Wheat Flour Sourdough Starter Safe?

[alicewa 4]

Hi,

I was diagnosed with celiac very recently and used to make sourdough bread every weekend. I no longer do. But I read http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/glutenfreebreads/f/Does-Fermentation-Break-Down-Gluten-In-Sourdough-Breads-And-Beer.htm and it seems it can be.

How could/should I go about this?

[sa1937 324]

Hi,

I was diagnosed with celiac very recently and used to make sourdough bread every weekend. I no longer do. But I read http://glutenfreecoo...ds-And-Beer.htm and it seems it can be.

How could/should I go about this?

You can make gluten-free sourdough starters. I just pulled up http://www.food.com/ and did a search. A few recipes came up. You could also google it and I bet you'd find a lot of recipes.

[GlutenFreeManna 612]

Hi,

I was diagnosed with celiac very recently and used to make sourdough bread every weekend. I no longer do. But I read http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/glutenfreebreads/f/Does-Fermentation-Break-Down-Gluten-In-Sourdough-Breads-And-Beer.htm and it seems it can be.

How could/should I go about this?

IMO, there is just not enough research on this to know the long term effects of eating wheat-based sourdough breads. You can use the same methods you used before for making a sourdough starter out of gluten-free flour. There is no need to use wheat flour and no reason to risk it.

[sreese68 36]

You may want to read the article a little more closely. It says that the only sourdough bread that was tolerated was made using specially treated wheat (the resulting bread had 8ppm gluten). It further says that sourdough made with grocery store wheat should NOT be eaten by people with celiac.

Also, the sample size of the study was TINY. Only 3 people ate the "safe" bread. There are certainly those with celiac who would react to 8ppm gluten and wouldn't be able to eat it.

It's an interesting study. But a lot more research and testing would need to be done.

[alicewa 4]

How do "gluten free" sourdough breads turn out? (i.e. ones started from a sourdough starter). Are they normally better in taste and quality than the awful yeast-risen stuff?

[sa1937 324]

How do "gluten free" sourdough breads turn out? (i.e. ones started from a sourdough starter). Are they normally better in taste and quality than the awful yeast-risen stuff?

I've never tried to make sourdough bread. But the gluten-free sourdough starter recipes I saw do call for yeast.

[RiceGuy 55]

Although Barry Farm has a gluten-free sourdough starter, the instructions for it suggest to me that you could easily make your own. It does start with yeast, but I think that is often done so that you don't end up with the wrong colonies of bacteria, thus spoiling it.

I wonder about using a fermented product such as coconut aminos, to begin the fermentation process on some gluten-free flour. I've never looked into it, but I have stumbled upon articles about sourdough breads, and it seems the taste is very dependent on the types of microbes/yeast that dominate the starter. Many say the best sourdough bread is that which is made from San Fransisco cultures. Here's an article on it: http://www.joejaworski.com/bread/bread1.htm

According to this Wikipedia article, sourdough has certain types of Lactobacillus, and usually also some yeast types. Seems to me you could use a probiotic supplement containing the specific forms you want to use, for the starter.

[GlutenFreeManna 612]

I have not tried it but this recipe looks amazing: http://www.artofglutenfreebaking.com/2010/10/sourdough-bread-boule-gluten-free/

If you read the link on how she makes her starter she actually used red cabbbage to get the fermentation part of the starter. Brilliant! I never would have thought to do that.