Erin McKenna + Gluten-Free/Vegan Baking Science
So, without further ado, here is my little chat with Erin! What exactly clicked in your mind when you realized that you wanted to own your own bakery? Did you know right away the particular concept that you wanted your bakery to be? Did that concept change as you developed the bakery?
So there you have it folks! Erin McKenna. But upon conceptualizing this post, I wanted to get a little more scientific. Regardless of your opinion of or need for gluten-free, soy-free, and vegan baking, the technique involved is obviously intense. Do you want to know a little more about how to approach this mysterious realm? Check it out! Or you can skip ahead to the recipes. That works too.The most important challenge to overcome in breads is mimicking the gluten from the wheat flour that you’ll be missing with gluten-free baking. Gluten is a protein matrix that creates the structure of breads. It traps air and also allows for elasticity. Often a mixture of approaches is used to achieve this. A thickener combination is one such approach. Starch is the magical little part of flour that is responsible for thickening your gravies. And gums like xanthan gum are used in plenty of food products to thicken things like smoothies. Together, they can increase the viscosity of the batter just enough so that the air has a harder time escaping during baking. It also prevents any of the other ingredients from settling to the bottom of the dough. A second approach is to add a flour from a source other than wheat. Such flours add proteins that can mimic some of the functions of gluten. The proteins will help to trap air in the bread dough and set up a structure similar to normal bread dough. Together, the thickening strategy and the protein from alternative flours will get you pretty darn close to wheat-based breads. The protein will act as the middle-man between the ingredients and the air bubbles and keep them grounded in the thick dough. And voila! Gluten-free bread.
As for the vegan component, that is really more of an issue in confectionery-type products like cookies and cakes. Cakes rely on eggs to create the airy structure and prevent them from falling. Gluten is more minimal in most cakes, so adding other proteins here is key. Alternative flours like sorghum or oat flour can create a loose structure similar to the albumins in egg whites. The gelatinization of the starch from these flours or additional starch ingredients create that soft crumb we are all familiar with, so optimization of the starch gelatinization is extremely important. Using sweeteners other than sucrose, or table sugar, can actually make it easier for this process to occur. Decreasing the amount of water in the batter can also help with ensuring that the cake does not collapse because increasing the ratio of chemical leavening power to the protein will optimize the structure formation and keep the cake light and fluffy. In addition, adding an acid like apple cider vinegar will increase the effectiveness of the leavening agents like baking soda by reducing the pH and creating more carbon dioxide.Cookies rely a lot on the butter and eggs for their textbook structure. Beating sugar into butter creates holes that cause the dough to become light and fluffy by pushing air into it. Vegetable shortening can be used to mimic this, but some prefer the use of healthier fats like oils. These can work, but the natural emulsifiers in butter and eggs will not be present to help bind the dough together. The fat and water ingredients will not be especially comfortable with each other. The natural emulsifier in eggs, lecithin, can be extracted from soy and added to these doughs, but Erin has created the extra challenge for herself of not using soy ingredients. Often a gum can be added to help with this problem by thickening the dough and getting in between and all around the fat and water-based ingredients preventing them from separating. A replacement for eggs themselves has been tackled a bunch of different ways. The most successful approach seems to be using an ingredient such as arrowroot or flaxseed to create a similar texture to eggs. Finally, preventing spread of your cookies is very important! Addition of starches and alternative flours will bind the water and create a framework for the cookie’s shape and structure.Here are two wonderful recipes from Erin McKenna’s brand new cookbook, Bread & Butter. You can purchase Bread & Butter and all of her cookbooks from Amazon or your favorite retailer. There are plenty of inventive recipes and ideas for your foray into gluten-free, vegan baking. Click on the recipe images to get a closer view!
Reprinted with permission from Bread & Butter by Erin McKenna. Photographs by Davide Luciano and Clarke Tolton. Cherry Bombe cover from Cherry Bombe. Featured photo from BabyCakes Covers the Classics, Tara Donne photographer.