Taste of Things To Come

Hey folks! Thank you to everyone for the kind words about my new site. I’m still working out the kinks, but I am very happy with it. It’s so nice to have my own home (a.k.a., domain name) instead of a rental property (heh).

I’ve been quite busy this week with the blog move and the fact that Girlfriend has been home sick. We’ve been trying to take it easy–which I think is what the universe is telling us to do when we get sick.

One thing I have been working on is a gluten-free sourdough starter/bread made with wild-harvested yeast. This has been such a fun process for me. I feel like I’m the last to come to the sourdough party, but the whole sourdough thing has been such a mystery to me. Before now, it’s always seemed to be something that takes too long, doesn’t really work, takes as much work as a pet, and creates a mess that I end up composting. Every so often over the past 10 years I have tried to do gluten-free sourdough, but I have never had success until now. I grew up in Monterey, CA, which is a 100 miles south of San Francisco, and I desperately miss sourdough. It’s a taste of my roots.

Luckily, this fall I discovered a totally new (to me) way of creating the starter. And it’s been working like a charm. The whole process has been easy and working well. I’ve been experimenting with making boules (a fancy-schmancy French word for a round loaf) and baguettes. I’ve been working on the flour-starter-water ratios. My goals for sourdough bread are for it to be crunchy on the outside, soft but not gummy on the inside and, of course, to taste like “real” sourdough. One thing I’m thrilled about is that this bread is naturally vegan–no dairy or eggs. Which is awesome!

I’m still working on tweaking the recipe, so I won’t post it now. But, I want to use this as an opportunity to do a shout-out to my friend, Jean, of GF Doctor Recipes. Please go take a look at her gluten-free sourdough recipe and method. It’s awesome. Last spring I had the pleasure of filming a video with her on how to make her sourdough. Her recipe and method are terrific. She has even figured out a way to dry it so she can send it through the mail. Brilliant. And the taste–delicious. She also teaches classes on how to make it. She spent a lot of time and effort coming up with her sourdough recipe/starter/method and she is a trailblazer with this one! And, she has been so generous to the gluten-free community–giving away samples of her dried starter to folks at conferences. We are lucky to have folks like Jean around. I truly believe that generosity of spirit like her’s enriches all of us!

With my sourdough, I’ve gone in a different direction and have a different method and use different flours for my bread and starter (not necessarily any better than Jean’s, just different). I’m pleased as punch with the results. Girlfriend and dAhub have been happy, too, because they have been the recipients of the test batches.

Recipe soon!