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Gloriously gluten-free sourdough
Martin Taylor is a nutritional therapist, who runs gluten-free sourdough baking workshops from his home in Gloucestershire.
If you’d asked me as a teenager to describe the bread that first came to mind, I probably would have mumbled something about a supermarket sliced-white loaf. That’s what we would have most days, spread with Flora margarine and marmalade for breakfast after our cereal, then as a round of pale cheese and pickled onion sandwiches in my school packed lunch. Whatever that stuff was, it used to stick to the roof of my mouth and I would have to prise it off with my tongue somehow.
Bread for me these days is a gluten-free (g-free) sourdough loaf. It has a dark crust, nutty flavours of teff (a highly-nutritious ancient grain, native to Ethiopia and Eritrea) complementing the lighter notes of quinoa and buckwheat, and a slightly sour undertone.
My path to g-free Real Bread
I started making sourdough bread around 20 years ago, after a baking workshop with Tom Herbert at Hobbs House Bakery in Nailsworth, south Gloucestershire. We were given some starter to take home, which I have nurtured ever since, mostly to bake for myself but occasionally for friends and family.
A few years before this, uveitis (an auto-immune condition affecting the eyes) gave me the first hint that all was not well but, after a few years on immune suppressants, it went away. Then a persistent cough was diagnosed as Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (scarring in the lungs), which is altogether more serious. To cut a long story short, I took up yoga, then trained as a yoga teacher and met a therapist who advised me, among other things, to eliminate dairy and gluten from my diet. This was very upsetting but I did so and am happy to report I’m now in good health and have since qualified as a nutritional therapist.
The problem with gluten
Gluten is the name for a group of proteins found in wheat, rye, and barley, responsible for the elastic and stretchy texture of dough. Some people’s bodies find gluten difficult to deal with. Humans have been eating bread for maybe 14,000 years, which is not very long in evolutionary terms, and we are not well adapted to processing it.
Fermentation can help by partially ‘pre-digesting’ some of the gluten, making it easier for our systems to break down. Some people, however, have conditions that mean (even after long sourdough fermentation) gluten can cause damage to their intestinal villi, which can result in malabsorption and leakage through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream. This issue can manifest in many ways, including diarrhoea, bloating, headaches and brain fog. Intolerance to gluten has also been linked to autoimmune conditions, including arthritis. In the extreme, people with coeliac disease are severely affected by even a small amount of gluten, whether or not it has been fermented.
Beyond auto-immune conditions, allergy and diagnosed intolerance to gluten, many people notice a sensitivity that I do not think would have presented itself in earlier times. I believe that many such cases might be attributable to the very short fermentation times of mass-produced dough products, plus the highly-refined gluten that is added to many other ultra processed foods (UPF).*
Building blocks
There’s no denying that making a loaf of Real Bread without gluten is challenging. The strength and elastic properties of gluten’s long protein chains create a matrix that is ideal for trapping fermentation gases and giving that spring of a good loaf. Cakes, biscuits and so on that need to be crumbly, fine, but bread? Needs must, so I transitioned my starter from spelt to a rice and buckwheat blend and…made lots of terrible, gluten-free bread. It was still tasty but flat, dense at the bottom and only really fit for toasting.
The first challenge for the g-free bread maker is finding suitable flour to use. There is a wide variety of naturally gluten-free flours, milled from grains, tubers, seeds and nuts. Each has different properties in terms of flavour, protein content and water absorption. Protein content is important for structure; a flour or blend that is low in protein will make for loaves that are dense at the bottom. For example, a mix of rice and buckwheat would be fine for a flatbread or baps, but not a well-risen loaf. After much experimentation I have settled on a mix of buckwheat, quinoa, millet, lentils and teff. This gives a flavour that I like and the overall protein content is around 11%, which is similar to a wholemeal wheat bread flour.
As an extra building block for my g-free sourdough bread, I use psyllium husk as a binder. Its long, carbohydrate chains (soluble fibre) are a partial substitute for gluten’s protein chains. It does the job (just), though with less strength and elasticity. Gums, such as xanthan, do more or less the same thing but I prefer to keep it Real.
How I roll
I still use the familiar method of mixing, proving, shaping, proving again, then baking. It’s not necessary to knead gluten-free doughs, but two proving stages allow time for starches to become fully hydrated. The long, slow, lactic acid bacterial sourdough fermentation also helps to develop flavour and aroma. Studies suggest that the acid conditions might promote activity of phytase, an enzyme that can reduce levels of phytic acid – an ‘anti-nutrient’ found in high levels in the outer layers of grains and seeds (therefore whole grains and wholemeal flours) that bind with certain minerals, meaning the body cannot make use of them.
What originally seemed very challenging now feels quite routine, and I’ve found that other types of bread such as muffins and bagels are really quite possible without gluten. As with all artisan bread making, it seems the trick is to keep trying.
*We also question whether 20th and 21st century wheat hybridisation in pursuit of short stalks, high levels of strong gluten etc. inadvertently also cause mutations that result in gluten that more people have difficulty dealing with. [ed]
Originally published in True Loaf magazine issue 63, July 2025.
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Published Wednesday 10 September 2025
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