Gluten free batter-breads

[atash]

This is a continuation of another thread, branched off because it's not necessarily about Legumes.

Southern Indians make pancake-like batter-breads known as "Dosas" (I have usually heard "dosa" pronounced "dosha") out of a fermented batter made from rice and lentils (actually, "Urad daal"). It is not as fluffy as bread but it has somewhat of a spongy network of air pockets like bread does. Something other than gluten, or for that matter, egg (the batter contains no eggs) holds that spongy network together. Probably because they are thin, it doesn't have to be as strong as a gluten network (gluten is a fairly tough protein).

Because it uses a combination of a cereal (high in the sulfur-containing amino acids, low in lysine) and a legume (high in lysine, low in the sulfur-containing amino acids), dosas are relatively protein-balanced, which is important in southern India where traditionally little (or no) meat was eaten, in part due to Hindu tradition and in part due to lack of refrigeration.

Fluffier and definitely quite spongy is another batter-bread, made in Ethiopia from teff flour, namely Injera.

Injera is pretty good. Soaks up sauces and makes a nice wrap around savory foods.

Teff like rice contains no gluten, and yet somehow it makes a bread-like spongy network. Again, it helps that being a relatively thin pancake-like bread, the network doesn't have to be all that strong. The high water content probably helps too.

East Africans make yeast-leavened rice-flour pancakes, something they probably picked up from Indian minorities living in the area. There is a recipe for them on the internet, copied from a book I have a copy of, but there is something very, very, very wrong with the recipe. A detail or a step is missing. For one thing, the recipe simply specified "rice flour", which does not tell me WHICH rice flour it is. They don't all have the same cooking properties!

Here is a copy of the recipe:

www.xs4all.nl/~westher/recepten/RICE%20PANCAKES.htm

I tried guessing, but whether for lack of the right guess, or a missing step somewhere, the recipe flopped horribly. The yeast bubbles would not stay in the batter, but simply floated out to the top and popped. There was nothing to bind the batter enough to hold them in.

Now there are some smart people here so help me out: what is the key to making yeasted batter breads out of non-wheat flours? Does the batter need to sit longer? What kind of rice flour should I use?

(adding eggs as a binder is cheating)

There's a practical purpose behind this.

[mnjrutherford]

JUST a guess here, but I would have to say it is probably the fermentation process itself that causes the "sponginess". If so, then the trick would be to make the item when the fermentation is going on at it's strongest point.

As for Injera, I've only seen it made once and it was made with soda water. My understanding was that the soda water was responsible for the texture. That sort of supports my notion of the fermentation bubbles.

Using the correct heat would also factor in.

I got some mochiko flour at the store yesterday. In a few days I'll give a shot to adding sweet rice flour to my sourdough bread and giving it loads of rise time. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for brown rice flours...

[atash]

It might very well be the fermentation process. When Ethiopians in the USA make Injera using soda water (or self-rising wheat flour), they cut the teff with some wheat flour, giving it some gluten. Otherwise, traditionally, it's a sourdough batter to which they later add some bicarbonate of soda. Same way that miners in the Old West used to make sourdough flapjacks.

(personally, though, I like the teff, preferably the brown kind)

Dosas are made with a fermented batter. In India it doesn't take too long because the ambient temperature and humidity are high.

How about this: make a rice-flour batter, let it sit for a while, then add yeast later and let it rise? I might try this today. It's possible that in Kenya where the recipe is from, the ambient temperature makes the process go a lot faster than it does in Seattle.

Once I get a rice-flour batter to work, I'll try adding other types of flour--a leguminous flour for example--to balance the protein. The idea is to develop a recipe for an easy-to-make, low-cost batter-bread that could be wrapped around whatever you happen to have out in the veggie patch. Something vaguely similar to its African and Indian counterparts, made with cheap, readily-obtainable flours.

In general, southern Indians are surprisingly well-fed and long-lived compared to other peoples of the world living at the same or on some cases higher standards of living. It's because their diet is fairly healthy and low-cost.

[mnjrutherford]

True on the Southern Indians, yet from what I've heard, the healthiest folks are a small group of Jews who survived internment in the WWII death camps. The youngest is 90, the oldest I THINK (don't quote me) is 110? Their diet isn't perfect, but researches believe that having lived on the brink of starvation and in absolute terror for such an extended period of time created some sort of situation where their brains and bodies quite simply are not giving in to the "demands" of age. As though the period of suffering caused them to lose the ability to slow down. An interesting hypothesis.

Anyway, this deal with the fermented flat breads is going to get more interesting I think. It came to me after reading this that one of my fav Vietnamese meals is banh xeo. A "pancake" made from soaked yellow split peas or lentils that are put through the blender until smooth. Then it's "baked" into a thin "cake", stuffed with bean sprouts and perhaps a tad of grilled pork, beef, or chicken and a side of saladish type garnishes like one receives with a bowl of pho. Asian cuisine has loads of similar sorts of "pancakes" and none are made with wheat as far as I know.

::laughing:: maybe we should institute a convention of non wheat flat breads from around the world... ;o)

[spacecase0]

I have made Injera, it only uses teff and water, salt is added for flavor
use one cup of teff flower
1 1/2 cup water,
mix and cover for 24 to 48 hours at 75 to 80 F
I prefer it at 24 hours where it is sweeter,
it gets more bitter at 48 hours but stores longer...

pour off the liquid (save the liquid for something else as it is very high in amino acids)

add 1/2 tsp of salt to the batter,
cook on a medium hot skillet for 2 to 3 min.

only cook it on one side
and the cook time seems way to long for something that flat

my guess is that the sponginess is made by the fermenting and the high heat that it is cooked with

if you try frying up the liquid on the top, it turns into a sticky, bitter, gummy kind of thing, it is kind of like eating a bugger, but tastes better. I will use it in a soup next time


as to the rice flower, when you see it in the Indian stores, it never says what kind it is.
I have some and do cook with it, but I am unsure how to make it myself

[atash]

Thanks, Spacecase. One of these days I should watch a demo of making Injera.

I know that local Ethiopians use Canadian pizza cookers to griddle their Injeras on. Just the right size and shape!