Grapes???? GF Bread that really rose!

Last week I was having a tough time baking bread... same recipe, kept overproofing, and I'd only get a slice or so from the loaves.

After the 3rd failure, ( I had been modifying a few things as I went), was using Expandex and montina flour to make things work better, along with a cold oven to start (really doesn't make sense to do if your bread rises so fast). My bread was rising in 30 min. or less - I couldn't get distracted... I finally realized I had only ever made this bread as a sourdough type and had never made it with yeast.

So I gave up and went with another recipe, my other go to gluten free bread recipe that I'm pretty happy with - but since I've never had a problem with it, I thought I'd try the grapes (just squeezed out 2 green grapes and proofed the yeast with that), oh and why not whip the egg whites? so now I'm not sure if it was the egg whites or the grapes that produced this stupendous rise (common consensus is the grapes)... the original recipe said to use 2 8x4 or a bigger 10" pan, but my dough was too small so I used a 9x5 pan, but now...

This was not over-proofing - the dough actually rose that high in the oven - it went in the oven just barely at the top of the pan, and due to the aforementioned failures that week, I had preheated the oven - ok, one bubble at the top in the back, but it couldn't support the height - of course... But it was the best bread so far - just weird size of slices...

BTW, you should have heard me laughing when I saw this and HAD to take the picture, all week long things puffed up extraordinarily when I made them, even pancakes...

A yeasty experiment

What a fun experiment I had today! I came up with the idea after visiting my sister and fully realized what a challenge living without wheat and sugar (not to mention a host of other things) could be.

I was rewriting a gluten free bread recipe (ooh, I will be selling these recipes) and saw 'combine the yeast with the warm water and set aside'. Huh, really? what's that going to do? Yeast needs to feed on some sort of sugar!!! So, I did some researching and found that potentially any natural sugar will feed yeast.


Well then, I was wondering what would best replace white sugar in an otherwise sugar free bread recipe.


I compared 7 different samples (but I am going to have an update with some other samples - my lucky family gets to smell lots of yeast): just yeast, yeast and white sugar, yeast and a smushed grape, yeast and Stevia, yeast and maple syrup, yeast and agave and yeast and honey.

I didn't want to do the full 2 1/4 tsp yeast and 1 tsp sugar that I would use for a regular loaf of bread, so I used 1 tsp (or 5 ml) of yeast and 2/5 tsp (2 ml) of the sugar and 1/4 cup of water (60 ml).

I warm my water first in the microwave. About 30 seconds per cup of water, so I tried 1 minute for a little more than 2 cups and then let it cool to 109.6F.




Here's what I started with:

Just yeast:	Yeast and white sugar:
Yeast and grape:	Yeast and Stevia:
Yeast and agave:	Yeast and raw/natural honey:
Yeast and maple syrup:

Since I always mix my sugar and my yeast before adding the water (well, when I remember...), I mixed all of my samples, this got a bit gooey. But in order of appearance we have maple syrup at the very top, then from left to right going down, plain yeast, agave, honey, and in the closest row, grape, Stevia, white sugar.



Then I took pictures at approximately every 5 minutes...

Time 0min. - just stirred:	Time 6min. - all proofing nicely except the plain yeast and, huh, the Stevia:
Time 11min. - still no Stevia action, and sugar is as high as it's going to get:	Time 18min.:
Time 24min.:	Time 29min.:
Time 36min.:	Time 41min.:
Time 48min.:	Time 54min. - both agave and honey overproof and collapse:
Time 59min. - maple syrup joins the gang:	Time 64min. - sugar and grape are still stable:
Time 70min. - ooh, sugar is starting to go...:	Time 75min. - grape wins!:

Conclusion: my first choice for a good replacement for white sugar in a bread recipe would be a smushed grape - ok, I'd probably strain it through cheesecloth or just squeeze out the juice, next would be maple syrup, then agave or honey. No way would I recommend Stevia.