Mr. Hedayatpour, a.k.a Husband, You have NOT put on 10 pounds. Maybe 10 pounds in muscle!!! But Chef Wattacetti is backing up your sourdough theory as long as it’s heavily fermented. And he also suggests that perhaps some of that Euro-style heavy wheat bread would be a good alternative if your sandwich requirements aren’t being met.

I’m just curious – if I poke you in the belly tonight are you going to let out a Pilsbury dough boy “oooo oooo”? xoxo

I think you’ll probably want to buy him a new loaf of acme bread because he’ll have a whole whack of other problems if he attempts to eat something that’s been incubating in the bin.

But it’s also not just straight-out sourdough; it’s a sourdough that’s either over-fermented during proofing or that’s been given a super-slow proofing period (e.g. the refrigerator for several days). I don’t know what the acme is like so you’ll have to check for yourselves.

Unfortunately I don’t have a good chestnut “bread” recipe; that one I made years ago was pretty flat and reminiscent of a patio brick. I never went back to experimenting with chestnut because I stopped baking shortly afterwards and because the flour was really too expensive.

Angela – I feel for your friend. That must be very difficult to be both celiac and soy and dairy free. Perhaps not so hard when it comes to just daily meals, but I would imagine baked goods are difficult. I’m curious if you have any dessert recipes that you like that fit your friend’s health needs? I find the more events I do these days, the more people I meet who have genuine health concerns and I’m always searching for great go-to ideas….

I did find the Chestnut flour and I followed the directions on the back for what they called in French a: ‘Gateaux Chataigne’ (my spelling is probably off) and it was TERRIBLE! My guests couldn’t even eat a bite of it!!! I knew it was going to be weird because it did not call for leavening or chiminique but I thought perhaps it might rise on it’s own. It didn’t. It was sort of like a dense chewy chestnut cake with toasted pine nuts but the texture and the flavor was not what I was expecting. Oh well, I’m going to give it another go but I think I’m going to make more of a genoise cake of sorts and see how it reacts.

Unless you’ve got some recipes???

The premise of the paleo diet is that you can eat whatever you want that your caveman ancestors would have been able to find, so that means any foodstuff that was readily available before the invention of agriculture. You can’t have Bragg’s under paleo.

If you want soy sauce, there are some Japanese ones which are made with soy, salt and koji (no wheat), but they’re considerably more expensive even taking into account the transport premium.

Chestnut flour can be found at Whole Foods and other specialty retailers though if you wanted to be really bada$$ you can grind your own chestnuts. I presume it would act similarly to almond flour in pastry but I’m not that good with sweets. I have made one very dense unleavened chestnut loaf, which I recall was slightly sweet and nutty. I was eating it in very thin slices because of the cost.

And yes, an overdeveloped sourdough bread has less gluten and less rise because the acid from the lactobacilli can/will break down protein. The overdeveloped loaves are definitely flat (I’ve baked several failures) and you may not enjoy the taste.

In a similar vein, there is some experimentation with very slow-rise sourdough which is said to develop less gluten but still provide rise but I haven’t really looked into it.

I will say that even though this cake is gluten-free (and really delicious) it is NOT carb free and even small amounts make me really sleepy. However, I feel a little less guilty without the wheat.

I have trashed the soy sauce for now and replaced it with Bragg liquid Amino acids. I know this is an entirely different entity but they both have a certain similar salinity and fermented flavor. In fact I really like it salad dressings and in sauces, so I feel I discovered a new secret ingredient.

Chestnut flour?!?!?! Where does one get that?!?! Please don’t tell me I have to make it from chestnuts 😉 and how does it act in pastries? Similar to almond flour?

Love pupusas and tacos! We’ve been overdoing on the tacos I’ll admit. I even toast them with butter in the morning when I’m pulling my hair out for bread. I will say that the GF bread I’ve tried is just terrible and it doesn’t make me feel good. And the ingredient lists look worse than the regular bread.

Ok one questions for you science people out there: I recently read that Sourdough bread has less gluten because the yeast breaks it down. Is there any truth in this?

Your friend the human Guinea Pig,

Amy

Then again I also come from a culture where wheat and peanut gluten is actively transformed into certain types of side-dishes as an alternate protein for those who decide to become wholly vegetarian.

This is going to be interesting watching you do this because wheat products are obviously everywhere and it impacts a lot of underlying techniques. Did you look at your soy sauce?

I do see a lot of buckwheat, quinoa and amaranth in your near-term future. And muscovado sugar and agave if you really do want to minimize the refined sugar. On the rice side, you can look to germinated brown rice to improve its nutritional content (GABA rice), plus all the other colors as well (the pink Bhutanese stuff is pretty good).

I do have a potential suggestion to address your sandwich issue: the organic corn pupusa. And there’s always chestnut flour to make what would become some incredibly expensive flatbreads.