the SD starter please, I’m intrigued as to what flour is used.

I made my first gluten free starter using brown rice flour. I tried buckwheat flour but it was too heavy.
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the results so I bought a gf starter from the Good Gut Tribe (Amazon)
The results have been very good. When in use I feed it every day with two tbspns of brown rice flour and about 30g water. I ‘discard’ every other day. It stays in the fridge in between bakes and I feed it twice on the day before baking, keeping it in the airing cupboard to wake it up.

This is for gluten free sourdough.
I can recommend the British Sourdough co., for ordinary sourdough starters. They have a lot of info on their website and Instagram.

Stabilisers? That's a travesty for a start.

Some 'chef'!

Sago I am with you all the way, but would say is not that the 'bread' was not sourdough, but that it wasn't bread.

Look at the list of ingredients on the back of any supermarket 'bread', and any semblance to the ingredients needed to make bread is purely coincidental.

As you say, bread, any bread, should contain flour yeast and water, possibly a little salt or fat, but nothing else. With every year supermarket bread gets less and less like bread.

We have just moved from an area where there were several quite large artisan bakeries, to somewhere where the nearest one is roughly 20 miles away and I have more or less stopped eating bread because I can only get supermarket bread.

I find it turns into paste in my mouth and I have difficulty swallowing it. I made my Christmas puddings and stuffing using breadcrumbs made form a modern loaf and they were absolutel disgusting pasty and slimy. I threw the remains, away at the end of the meal, because no one in their right mind would want to eat them more than once.

Merlotgran What is in the SD starter please, I’m intrigued as to what flour is used.

I love sourdough and NO you are not being unreasonable!

Thank you merlotgran

I don't have my large cast-iron pot (I suppose it was a Dutch oven) any more because I just couldn't lift it empty, let alone with anything in it.

Which flour and recipe do you use merlotgran?

It’s my own recipe ,Allira

180g brown rice flour.
100g tapioca starch.
120g of any commercial gf flour blend.
18g psyllium husk.
2 tspns xantham gum
2 tspns baking powder
2 tspns salt
150g sourdough starter.
300g water
20g oil
2 tbspns honey or maple syrup.
I use a stand mixer with dough hook for mixing.
I set the dough to rise in a plastic bowl lined with baking parchment. No kneading required. It can take 5-6 hours to prove (gf dough doesn’t double in size) Scoring is essential.
Lift out of bowl when proved by holding the bp and place it all in preheated Dutch oven.
Bake at whatever the recommended temp is for your oven. I remove the lid after 30 mins.
Gf sourdough takes at least an hour to bake. Use a temperature probe. It must be 100C and not struggle to get there.
Cover with a tea towel while cooling on a rack.
Don’t be tempted to cut before completely cool. 😂