Where Else Can You Find Fresh Sourdough Starter
And what a history this one has! Ours is descended from a starter that’s been lovingly nurtured here in New England for decades. When you feed it, it quickly becomes your own, adapting itself to your own region and climate. Thousands of bakers before you have made wonderful bread with a bit of this same bubbling brew. Join the ranks of satisfied sourdough bakers.
IMPORTANT Please note: Sourdough starter is a living entity it needs regular feeding.
Thus we recommend no more than 10 days elapse between when the sourdough starter you purchase leaves our facility, and when you give it its first feeding. Keep this in mind when choosing a delivery method if you need help making the smartest shipping choice, please contact our customer service team.
For best results, please feed your fresh sourdough starter within 24 hours of receiving it.
Care and feeding directions are included with your order, and are also available in our Sourdough Tips & Recipes Booklet »
- Note: DO NOT CONSUME RAW STARTER.
Gluten Free Dairy Free Sourdough Bread
You should be able to replace the dairy in this bread recipe successfully. The milk can be replaced with unsweetened nondairy milk , or even with water. If you replace the milk with water, your loaf will simply be a bit less tender but it should still rise.
I havent tried replacing the butter with a nondairy replacement, but you should be able to use your favorite vegan butter alternative. I only recommend using a butter alternative like Melt or Miyokos Kitchen brand vegan butter or Earth Balance, and not oil.
Key Tips For Using Your Gluten Free Sourdough Starter:
- For best rise, feed your gluten free sourdough starter 4-12 hours again before using it and bring to to room temperature
- You may still use the starter stored in the refrigerator that wasnt just fed your loaf will have less springiness and will take a lot longer to proof.
- Using starter that is not fed a few hours before will produce a loaf with more sour flavor.
- Unfed starter can still rise the sourdough, even after two weeks in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before using, if possible.
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Storing Your Homemade Gluten Free Sourdough Bread
I always recommend storing your baked goods at room temperature in a sealed container, and this gluten free sourdough bread is no exception. The simple truth is that if you put baked goods into the refrigerator, they will dry out. You can put them into the freezer when they are fully cooled, but they will need to be warmed or toasted before enjoying again.
This gluten free sourdough bread is still soft and delicious after a few days in a zip top bag with the air squeezed out of it and stored at room temperature. Depending on the size of your loaf, you may need to cut it in half to get it to fit into a gallon sized bag, but other than that, its easy to just seal it up and grab a slice whenever you like!
If youd like to bake a regular gluten free artisan loaf without the sourdough starter, check out my Gluten Free Artisan Bread Recipe. And of course, my award-winning gfJules Gluten Free Bread Mix works well for any kind of sandwich bread, oven or bread machine, hamburger/hot dog bun or baguette recipe! Click on the description tab to find links to all these gluten free bread recipes or use the search bar above.
So lets get down to baking great gluten free sourdough, shall we?
What Is Sourdough Is All Sourdough Gluten
Sourdough bread is a type of bread that is made with a sourdough starter, which is a combination of flour, water, and naturally-harnessed wild yeasts. Creating the sourdough starter culture is done through a process of fermentation, and that sourdough starter is used as the leaver for our gluten-free sourdough bread! Not all sourdough is gluten-free though, so its important to make sure you use gluten-free flours to create a gluten-free sourdough bread.
Not all sourdough is necessarily super sour! You can make it have a more sour flavor with a longer ferment, but if you do a short ferment, you can also make it taste not very sour. Its up to your personal preference! A major plus of eating sourdough is the health benefits. Because sourdough is a fermented food, many people find it helps their gut health by improving their gut flora and microbiome. Its also easier to digest than other breads, which can have a lot of additives.
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Getting Your Starter Ready For Baking
Youll want your starter to be at peak activity when you mix up your preferment! You also want to make sure you have enough starter for your loaf, and to make your bread. So, before making bread, I like to do a big feeding and get to a solid doubling in size of my starter.
If your starter had been in the refrigerator, you want want to do two feedings before making bread to make sure your starter is super happy and ready to go!
How To Discard And Feed Gluten
You discard and feed a gluten-free sourdough starter like a regular one. See the section above on the best gluten-free flour for sourdough starters.
Step One
Step Two
Step Three
Step 4
Day 8
- If your starter shows bubbling and rising, you can use it for baking.
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Although Traditionally Fermented Sourdough Bread
is easier to digest because of the gut-friendly bacteria, yeasts, and enzymes, it often still contains gluten. Making it unsafe if you or a loved one has Celiac Disease.
Thats where our story starts. When my second oldest daughter was 2, I knew something wasnt right. My aunt has Celiac Disease and I had heard her experiences as a child. The descriptions sounded just like R. After a false negative, it was another 3 years before I got a doctor to listen to my mama gut that something was wrong. We did lots of tests and the diagnosis came back as positive this time, as did the biopsy results.
I had been making sourdough bread before this but stopped after this. The transition to strictly gluten-free was already going to be tough, without the delicious smell of home-baked bread wafting through the air.
Thankfully a friend shared some starter and this recipe a few years ago. So fresh-baked bread can still happen in our home!
This Simple Pizza Crust Might Be Gluten
Ingredients: 1 cup gluten-free sourdough starter | ¼ cup water | 1 tbsp olive oil | 1 large egg | 1 tsp salt | ½ cup tapioca flour, plus more for kneading | ½-1 cup sorghum flour
Delicious sliced thick, spread with butter, and served with soup
The perfect complement to any turkey dinner!
Everyone will love to wake up to a steaming stack of sourdough flapjacks
Pizza everyone can enjoy!
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Starting Your Gluten Free Starter
Everyone seems to have their own way of beginning a regular starter, so I researched several of them and then came up with MY own way. Plus, gluten free is different so that factor always needs to be taken into account. Heres a timeline of how I made my gluten free starter:
- Day 1, 9:00 a.m.in a clean glass jar, add 50 grams of your whole grain flour of choice. To this, add enough water to make a thick pancake batter-like consistency . Stir to combine. Cover loosely and set on the counter.
- Day 1, 9:00 p.m.repeat what you did in the morning.
- Day 2, 9:00 a.m.repeat adding 50 grams of the same flour and about 70 grams of water. Stir to combine. Cover loosely and set on the counter.
- Day 2, 9:00 p.m.repeat what you did in the morning.
- Days 3-7 to 10 or more, 9:00 a.m.check starter for activity. If it seems to have risen at all and there are tiny bubbles breaking on the surface , discard about a third of the starter. I dont measure. I just estimate about one third, but Im not precise about what I discard. Add another 50 grams of flour and 70 grams of water. At this point, you can start using a different flour if youd like, or stick with the same flour youve been using. See below for other flours and blends.
What Can You Do With The Discard
Store your discard in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week. Keep adding more discard to the container as your starter produces it during the course of the week. The discard can be used in recipes such as banana bread, scones, pancakes, waffles, brownies. It’s a lovely baking ingredient to have as it gives bakes a lovely sour tang and is a special bonus from your sourdough kitchen.
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Tips For Making A Gluten Free Sourdough Starter:
- Use any kind of all purpose gluten-free flour. I haven’t tried using flours like buckwheat or millet or oat to make the starter and I can’t attest if these will work, but what I do know is that an all purpose gluten-free flour will.
- Keep your sourdough starter warm. When it’s cold here, I put the starter in the oven with the pilot on. In warmer weather, leave it on your countertop.
- Make sure you feed your gluten free sourdough starter every day for at least a week to make it strong so it can work for you.
- Gluten free flour tends to be thirsty, so I used a 1:0.75 flour to water ratio. For one cup of flour, use ¾ths cup of water.
- Always use filtered or distilled water for your sourdough starter and baked goods, for the best results.
And now for the recipe. Happy gf sourdough starter making! And I’ll be back with the photos of the final starter in a day or two, and recipes.
Here’s the GF sourdough starter on day 8. You can see the bubbling in the side shot of the bowl below, and also how puffy it has become after eight days of feeding. The unexpectedly cool weather hereabouts has slowed me down a bit, so I’ll probably keep this going with feedings for another couple of days, before I can refrigerate it and feed it once a week.
Microbes In Gluten Free Sourdough Starters
Fermentation in sourdough starters doesnt happen in succession. As soon as the yeasts produce alcohol, the bacteria metabolize alcohol into acids. So things do get sour early on. Its not like the yeasts make all the alcohol first then, days later, the bacteria start metabolizing it. Its simultaneous since it is a rich, wild, mixed culture.
Yeasts make bubbles and visible expansion in a starter, but bacteria produce all the flavor. Bacteria start making things sour on day one. The bacteria can also metabolize carbohydrates from the flour into acids outright, and then wild yeasts metabolize the lactic acid produced by bacteria for energy. When more good bacteria are present, they can help boost yeast populations by feeding them usable acids and eliminating waste products . The point of discarding and feeding is to refresh the functional substrates available to all the microbes so that the accumulation of waste products does not kill the yeast and bacteria. Sourdough is fascinating because so many different types of microbial metabolism and fermentation are happening all at once.
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What Is A Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter
A wild yeast sourdough starter, gluten free or otherwise, is a combination of flour and non-chlorinated water that is combined to creative an environment conducive to the growth of the naturally occurring yeast that is all around us and in gluten free flours.
It’s essentially a controlled rot, like kombucha, but if you think of it like that, you may not ever want to make it so let’s move on. When yours is good and active, as described in the recipe card below, you’ll be ready to bake fresh gluten free sourdough bread with it!
My Starter Smells Like Alcohol
This is a normal part of the sourdough process. It should progress through this stage, and onto a stage of smelling yeasty, floral and generally like sourdough in the next couple of days. If it persists in smelling like alcohol, try feeding it more, or in more regular intervals. See the point on nail polish remover smells.
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Different People Different Methods
Understand that most people will probably use different methods to make a starter. Just like no two people will ever make pizza the same way. Below are my tips on how to prepare a simple active Gluten-Free Sourdough Starter.
Ive tested everything from adding kombucha, grapes, water kefir and apples to create pleasant smelling starters. Each method has different outcomes. Ive even placed fruit beside my starter to see if the bacteria from the fruit would magically fly into my starter to make it sweeter.
My friend Melissa Torio makes her starter with kombucha yeast.
Start with a simple method. As you get better at experimenting you can test different ingredients to achieve a lively bubbly starter that you will love to bake with.
Can I Mix Up The Flours I Feed My Sourdough Starter With
Yes! Please do! But within reason. While I wouldnt necessarily recommend feeding the starter with a different gluten free flour every day, you can use different flours if you run out of your original flour. You can also combine two flours, like I do with sorghum and quinoa. Apparently, after a while, your sourdough will eat away the remnants of the old flour you were using without a trace. So, for example, if you were to start feeding your quinoa flour starter brown rice flour, it would eventually become an entirely brown rice flour starter.
A caveat: starters do like consistency. Both in their feed and discard schedule, and in their feed itself. While you can move your starter to a different feed if you need to for best results, dont be too flippant.
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Does Fermentation Break Down Gluten
Sourdough bread relies on a sourdough starter to help bread rise. A sourdough starter consists of wild yeast and lactobacilli bacteria that stimulate a fermentation process in bread. While the fermentation process does break some of the gluten down, there is still a considerable amount of gluten that remains. The gluten left after fermentation does not reach a level of gluten low enough to consider it gluten free. The percentage of gluten that remains is also well above the level defined by the United States to claim a product gluten free.
One study found that people with IBS had increased fatigue, joint symptoms and reduced mental alertness after eating sourdough bread.
Though fermentation can reduce the quantity of gluten in breads, it does not make them gluten free. However, there are some breads made with both gluten free starter and gluten free flour that may be considered gluten free and tolerated by those with gluten sensitivity.
Gf Bread Making Equipment And Tools
To make this simple, rustic loaf of bread, you don’t really need any fancy tools. As you get more and more into bread baking, you may want to look into some of this specialty equipment:
Danish Dough Whisk – Instead of using your hands or a wooden spoon to mix the dough, this tool was made especially for the job!
Dutch Oven – You can bake a loaf of bread on a metal baking sheet, but if you’d like an extra crusty loaf, you’ll want to try baking it in a 5-6 quart Dutch Oven instead.
Banneton Basket or a large glass bowl – This is where your bread will rest to proof before baking.
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