Obscure Grains
Apr. 17th, 2008 06:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrLately I've been reading a lot about alternate grains, the ancient grains still used in parts of the world, such as amaranth, sorghum, and so on. There are lots of ancient grains out there that we Americans don't ever eat but which serve as staple crops elsewhere on Earth. Broadly speaking, there are cereal grains that are closely related to wheat (spelt, kamut, triticale) and there are cereal and pseudocereal grains that aren't closely related to wheat and which don't have gluten. For the obvious reason, this latter category is what people with celiac disease use.
The thing is, as many of you may know, that without gluten, it's very hard to make bread that looks and feels like wheat bread. The stretchy gluten protein you get from the glutenin and gliadin in wheat flour is what gives bread its texture and structure; it's what keeps the cells in the bread intact as the bread rises due to the leavening. Without something to help the bread form structure you get a dense, flat bread. Thus, people who try to replicate the look and feel of wheat bread for celiac sufferers tend to use certain gums (like xanthan gum) and starches to help the non-wheat bread form structure.
I don't suffer from celiac disease. Not in the slightest. But I am interested in baking with non-wheat grains, partly because I'm curious what they wind up tasting like and partly because I'm curious what you have to do with them to get them to form usable bread. I haven't tried doing a lot of completely wheat-free breads but I've done a lot of loaves lately that are half-wheat, half something else. King Arthur Flour makes a twelve-grain flour that has just about everything under the sun in it, and Bob's Red Mill makes amaranth flour, sorghum flour, you name it. Even coconut flour. I've really enjoyed the wheat/amaranth yeast bread I've made; it has a bit of a nutty, sweet taste to it that I find appealing. I've also tried using sorghum flour in combination with wheat in yeast breads and again, found the results very promising. I've had to add a bit of vital wheat gluten to get them to rise the way I like, but that's no big deal.
Last night I tried something a little different: I took an absolutely ordinary cornbread recipe, leavened by baking soda, and simply substituted amaranth flour for the cornmeal. Since the amaranth flour was ground much more finely than your typical yellow cornmeal, the resulting product was very different in texture, but good. I also substituted brown sugar for the white sugar in the recipe since, annoyingly, I'd let myself run out of sugar. The end result was a very light, mildly sweet table bread, not heavy like cornbread can sometimes be. I think it might have benefited from a little bit of vanilla extract, but on the other hand, adding vanilla extract would have masked the amaranth taste.
One of these days when I've got the time and I'm feeling good, I'm going to try to make an a completely wheat-free yeast-leavened loaf. The only thing that's stopping me is that your typical celiac-friendly non-wheat loaf recipe calls for six or seven different flours, like tapioca flour, rice flour, garbanzo bean flour, and even almond flour. I don't know enough yet about the chemistry of each of those flours to know which are really essential and which are just the result of fussy bakers wanting something to taste a particular way. I don't really want to buy a bunch of $8 bags of obscure little flours if I can achieve some sort of worthwhile results simply using a couple of grains and some xanthan gum (which I do have) to form structure.
Stay tuned.
The thing is, as many of you may know, that without gluten, it's very hard to make bread that looks and feels like wheat bread. The stretchy gluten protein you get from the glutenin and gliadin in wheat flour is what gives bread its texture and structure; it's what keeps the cells in the bread intact as the bread rises due to the leavening. Without something to help the bread form structure you get a dense, flat bread. Thus, people who try to replicate the look and feel of wheat bread for celiac sufferers tend to use certain gums (like xanthan gum) and starches to help the non-wheat bread form structure.
I don't suffer from celiac disease. Not in the slightest. But I am interested in baking with non-wheat grains, partly because I'm curious what they wind up tasting like and partly because I'm curious what you have to do with them to get them to form usable bread. I haven't tried doing a lot of completely wheat-free breads but I've done a lot of loaves lately that are half-wheat, half something else. King Arthur Flour makes a twelve-grain flour that has just about everything under the sun in it, and Bob's Red Mill makes amaranth flour, sorghum flour, you name it. Even coconut flour. I've really enjoyed the wheat/amaranth yeast bread I've made; it has a bit of a nutty, sweet taste to it that I find appealing. I've also tried using sorghum flour in combination with wheat in yeast breads and again, found the results very promising. I've had to add a bit of vital wheat gluten to get them to rise the way I like, but that's no big deal.
Last night I tried something a little different: I took an absolutely ordinary cornbread recipe, leavened by baking soda, and simply substituted amaranth flour for the cornmeal. Since the amaranth flour was ground much more finely than your typical yellow cornmeal, the resulting product was very different in texture, but good. I also substituted brown sugar for the white sugar in the recipe since, annoyingly, I'd let myself run out of sugar. The end result was a very light, mildly sweet table bread, not heavy like cornbread can sometimes be. I think it might have benefited from a little bit of vanilla extract, but on the other hand, adding vanilla extract would have masked the amaranth taste.
One of these days when I've got the time and I'm feeling good, I'm going to try to make an a completely wheat-free yeast-leavened loaf. The only thing that's stopping me is that your typical celiac-friendly non-wheat loaf recipe calls for six or seven different flours, like tapioca flour, rice flour, garbanzo bean flour, and even almond flour. I don't know enough yet about the chemistry of each of those flours to know which are really essential and which are just the result of fussy bakers wanting something to taste a particular way. I don't really want to buy a bunch of $8 bags of obscure little flours if I can achieve some sort of worthwhile results simply using a couple of grains and some xanthan gum (which I do have) to form structure.
Stay tuned.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 04:20 pm (UTC)I actually found this post by doing a google search for amaranth.
I just made cupcakes using amaranth flour and the flour I got seems different from what you described. My flour had a lot of unground whole seeds in it and was very course. More course than cornmeal, I'd say. The cupcales fell because all the air just escaped.
I thought that was just how amaranth flour was, but now I'm thinking I should buy a different brand!
By the way, I picked up a wheat flour substitute recipe in my travels that is apparently very applicable to many applications. It's from Bette Hagman, who is apparently quite a figure in the gluten-free world (I am new to this stuff).
For every 3 cups of wheat flour, substitute:
2c of white rice flour
2/3c potato starch
1/3c tapioca starch
and an appropriate amount of xanthan gum
(1 tsp for cakes, 2 tsp for bread or pizza dough, less than 1 tsp for cookies)
I understand that different flours are favoured for different applications, depending on whether you want a crumbly cake, a chewy cookie, etc - but this recipe is said to be quite a good all around substitute.
Good luck with your baking!
:)
AT
no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 04:38 pm (UTC)My goal isn't so much a breadlike substitute for wheat bread as it is exploring the taste and demands of things like amaranth, sorghum, and so forth. One of these days, preferably a nice warm day, I'm even going to get some teff flour and try to make injera. Since that involves letting the dough ferment I want to make sure I know what I'm doing first. :)
The amaranth flour I used is sold by Bob's Red Mill of Milwaukie, Oregon. They sell just about every kind of alternative flour you could want, and they do discounts for large orders. On the other hand, you can also often find their stuff in health food stores or the natural foods aisles of your local supermarket. I wasn't able to find EVERY product they sold locally, though, so in order to get their blue corn meal and their triticale flour I had to order it. Oddly, though I was able to get their blue corn meal our local health food store didn't even have it as an available item in their big list of Bob's products. (Perhaps their wholesaler doesn't offer it.)
Anyway, I was able to find Bob's amaranth, finely ground, at my local stores. I also can get the coarse-ground amaranth in bulk at one store; you can actually pop that stuff like popcorn, although I haven't done it yet.