Aran Goyoaga Transcript

Aran Goyoaga Transcript

Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, Snackable Bakes. Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes. I'm so happy to kick off season two of our podcast with today's guest, Aran Goyoaga, one of the leading experts on gluten-free baking. Some of you might know Aran from her popular blog, Cannelle et Vanille, or her best-selling books, or her beautiful photography and styling, which you can see on her Instagram feed. Aran joins me from Seattle, Washington to talk about her gluten-free journey and the trusted ingredients, tools, and techniques she relies on. We also go through the Quick Crusty Boule recipe step by step from her most recent book, Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple. Whether you're gluten-free or not, you're going to want to try your hand at making this delicious bread. Stay tuned for my chat with Aran. 

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Before Aran joins us, I want to thank those of you who left ratings and reviews for the show. I appreciate your kind words and enthusiastic support, and I'm so glad you love the show. Now let's check in with today's guest. 

Aran, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie, and to talk gluten-free baking, Quick Crusty Boules, and so much more with you.

Aran Goyoaga:
Hi, Jessie. Thank you for having me.

Jessie Sheehan:
So you have been called one of the most beloved gluten-free cookbook authors and bloggers, and in fact, your blog, Cannelle et Vanille, falls into that category of OG [original] since you've been at it for about 15 years if I'm doing my math right. I think it's like 2008. Could you tell us what led you to the world of gluten-free baking?

Aran Goyoaga:
I was a pastry chef in a former life before my children and I was eating wheat, and I actually grew up in a family of pastry chefs where I was eating brioche every day for breakfast and all kinds of pastries. But in 2009 I started having health issues. I developed gluten intolerance. Later, I found out I have genetic gluten intolerance, but it never really manifested itself and I started having autoimmune problems. I had a friend who had also gone through this, years before. And I remember when I was a pastry chef, this is like 2002, 2003, she went gluten-free and she suggested, she said, "Maybe you should experiment a little bit with this." And at the time I was working with European chefs and just really fine dining pastry, and I thought, I never shared this with her, but I thought that sounds so like crunchy, granola, hippie. It's not my thing.

Fast-forward to 2010 when I was diagnosed with gluten intolerance, it was what I had to do. It was kind of easy actually because I had experience with baking and I had a really good base and I had experimented with alternative grains, but always in combination with wheat. I think just pastry in general wasn't that difficult. Bread was… it's a totally different story because bread does rely on… gluten is number one to really get the structure, the consistency and everything that you need for bread. It all revolves around gluten. With pastry, cakes, cookies, quick breads, they're actually tender products, so you don't really need a lot of gluten.

Jessie Sheehan:
You've described your work as meshing the world of traditional pastry, which obviously you know something about, growing up as you did around your grandparents' pastry shop, going to culinary school, working in professional kitchens. So you've talked about meshing that world with the world of alternative baking, all with the goal of elevating such baking. Could you define alternative baking for us and also unpack what that meshing and that elevating look like?

Aran Goyoaga:
So when I say alternative baking, I mean baking without gluten, oftentimes baking vegan, baking sugar-free. So once I got into the world of gluten-free baking, I encountered this whole world of people that had requests and a lot of it has to do with allergen-free baking and that involves eggs, which probably to me is the hardest part of alternative baking and vegan baking, especially when you take out gluten, which is what provides structure. And then you take out eggs, you're kind of having to reformulate things. But for me, because I come from this world where I have some standards of crust, color, crumb, flakiness, I don't get just like, oh, I baked something and it came out.

I'm always trying to perfect something, thinking about those characteristics that I am expecting. And that's why I don't usually rely on all-purpose mixes because each product or each recipe that I'm trying to create has something that I'm looking for specifically. So different flours provide different kind of earthiness, flavor, elasticity. Some are crumblier than other, some are elastic. So I'm always playing around within a new framework for alternative baking, with kind of the ideas and the desirability or craving that I have from having tasted other things.

Jessie Sheehan:
This is a great segue into your latest book, your third, Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple, which came out in 2021. You're an incredible photographer, and these beautiful desserts pop off the page. And it's only when you start to look at the ingredient list that you realize, oh, this is something a little different. Basically to describe the book for people, it's full of easy to follow gluten-free recipes for breads, cakes, pies, tarts, biscuits, and cookies, basically all the things. And I thought we would sort of start in the beginning. You have a gluten-free all-purpose baking mix. You say it's a neutral flavored gluten-free flour mix with this ratio of whole grains and starches.

I'm just going to list the things that you put in this mix because I'm so curious about all of them and I think listeners will be too. But in this particular mix, there's super fine brown rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, and you say this is a great mix for tender crumbed cakes and cookies. First I would love to know, and I'm sure the listeners do too, what your favorite brands of all of those things are. This maybe sounds like a silly question, but how do you even come up with a gluten-free baking mix? How do you know that it should be super fine rice flour should be your flour? So if you could talk to us a little bit about brands. And then also, it's fascinating, the creative process of developing the mix.

Aran Goyoaga:
Actually it wasn't my idea to include that. It was my agent. And she has a lot more of a commercial of mind when it comes to books and book selling. I think it's a great idea because I do get asked oftentimes people have these family recipes that they want to convert. Without me being there for them, I kind of like to suggest something that's very all-purpose and I thought that this was a great way to start the book, kind of getting it out of the way. Here's something that you can use if you want to convert your own recipe. It's pretty kind of mild and it's not something that I invented. I think it's a amalgamation of different recipes that I've seen. I think the first recipe that I saw for something similar was Cybele Pascal, and she's actually the first person that I ever heard talk about super fine brown rice flour, which is a total game changer. And when anybody comes to me with problems with recipes, I say, "Are you using stone ground flours or super fine flours or what kind of silly am I using?"

Those are the three sort of key to really have an amazing hydrated dough. Back to the all-purpose mix, if you look at any packaged mix, it'll have a mixture of whole grain flours and starches. And oftentimes they have guar gum or xanthan gum, which is just a binder. You don't always need a binder. You will need a binder in bread, but not always in cakes and cookies. So that's why I put that as an optional thing. And so some might have a mixture of millet and brown rice, sorghum. The list of whole grains could be long. And then the starch is usually a combination of potato starch, tapioca starch, or corn starch. So this one is kind of a simplified version of something that you can buy in the store. The ratio, and I mean, I'd have to take out the calculator right now, I can't remember, but it's probably like a 60/40, so like a 60 whole grain, 60% whole grain, 40% starch.

And that's kind of a good base. When you're thinking about something in general, if you don't know where to begin with converting a recipe that uses all-purpose wheat flour, just think about that, like a 60% whole grain, 40% starch, and just play around with different flavors that you might enjoy, like buckwheat is very different than sorghum or millet. In this book, because it's called Bakes Simple, I think people get intimidated by a long list of gluten-free flours and ingredients. I had to exclude some flours because I couldn't just have all of them. So I really focused on oat flour, buckwheat flour, brown rice flour and sorghum flour, are sort of like the four flours, the whole grain flours that you'll see in the book, and then potato starch and tapioca starch. I don't use corn starch because it's an allergen and it's pretty easy just to replace with tapioca starch, so it's also simplifying for me.

Jessie Sheehan:
Can you also substitute arrowroot powder?

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, tapioca and arrowroot are very similar. Tapioca's a little bit gummier. Potato is also an allergen for a lot of people because it's a nightshade, so I recommend… if you can tolerate corn starch, to use corn starch. But anyway, back to your question, I feel like I'm going in circles. I want to answer the brand question because it's really important and I feel like there's such inconsistency amongst brands that makes it very difficult to write recipes that turn out the same for everybody. Anytime you can find flour that it's finely milled, it will be labeled finely or super fine, go for those because what that does is allows for the dough to hydrate much better. Anytime you have a stone ground flour, it works, but it doesn't quite get the same elasticity because it doesn't hydrate the same way. And of course, we're not going to have elasticity like gluten, we're not going to have these strands of dough, but it does make a difference how kind of expands.

So my favorite brand, Authentic Foods, is a company in California and they mill their own flour and they're amazing, but they're a small, small company and it's quite pricey and it's not always easy to get. There's another one called Anthony's Goods. They're sort of focused on health products and flours. Of course, Bob's Red Mill is amazing. What else? Oh, and then psyllium. Psyllium is for bread baking, gluten-free bread baking is key. What everybody is using now, it used to be xanthan gum, and psyllium is the new xanthan gum. They're different products. Psyllium absorbs a lot of water, so it gels and it gives you the same bouncy texture of a traditional dough, versus xanthan gum was always like a cake batter. When you read old gluten-free recipes that use xanthan gum, you kind of, it's almost like cake butter that you pour into a loaf pan and then you bake.

But now with psyllium, because it absorbs so much moisture and it gels, it's a bouncy pillowy dough that's amazing to work with. But it's a very inconsistent. Every brand has a different product and there's a psyllium shortage in the world right now. Most of the psyllium comes from India, and so I think with the pandemic and then they had floods, a lot of stuff that's disrupted the chain supply. My favorite brands are right now Frontier Co-op, Anthony's Goods, but I think their product is sold out at the moment, and Terrasoul is another company in the U.S. They're also sold out and they told me that the harvest is now in the spring, so hopefully by summer, they'll be... These are so specific, I know, but it's really key.

Jessie Sheehan:
No, that's exactly, yeah, no, no, we're baking nerds here.

Aran Goyoaga:
Okay, great.

Jessie Sheehan:
So we love this. One thing I wanted to ask because I don't know, and I wonder if maybe listeners don't know as well, why do you need the starch? I understand the role of the psyllium and I understand the role of flour obviously. What is the starch adding to the flour that makes it more, quote, unquote, "gluteny?”

Aran Goyoaga:
So starch is what provides sometimes crispiness, fluffiness, and binding. So tapioca starch is kind of… if you think about when you make pudding like tapioca pudding, how it's just elastic and gummy, if you just take tapioca starch and mix it with water and heat it up, it'll become this little like a rubber thing, and that's what helps bind. Whole grain flours absorb a lot of moisture, so they need something to crisp it up and to lighten it, otherwise you'd have this dense heavy bread, which is great. I'm actually working on a bread book right now. I'm working the whole spectrum of breads that are really heavy, more like Nordic style breads, but then also something like brioche that you need it to be fluffy that has a very pully crumb, so the fluffier the bread, the more starch you're going to need. And then you can go to the other side, which is something that's dense, really flavorful because whole grain flours really have the flavor, not so much the starches.

Jessie Sheehan:
I think I learned it from Peter Reinhart, I'm not sure, but I always put a little potato starch in my recipe for my cinnamon buns and for my Parker House rolls and all of that, and I won't lie to you, I don't even think I knew why I was doing it. I think I had read it in one of his recipes and I'm like, oh my God, that sounds good. I mean, he probably explained it at the time. I have since forgotten why I'm putting it in and I just still do it. So that's so interesting that that makes perfect sense that in gluten-free baking you're going to need it. It's going to be a mandatory ingredient, whereas I'm using it with gluten with all-purpose flour, but it's still adding that fluffiness.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah. So the two starches that I use, potato starches, if you're thinking of adding fluffiness, that's the one. Tapioca starch is more of a crispness and binding. Starches don't absorb as much water as wholegrain flours too, so you have to kind of know how much water one can take versus another.

Jessie Sheehan:
And that's why you have both of them in the mix.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yes.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. The tapioca plays one role, the potato plays another.

Aran Goyoaga:
Exactly. But also people think of wheat flour because it's one bag that you're buying. I mean, it's one ingredient, but wheat flour actually has quite a bit of starch in it. So when you think about, let's say like a whole grain buckwheat flour or a all-purpose wheat flour. All-purpose wheat flour naturally has a lot of starch in it, so you're not really needing to add anymore. I mean, you did with a potato search with Peter's recipe, but it's interesting that people don't think about wheat as having starch, but it does. And I don't know how much it is, but I want to say it's quite a bit.

Jessie Sheehan:
I also love that with this baking mix, because it gives people a lot of agency, you say, look, I don't recommend using this mix in every single recipe in my book, but if you wanted to, you can measure the amounts of the other flours and the other starches that I call for recipe by recipe and use this mix as well. So I just, not that I love a shortcut, but I won't lie, I do love a shortcut, so that appeals to the shortcut person in me. Do you know what I mean? If you had that stored in your pantry and you were making one of your recipes that called for a different flour and you didn't want to go get it, you could use this.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, makes sense. And it's easy to have something mixed in your pantry in a big jar and just go and get it. It's just reminding me the importance of weighing. Gluten-free baking, probably number one thing you think about, that if you are only using volume measures and you're switching to gluten-free baking and you want to really perfect it, I would say really invest in a kitchen scale, or baking. I mean, even gluten baking, but especially in gluten-free baking because the inconsistency in product which affects density and how much space it takes, so like a stone ground flour versus a super fine brown rice flour are going to be different densities and how it sits in a bag and all this stuff. So I would really recommend weighing to be successful.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I had written down a couple of your gluten-free baking tips and one of them was weigh your ingredients, so I am so glad that you mentioned that. Just a quick thought, if you had a rice flour but it was a little dense or a little coarse, could you stick it in your food processor and... No.

Aran Goyoaga:
No. Rice is a really hard grain to mill. I think the Authentic Foods people told me that they mill their flour three times and it's sifted every time, and it's like a whole process that you have to go through. So I can't imagine you can do that in a Vitamix. I mean, if you have one of those Mockmills or, that's the only brand I know, but the home little mills, you could try doing that sifting and grinding it again and milling it again. I don't know if it gets to that same fineness. What I would recommend with stone ground flour is to give it more time to hydrate. For example, if you're making bread, this is not in my book and I'm working on this idea a little bit more because I do get this question a lot, is hydrate the flour with a little bit of water and let it sit, almost like autolyzing when you're making sourdough bread, how you're autolyzing your flour.

And doing that with coarser flour so it has a little bit more time to hydrate. I mean, with sourdough, inevitably you're going to have long fermentation time, so it's going to hydrate slowly, but it's going to hydrate. Introducing autolyzing in bread baking with stone ground flours could be a good solution to that. Or sometimes I even say if your dough feels like, with my formula, if it feels a little too wet because my flour is absorbing more waters, maybe reduce a little bit of water. Start with less water, maybe 10% less and then add more at the end after it's done mixing. So specific.

Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. I love it. That's exactly what I want. 

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Okay. Now I wanted specifically to talk about this recipe. I mean, so many recipes in the book popped out at me, but your Quick Crusty Boule. First of all, I love the name. And then also I just am always curious about quick bread, so I thought we would talk about that. The first thing I wanted to mention is that you have a note on Dutch ovens. I can't remember if it's with this recipe or elsewhere in the book because many of your, at least a boule is going to be baked in one. So the first thing I wanted to ask is if somebody is in the market to get a Dutch oven, is there a brand that you particularly like for when you're baking a boule like this?

Aran Goyoaga:
Yes. I have to say Lodge 5.5 Quart Combo Dutch Oven. Most people use them for bread. Those are maybe $55 the last time I checked, and they're not enamel, so they're not coated. They're a little bit more durable. I feel like the enamel, Dutch ovens are great for cooking, but they get damaged so easily when baking at 500 degrees that it's not worth the investment. So getting something that's inexpensive and that's super durable is probably worth it. I'm sure there's other brands, but that's what I have at home.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's a great tip. But if somebody didn't have a Dutch oven, they could bake the bread, as you say, directly on a baking sheet. You just have to be ready, the crust might be a little paler and maybe not as crispy.

Aran Goyoaga:
It's all about creating steam. So when you're baking in a Dutch oven, you are creating a super hot environment, tight, enclosed environment where you're going to add a little bit of ice, and when you put the bread in and the ice and then you close it, it's going to be a steam chamber. You're trying to recreate that without a Dutch oven. I happen to have an oven that has a steam injection, so it's easy, so you just tell the oven to do it. But if you don't, you can add ice into the oven. I think in the book I say there's different ways. You can put another cast iron pan or skillet or a metal tray in the oven while it's preheating, let it get super hot. This is another tip for bread baking. If this says preheat to 500 degrees, let it preheat for 500 degrees for 20 minutes extra. So not only is the thermometer that it's telling you is 500 degrees, but the walls of the oven, the racks, everything are super hot.

And then you can add ice cubes into that tray. You can even add hot water, but I feel like ice cubes are just easy to throw in. Lately I've been just throwing the ice cubes in the oven at the bottom without a tray. I just put the bread in, the sheet in, throw some ice cubes at the bottom of the oven that it's super hot, so it's going to create steam right away. Close the oven and that should do it. You could do that a couple times every five minutes in the first 15 minutes. You could do it three times. Depends on what kind of bread it is. And then another thing you can do is something similar, but it's getting a metal bowl, like a mixing bowl and put it over. So have a sheet with the bread on it, and put the ice and then put a metal bowl on top of it like creating a cover. So it's going to sort of create a little bit of a steam chamber in there and then put that in the oven.

Jessie Sheehan:
I might have missed this, but were you saying you'll flip your bread or maybe move it with your piece of parchment or however you get that bread into the pot, but then you also put an ice cube into the pot?

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, I've made it without ice cubes. Depending on the recipe, it can crack. If there's not enough moisture, the dough as it's rising, the surface of the bread gets a little bit dry and so as it's expanding, it doesn't have that moisture to just open up, so it can crack. That's happened to me, so I always add a couple of ice cubes in there. This recipe, I did not put, the quick boule doesn't have ice in it. It comes out and I think it's probably because it's a really high moisture bread, but you could add ice in it.

Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, that's a great tip. I love that. One reason I picked this recipe, and you're right that it's a great bread recipe. It's made with baker's yeast, so it can be on the table within a couple of hours, which some of us love that. Quick to assemble and bake, allows you to have fresh crusty bread, very versatile. You're adding cheese or herbs, other savory additions, and we're going to get to the assembly, but there's so little time in the mixer for this recipe. Would you even call this a no-knead bread or not, because of those three minutes in the mixer?

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, I mean, you are mixing it. It's funny, I am working on a no-knead bread for my new book. And I mean, you are mixing something, but this one does require a little bit of either kneading by hand or in the mixer. I find that the no-knead breads though have a longer fermentation. This one is a very quick fermentation. I have the sourdough bread in here, sourdough boules, and that takes so long. I wanted something that was really quick. So there's not even a bulk fermentation in this recipe, which I oftentimes, even the recipes that I make with baker's yeast, there's a bulk fermentation stage and then you shape it and then you bake it. Bulk fermentation is when you ferment the dough, you mix it and you're not really shaping it, you're just letting it ferment, and then when you punch it down or you deflate it again and then you shape it into your final shape and then you bake it.

So that intermediate fermentation without shaping it, that's the bulk fermentation, and that when you're making oftentimes cinnamon rolls or it depends, like some recipes don't call for it, but it allows you to ferment it a little bit longer and develop flavor. So this one is because it's really like a 40-minute fermentation, it's not going to have that super developed flavor, but it is fast. So it's kind of the contrast to the sourdough boule, which is more elaborate time wise, it's not very difficult, but it's just takes longer and this is just, okay, I want some bread now kind of scenario. And I think it's not as intimidating for people for some reason, even though the process is very similar.

Jessie Sheehan:
First things first, with this recipe, you need some filtered water, some warm filtered water. I wondered if you can avoid a thermometer. Can the water be warm to the touch?

Aran Goyoaga:
Actually, I think for consistency reasons, we put filtered water in this recipe, but it doesn't have to be filtered water. If it was sourdough starter, you wouldn't want to filter your water. But for baker's yeast, which is baker's yeast is cultivated and harvested to be really hardy so you don't have to worry so much about chlorine. But anyway, for active dry yeast, you do want your water to be hot, not over 115 degrees, somewhere between like 100 and 110 degrees. Because it's what's going to dissolve the outer layer of the yeast that it's dead, they're dead cells, and then those are going to dissolve and then it's going to activate what's inside, which are the active cells. You'll see that in this case, I don't have any sugar, and oftentimes active dry yeast is in many recipes you'll see a pinch of sugar or something. Sugar does speed up the process of activation, but it's not necessary. But you do need to have warm water. Again, not over 115 degrees or you'll kill the yeast.

Jessie Sheehan:
Do you have a thermometer that you like to use in the kitchen, a brand that you would tell us about?

Aran Goyoaga:
I don't know the brand. It's like probably a $15 super cheap restaurant supply store. What are those called where you bend and you probe them?

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, the probe thermometer.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yes. Exactly. And I just stick it in there.

Jessie Sheehan:
With the water, we're going to whisk in the active dry yeast where you were talking about, and I have two, well, three questions. One, is there a kind of whisk that you love, a brand that you would share? Two, is there a brand of active dry yeast that you like? And three, how do you feel about instant yeast where you wouldn't need to have the warm... I mean you would need the liquid, but you wouldn't need it to be warm.

Aran Goyoaga:
Instant yeast, I love. I don't use it as much because I find that, I mean, I think now it's more available. And actually in Europe where I'm from, it's either fresh yeast or instant yeast what's most popular. Here, I find that active dry yeast is the most available in supermarkets, although I've seen a lot of instant yeast lately. They work the same. I think for instant yeast, you need a little bit less, and I want to say it would be about 80%, and I could be wrong on this one, but I can't remember exactly a number. But I would say you need less than active dry yeast because active dry yeast has dead cells, like I said, so there's some residue there.

And instant yeast just goes directly with a flour. You don't need to heat up the water, so maybe fermentation time might take a little bit longer since your water is not warm. But yes, you can. I think both of them work great. You just need a little bit less of the instant yeast. For brands, I like Red Star, honestly is what I use most of the time. Fleischmann's is the other one, right? I've used that too. Saf is the other one, S-A-F. I think that's a French. That's what we used to use actually in my last professional kitchen. And what was it?

Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a specific... Yeah, just a specific whisk that you love and a specific mixing bowl that you love? Things that if people want to do it the way Aran does it, what should they be?

Aran Goyoaga:
You need a balloon whisk. This is very interesting because I do have three whisks and they're different sizes, and one is very rigid, one is bendier, and one is really rigid and really big. For something like this, the smaller one that is a little bit rigid, so I would say it's probably eight inches, like a chef's knife size, and the wires are stiff. If it's too flexible, I feel like it's not really breaking up the yeast as much. As far as bowls, I have a set of ceramic bowls that I got from the U.K. and they have a spout and they're my favorite. I like making all my doughs and when I proof my starter, everything in these just because I like having a spout, but they're ceramic. Glass is great. I wouldn't really use metal for some reason, especially if they're not really good metal bowls. I have some metal bowls from the restaurant supply store. They're a little bit, sometimes I wonder every time I'm whisking if I'm getting some metal in my bread. But yeah, I would stick to ceramic or glass.

Jessie Sheehan:
So then you're going to proof this mixture of the yeast and the water until the yeast bubbles and then there's a thin layer of foam forms on the top, which I love, I just thought that was very descriptive, for about 10 minutes. Then you're whisking in the psyllium powder. We already talked about it earlier in our conversation, but can you remind us why we're adding the psyllium powder?

Aran Goyoaga:
Psyllium needs to be hydrated. That's its main goal in the recipe, right? In general, I like to add my psyllium to my whatever sponge I'm making, so when I say sponge, I mean either my sourdough starter, anything that's like the yeast with the water or anything that's going to have water in it. That's the stage I'm going to add it because I'm going to let it gel for five minutes, so it really does its thing and it really congeals and provides a structure for later on. You could add psyllium directly into the dry ingredients. When you do that, your dough initially is going to look like water, just like a pancake batter. Let's say you decide to add your psyllium to your dry ingredients and you mix it all together, and you're going to be a little bit scared that it's not coming together. Just let it sit for five minutes, just the dough, just like we do with the water.

Just let it sit for five minutes and you will see how it's solidifies. There's going to always be a little bit of resting time, whether you add the psyllium to the water or the dough gets mixed together without hydrating the psyllium first, just let it sit for five minutes, and this is what we're going to do. Once we add the psyllium to the yeast and water mixture, we're going to let it gel. And you'll see, it'll be kind of like a jello. It'll have that texture. Actually, I just realized there's also psyllium and flax in this one. Sometimes I use only psyllium, but I have flax in this one too, and they're both there to provide structure. What gluten does in bread is when you mix flour and water and you knead it, you're going to have these elastic strands of dough and that's what gluten does.

And then when your yeast ferments and you bake it, you're going to have gases that are released and these elastic strands are going to expand without breaking and they're going to trap the gas. And so that's where you're going to have the aeration in the crumb, so the holes in your crumb are going to come from that. So when you don't have gluten, let's say we make this without any psyllium or any flaxseed or any xanthan gum or anything like that, what's going to happen is the dough is going to ferment, but those gases, they don't have anything to get trapped in because the dough is just very, it breaks. So then the gas is going to just leave the dough and there's not going to be any layers or any aeration. So what psyllium and flaxseed do is they become a gel and they provide that structure, so they're going to allow those layers of dough to rise without breaking and trap some of that air.

Jessie Sheehan:
But is the flax adding any flavor or it's really just it's there for the purpose of giving it that structure that you just discussed?

Aran Goyoaga:
It's there for binding. It's not, I mean, it will have some flavor. Flax also has fat, so it does have that texture, so it has all those things, but the way I use it is mostly for binding.

Jessie Sheehan:
The next ingredient is just so interesting to me. So there's some apple cider vinegar in here, and I have to tell you that recently I too am working on another book and I'm going to have some no-knead bread in it. And I stumbled upon Jim Lahey's, it was a video he did with Mark Bittman for New York Times a million years ago where they were trying to figure out how to make that no-knead bread, that famous no-knead bread, super, super, super fast. Because I think the original recipe has you just, as you were saying, it ferments for 24 hours. But the way that Jim Lahey suggested that one could speed up the process was by adding vinegar. And I wondered if by any chance the vinegar is in this recipe, in your recipe, to try to speed up the fermentation.

Aran Goyoaga:
Interesting. That's not the reason why I put it in there, but now I'll have to read into it. It's just more like a citric acid replacement. And for me it's a little bit of a tenderizer, but also it was more of flavor choice because there is such quick fermentation, so you're really... I mean, we are using baker's yeast, so we're not going to get lactic acid notes because it's not a sourdough starter, but for me it was more of that a flavor profile to sort of add a little bit of sourness to the dough.

Jessie Sheehan:
As you say that, now I'm wondering, because I was watching a video that they made 15 years ago before videos were so sexy and fabulous the way they are now, and I wonder if actually he was putting the vinegar in for the reason you just said, and I misunderstood and thought it had something to do with the rise. But I wonder if it's to trick you into thinking you've had something fermented, or not trick you, but...

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, but it could be that it has to do with it does affect fermentation. I'll have to look. This is a little bit, I think more chemist kind of question, but I'm curious about that too. And I love apple cider vinegar in bread, just because I do a little bit of that sour note in there.

Jessie Sheehan:
I like to use it in pie crust for that same reason. Even if you can't really taste it once the pie is done, I love the way it smells when I'm adding it to the dough and it just...

Aran Goyoaga:
And it does tenderize a little bit too.

Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a brand of apple cider vinegar that you like particularly?

Aran Goyoaga:
I usually get Bragg's.

Jessie Sheehan:
So then you let this mixture gel and sit for five minutes, and then you grab your stand mixer bowl, you have your dough hook. This recipe be called for three different flours. We've got sorghum, we have super fine brown rice, and we have buckwheat, and then we have two starches, potato and tapioca, and salt. I think I know now, I was going to ask you a little bit about the brands which we discussed, and also about these flour types, but I think I know. They must feel, they must taste good to you in this combination.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, they're all a little bit different. Sorghum, to me, has the wheatiest taste of them all, but you can't only use one because they have, when you use a lot of sorghum, sometimes it has this fatty texture and it's hard to describe it. And I've learned about it by testing it when I've made a sourdough starter that it's only sorghum. It almost feels like the texture wants to break. There's fat in it, and it's just interesting, super fine, but it does bind well. And brown rice flour is mellow. And the reason for the apple cider vinegar too is because sorghum and brown rice flour and the starches are kind of sweet. A lot of gluten-free flours tend to be, not all of them, like not amaranth or buckwheat or teff, but the others can be a little sweet, so it's just counter resting that a little bit.

Brown rice flour is short, meaning when people make traditional shortbread, sometimes they add like wheat flour and then rice flour because it does bring that crumbliness to it. So it's kind of a combination of here you have some, and then the next one, which is buckwheat flour. If you've ever mixed buckwheat flour with water, you'll see it becomes kind of a, not quite tapioca, but it does have this slimy texture a little bit. If you think of brown rice flour and water, it's kind of short. It's not very elastic. If you think of buckwheat flour and water, it would be slimy. You kind of are mixing different flours that have different characteristics. We were talking about the all-purpose flour mix earlier.

You could totally make this bread with that. Let's say you add 105 grams of sorghum, 105, all the grams of all the flours and the starches, and replace that with the all-purpose flour mix. You could totally do that because when you look at the ingredients, it's a pretty basic combination. It's just that the buckwheat will have a different kind of more earthier flavor. And again, I would have to pull out my calculator, but I want to say it's probably like a 60/40, like 60% whole wheat flour, 40% starch. So it's really a basic recipe that you can play with. If you want it to make it less starchy, your crumb is not going to be as open, but that's okay if you know what you're expecting. And so it's I think really adaptable.

Jessie Sheehan:
So next we're going to add the psyllium gel to the stand mixer and mix on medium until the dough is smooth, only about three minutes, and you can also mix the dough by hand in a large bowl if you want. You turn your dough out onto a work surface, you shape it into a ball and you dust your proofing basket. I wondered if you had a favorite, a brand of proofing baskets.

Aran Goyoaga:
I feel like proofing baskets when you buy them, they really don't even have a brand. I don't know. I like them when they're bamboo style. My husband bought a plastic one years ago and I was like, “What are you doing with a plastic banneton?” But yeah, we have all kinds of shapes. My husband is a great baker, but he does gluten baking, so we have tons of bannetons and Dutch ovens and things. For this recipe, I would say something that's eight inches wide is ideal because it's for that amount of dough and what happens, this is another question that I get oftentimes with gluten-free braking, especially in my breads, is that people, they show me their bread and it's like, "Why isn't my bread as tall as yours?" First of all, how tall it is, it's great. It looks great when it's tall. The most important thing to determine if your bread is perfectly fermented is to look at the crumb.

So if your crumb is nicely aerated and you have nice open holes and all of that, then you're done. Even if it's looking flat like it's wider than taller, then it's good, you're doing something great. With gluten-free breads, what happens is because there's not that much elasticity, breads want to expand more sideways rather than up. So it's important that the vessel that you're using to shape it, in this case a proofing basket, is if you want it to look a little bit taller, then what you need to do is make it a little bit narrower, so proof it in something that's narrow. So I think eight inches is a good size for this dough.

Jessie Sheehan:
Aran, I think that is so unbelievably helpful that you just mentioned that because I know from my own sourdough baking, I know to look at my crumb and sometimes I'm happy with it and sometimes I'm not. But it is frustrating if you're trying to get one of those boules that pops up in this round beautiful way. I'm aware of the fact that one of my proofing baskets is a little bit tinier than the other, and the smaller one always makes a more beautiful loaf, which I kind of thought was playing a role in what my loaves ended up looking like.

But that's really helpful to hear, listeners, peeps listening. That's something to keep in mind, depending on what you want your bread to look like in the end, you have to think about even that proofing stage before you even put it into your Le Creuset or on your baking sheet. Now you put it into your basket seam side up, which makes sense because you're going to be flipping it over into your Dutch oven. And you're covering with a clean kitchen towel and you're proofing for 30 minutes or until it's doubled. I mean, that's just amazing to me that it's so quick. I love, love, love that.

Aran Goyoaga:
Another question that I get a lot is some people that want to delay the fermentation. So someone who's making this, they want to bake it first thing in the morning, but they don't want to start making it early in the morning, which doesn't really take that long. So it would be quick. But let's say you want to make it overnight. So what you could do is just shape it, put it in the basket, wrap it tightly with plastic. Because in the fridge, when you're going to have a dough in the fridge for a long time, it can dry out. So maybe a kitchen towel might just be too porous. You want something that's a little bit more sealed, plastic wrap works really well, and then let it ferment in the fridge for eight hours rather than bake in the moment.

Jessie Sheehan:
I just wanted to mention for the listeners, that is another gem that Aran just mentioned, the wrapping of the dough if it's going into the refrigerator, because I always thought when they were telling me to wrap it that it was because they were worried about the dough absorbing flavors from the fridge. And I was like, oh gosh, I don't care. I'm just going to stick it in there. But the idea that you could dry your dough out if you don't wrap it tightly is super, super helpful.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah. And then it can crack in the oven because you don't have elastic moist surface.

Jessie Sheehan:
I think I would sometimes put it into the refrigerator with the towel, but yeah, this is a time, I know not everyone likes to use plastic wrap, but something that really will seal it is a great idea.

Aran Goyoaga:
You might be using a towel and it's working great for you, but I always use plastic. And I have a little square and a rubber band and I reuse it over and over again, so it's sort of like my multiple time use little plastic.

Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. That's great. While it's proofing for the 30 minutes, we're putting our cast iron Dutch oven into our oven, preheating to 450. And just to reiterate, Aran had said, very important to make sure your oven really has time to preheat because that's another thing that I think people are curious as to why their bread isn't working. Your oven needs to be really hot.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah, so at least 15 minutes in there after it's reached temperature.

Jessie Sheehan:
What's the best way, because I know this can be scary for people. You're taking out your hot Dutch oven to put your bread inside. What's the way that you like to flip that bread over to get it into the Dutch oven?

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah. That's a good question. Because I use the combo cookers, the large ones. They have a deep side and then the lid, and it actually is the lid where you, it's almost like you are using it inversely of how you would use a normal Dutch oven. So the lid is, the shallow part is where you put the bread, and then the deeper part is going to become the lid for your bread. I actually personally, I do this every day. I just flip the basket on my hand and I put it gently on the work surface. I score it with my lame and then just with my hands, I put it directly in the Dutch oven.

If you are using Le Creuset or another Dutch oven where you are putting the bread in the deeper part where you have to maybe navigate not touching the sides, I would say put it on parchment. So get a square parchment paper over your basket, flip it over, remove the basket, and then use the sides, the edges of the parchment paper to kind of lift the bread and lower it into the Dutch oven, so you're not really going deep into it. And then you have to score it first. So maybe you have your dough on the parchment, you score it, you make your cuts, and then you lift it and you put it into the Dutch oven.

Jessie Sheehan:
That's what I do because I'm mostly baking in the Le Creuset Dutch ovens. And I also, this is so fussy and silly, but I even, I almost cut out a little piece of the parchment on each side, so it's almost like a little handle.

Aran Goyoaga:
That makes sense.

Jessie Sheehan:
And then it works really well because I know that can be scary for people. And I used to try to almost, I've had recipes where I don't even turn it out, quote, unquote, "turn it out" into the pot, which is like an impossible exercise. It slams against the side, you burn yourself, you're crying and it's like all your hard beautiful work is gone. The parchment is a great tip.

Aran Goyoaga:
Yeah. That's why these combo cookers are good because you can, like I said, you're not really, the lid is where the dough is going to rest, so you don't really have sides or edges to deal with.

Jessie Sheehan:
The last thing I wanted to mention about this recipe that I'm so struck with, so it's 45 minutes with a lid on and then you take the lid off and it's another 45 minutes. Again, my experience, the sourdough recipe I follow and then also no-knead bread. Usually it bakes maybe in 45 minutes, 15 minutes with the lid on, or sometimes 30 with a lid on, 15 without. Is the longer bake time, does this have to do with the fact that we're gluten-free baking?

Aran Goyoaga:
Yes, because gluten-free flours absorb a lot more water. So if you do a baker's percentage, so if you break down this recipe by baker's percentage, meaning flour 100%, and then all the other ingredients based on that, you'll see there's a lot more water. These gluten-free doughs are more hydrated than standard gluten doughs, and that's because the whole grain, gluten-free flours absorb a lot of water, and then we're also using psyllium to gel, so it's just like there's a lot of water in here, and you're going to need a lot more time to evaporate it. And it's important because otherwise, I know people get intimidated by it and they're like, "I'm going to burn my bread." And it does get crusty, but there's a lot of moisture, so it's going to be harder to burn your bread. It does need that time. If you're ever worried, you can check the internal temperature of bread. It should be about 205, 210 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's when it'll let you know that it's done. But yes, don't be afraid of the time. You'll see with gluten-free baking breads, you'll need the extra time.

Jessie Sheehan:
I see this in pie crust and I see this in bread when folks are making it at home and they're not used to it. I once heard Carla Hall say there's flavor in the brown. You actually want your pie crust to be dark. That's where they get flavorful and then you know your filling is done. You want your bread to be dark, and that usually means it's also going to be crusty. Don't be afraid. We actually don't want blonde bread.

Aran Goyoaga:
Exactly. I mean, there might be opportunities for blonde bread and all that, but definitely crusty is caramelization is flavor.

Jessie Sheehan:
So then this bread comes out of the oven and you cool for about an hour before slicing. I know it's so hard for people to do that because they want want to eat warm bread. Tell us why we should wait.

Aran Goyoaga:
It's really important in gluten-free bake breads in general, but especially breads to wait. Because remember you don't have that cement structure of gluten, right? Gluten is really structural and elastic, and once it bakes into place, there's a lot less water, a lot more evaporation because there's a lot more aeration. And it's usually, I mean, even with gluten breads, you want to wait a little bit to cut them, but these gluten-free breads for sure, you want to wait until they're completely cooled because if you start cutting something when it's still steamy inside, you're going to collapse. The force of cutting into the bread is going to collapse the crumb onto itself, so you're like putting pressure onto something that's still very moist and gummy. The layers are going to get compact and dense, so you need to let that set and that takes a little bit, I would say, depending on the recipe, but I would say an hour.

Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Aran, and I just wanted to say that you are my cherry pie.

Aran Goyoaga:
Thank you, Jessie.

Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrá Premium European-Style Butter for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform and tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.