Gluten Free Sourdough

Let’s talk sourdough! When 2020 turned our lives upside down and people could no longer eat out or buy the groceries they necessarily wanted to buy, cooking became quite the past-time.

Baking, in particular, saw such heightened interest that you couldn’t find yeast, flour, sugar, baking powder and other such pantry staples. It was insane in so many ways!

Like most everyone else, I ramped up my cooking and baking during quarantine, but one aspect of baking that missed my radar, but saw quite the resurgence from many other home cooks, was sourdough baking.

A little background

As you know (or maybe you don’t know if you’re new), we are 100% gluten free in my house. If you want more of my health story and how we ended up on a gluten free diet, I encourage you to read my about me page. For a long time, we were strictly paleo, but as our bodies have healed, we’ve loosened up a bit and allowed in some grains, some dairy and other treat foods. This has really opened up a whole new world of recipe possibilities!

I still aim to keep it paleo as much as possible, simply because that’s the diet that keeps us all feeling our best, but I do make gluten free treats from time to time. Actually, it ends up being a little more regular than I would like because I’m always creating new recipes for my health coaching clients and my readers/viewers. I have a YouTube channel too in case you weren’t aware. You can find it here.

One day as I was looking for something to watch on YouTube while I cooked, I ran across a channel that was cooking with sourdough and it was a lightbulb moment for me.

Ok, this post is going to be a bit long and you can skip around if you’d like, but I need to take you on a little trip in my wayback machine to explain some things. I’ll be as brief as possible, I promise!

A little background on sourdough

There was a time when all bread was sourdough. Yes, really. The commercial yeasts we use today were not invented until the 19th century. We have archaeological evidence of bread being baked way back during the early Egyptian empires and all around the world.

There is natural yeast floating around in the air and mixing water and flour (sometimes salt too) and leaving that sit out in your environment allows those natural yeasts to invade your dough and bring it to life.

Think back to the Biblical story of the exodus where the Jewish people had to leave in a hurry and were instructed to take unleavened bread. That bread was unleavened because sourdough (the type of bread they were making at the time) takes a long time to rise. They didn’t have time for that. They had to escape.

But then came along the commercial yeast products that were faster and easier and less finicky and sourdough took a backseat.

That’s the history of sourdough in a very tiny nutshell. Some of you like that sort of information so I thought I’d include it. What I suspect more of you are more interested in is the why of sourdough.

Why sourdough?

Why would anyone go to the trouble to make sourdough bread today?

Why is it better for you than traditional bread?

Why can some people tolerate gluten-containing sourdough when they can’t tolerate regular bread?

I hope to answer those questions for you right now!

The first question of why bother has a complex answer that varies from person to person. Why I make sourdough may not be why you make sourdough. I enjoy experimenting in the kitchen, I enjoy learning new things, I enjoy the challenge of doing something hard and also I want the health benefits of sourdough. Some of you may just want the health benefits. You might prefer the taste. You might also be a glutton for punishment, I mean, enjoy challenging cooking tasks.

The health benefits question is a little easier to answer. It all boils down to the fact that when we eat grains, we are eating the seeds of a plant. That plant is programmed to reproduce. It wants to create more and more little plants just like itself. Part of that process that has been so beautifully designed by our Creator is that the seeds come with quite a strong protective coat. The seed needs to make it through being dispersed (by wind, by water, by fire, and by animals). Think about all the seeds that actually make it through the digestive tract of some animal before being planted in the ground. That seed has to go through a lot and it doesn’t want to get spoiled before it’s safely in the soil.

Those coatings on the seeds that work so well for the plant, don’t work so well for humans who sometimes want to eat those seeds. There are all sorts of anti-nutrients: phytates, tannins, lectins, and oxalates to name a few.

Some people seem to be able to eat a large quantity of plant foods without any negative side effects. Here’s where I put on my health coach hat for a minute and tell you that you might think you eat lots of plants and seeds and have no negative effects, but in fact, maybe you’re just used to it. Most people, when they go through an elimination diet that removes some of these hardest to digest plant foods, report not realizing how bad they were feeling until they started to feel so good. Just some food for thought.

How do you know if you might be reacting to some of these anti-nutrients? Here are some signs: nausea, bloating, headaches, rashes, nutritional deficiencies. Some might show up on blood tests, such as low calcium, damaged red blood cells, thyroid dysfunction and on and on.

Ah, we’re finally getting back to sourdough. The main benefit of fermenting your grains (that’s what you’re doing when you make sourdough bread products) is that those anti-nutrients get broken down through the fermentation process making the actual nutrients in the plant foods more available to the body and reducing the symptoms that often come with eating non-fermented grains.

So to recap:

1. Why sourdough? Varies from person to person.
2. Why is sourdough better for you? Nutrients are better absorbed and fewer side effects that come with eating grains.
3. Can’t eat normal gluten-containing bread, but can eat gluten-containing sourdough? See number 2. Maybe you just need those grains broken down a bit.

What can you do with sourdough?

So many things! Now remember, gluten free sourdough is not the same as gluten-containing sourdough and it is going to be trickier to work with. But it can still be great. You just have to manage your expectations.

I’m still relatively new to the sourdough game, but I’ve already had a lot of success.

• quick and easy skillet cobbler
• scones – so many scones!
• pizza crust – so fast, so easy, so crispy and delicious
• biscuits – in fact, the best gluten free biscuits I’ve ever had

Notice what is not on that list. Bread. Yes, just plain old bread. I have tried and tried and every time, my loaf turns out like a brick and nobody has time for that.

I have a great gluten free yeast bread recipe and a great paleo bread recipe over on autoimmunefreecookingclub.com, my old membership site. I’ll get those up here soon. Frankly, that’s good enough for me. It’s not like you only get the benefits of sourdough when it comes in the form of a slice of bread. You get the benefits no matter how you eat it. And let me tell you – I am more than happy keep eating the biscuits and scones.

Of course I will continue to come up with new ways to use my sourdough starter, but I think the actual loaf of bread baking is going to sit on the back burner for now.

I hope you have enjoyed this little primer on sourdough baking, and perhaps learned something too. Now I hope you will go and enjoy some sourdough goodness in the form of some cobbler or perhaps a scone?

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments section below or just email me at elizabeth@totalwellnesshealthcoaching.com. I’m a real actual person behind your computer screen and I will really reply to your email. Just know that I’m learning too and am far from an expert.

You can find my recipe for the gluten free flour blend I used in my sourdough here.