Last fall I purchased Aran Goyoaga’s new book, The Art of Gluten-Free Bread. And of course I started baking from it.
I haven’t shared much of that process with you. There were some initial explorations of yeasted breads — a lovely soft dinner roll, some soft bread twists, using the same base dough. I shared some of those initial explorations here. But then, radio silence.
I didn’t stop baking, but my initial explorations were piecemeal. 2025 is now the past, and there is no point in exploring the reasons I was slow. I can say that my first attempt at creating a sourdough starter failed, probably due to a combination of factors, although my own inattention was one of them.
Around the beginning of the year, however, my baking mojo came together. While I was refreshing my starter and preparing for bread baking, I finally made some of the recipes calling for sourdough discard.
First up was this lemon-poppy seed sourdough pound cake. The texture is somewhere between a traditional pound cake and a quick-bread, leaning more toward cake, but with a delightful texture. The recipe specifies dividing the dough into two sections and adding the poppy seeds to only half, but I just mixed everything together, and frankly I like the result. I am not likely to change it now. The cake is brightly tart, and sweet without being cloyingly so. I’ve already baked this twice and am thinking of making more and keeping at least one of these at the ready in the freezer.
I also made these delightfully chocolaty and intense olive oil brownies. These may now by my favorite, and only brownie recipe, which also means that I need to maintain a steady supply of sourdough discard.
Although I was tentatively excited about the book and about baking, I was also cautious. Now I am all in even though I haven’t yet even begun to explore the bread-baking options. There is only so much bread I can eat, or will allow myself to eat perhaps. Luckily for the solo cook and diner, the freezer is my friend.
I have however made progress on the bread front. Aside from those soft rolls, my only other focus has been on trying to make a sourdough baguette. I’ve got a nice sourdough starter now, and have made several versions of the baguette, each delicious, and each actually better than most of the GF bread I can buy, but each also somehow not quite where I wanted them to be.
Perhaps I am just chasing some illusive memory of bread, something that will never be realized in its gluten-free incarnation. Only time will tell.
This last batch however was a major step forward. I moved from caution to comfort with the process, and excitement at the possibilities. It wasn’t a perfect loaf, it was perhaps not a masterpiece of shaping, but the results were delicious, perhaps the best gluten free bread I have ever eaten.
There had been issues with previous batches: the crust did not crisp enough, or brown enough, I needed to bake the bread longer than specified in the recipe, the bottoms were soggy. Once the dough was too wet, once too dry, but I do remember enough about bread baking to know that the weather affects that.
This time I made a few small changes which yielded big improvements.
I realized that my range came with a baking steel for oven. I had never used it as I really hadn’t done much baking. But I found it in the box of “stove accessories” and put it in the oven to preheat.
I also used a linen kitchen towel as a couche for shaping and rising the baguettes. This worked well. I really needed a heavier towel than the one I had, but it was a good starting place. The tricky part was transferring the baguettes from the couche to the hot baking steel. I donated most of my bread and pizza making supplies when I moved away from the Hudson Valley as I had not been baking bread for a few years at that point, and did not foresee a return to bread baking in the immediate future.
The bread felt awkward in my hands. Although the way a bread dough is supposed to feel is coming back to me, I have not regained full bread-making muscle memory. So as I awkwardly handled the bread, I placed it on the hot steel in a not very graceful manner. My baguettes were a little curved and atypical in form.
Shape made no difference in flavor however. The next batch will be even better. I still want to work on perfecting baguettes, but I am also getting ready to push forward into trying more things. No rush.
It is raining outside. I hadn’t decided what I wanted for lunch. A cup of soup appeals, but now that I have been writing about bread, I am thinking that soup and a sandwich would be a fabulous lunch. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually wanted a sandwich for lunch, actually craved a piece of bread. Yeasty excitement ahead.