Gluten-Free MSAK Style

It’s about time.

Since we opened our doors customers have been asking us to create gluten free items and we resisted. Of course we wanted to provide our customers with what they wanted, but held off for several very important reasons.

• First: There was an already existing gluten free bakery, Figg’s Ordinary, directly behind us and we had no desire to create competition

• Second: Most gluten free items are full of scary ingredients. Sure they don’t have gluten, but they are jam packed with things that we humans have no business consuming. We are not into fake food and, unfortunately, many gluten free products are simply fake foods.

• Third: The grains commonly used in gluten free baking are loaded with antinutrients such as phytates and lectins that block the absorption of important minerals and can wreak havoc on our health.

• Fourth: Many of the grains used in gluten free baking are loaded with oxalates 

But, things have changed. 

An Opportunity Emerged - right behind us

The gluten free bakery behind us moved a few weeks ago. Its departure simultaneously created a need for gluten free products in the community and addressed the first thing holding us back from making them ourselves. Now was the time. I figured if we could address the other three things holding us back we would finally be in a place to offer gluten free options at the MSAK. So, I sat down and I created a list of criteria every recipe we built would have to meet for us to feel satisfied we were actually nourishing our customers with the food created from them.

This is the list of criteria I came up with:

1. No scary ingredients. We would only use simple, natural, nourishing ingredients

2. ALL gluten free baked goods would be put through the same wild, long fermented, sourdough process as our wheat based baked goods. The sourdough process helps to mitigate the issues related to many of the harmful components of all grains - regardless if they contain gluten or not.

3. The gluten free “flours” we use must contain a minimal amount of oxalates.

Oxalate Levels in Gluten Free Flours

Unfortunately, many gluten free flours contain an extraordinarily high level of oxalates like almond flour and buckwheat flour which contains 394 mg and 168 mg of oxalate respectively per half cup serving. We will never use these or any other high oxalate flours. Also, swapping “starches” for “flours” drastically reduces the oxalate content. For example, potato flour contains 88 mg per half cup while potato starch contains a mere 2.8 mg for the same amount. We are limiting the grains we use to 25 mg of oxalates per half cup. Some of the gluten free flours on our approved list include (with corresponding mg of oxalate per half cup serving in parentheses):

Water chestnut flour (3.6), black-eyed pea flour (3.8), coconut flour (4.4), potato starch (5.4) pumpkin seed flour (5.5), flaxseed meal (6.6), cornstarch (8.3), green pea flour (8.3), garbanzo bean flour (8.6), wild rice flour (10.3), sweet rice flour (10.4), lupin flour (12.2), fava bean flour (16.6), yellow pea flour (16.8), tapioca flour (19), millet flour (20.2), sorghum flour (20.3), mung bean flour (20.7), chestnut flour (21.5), cornmeal flour (21.6-26.6), white rice flour (22.5), brown rice flour (23) 

Will our products be 1000% Gluten Free?

No. Since we produce items with wheat and other gluten containing flours we can never be 1000% “gluten free” because gluten is in the air.

However, we will take steps to mitigate any cross contamination such as cleaning equipment and surfaces before creating gluten free items and maintaining a separate gluten free sourdough mother that we started and maintained with gluten free flour. In fact, a few weeks ago we started our own and within days it was smelling great and bubbling away! Last Friday we tested our new mother on the wild, long fermented, low oxalate, gluten free sourdough pizza dough recipe we are developing and it came out great!

What you can expect…

We are in the final stages of tweaking our gluten free sourdough pizza dough formula and should have it available as an option for pizza Fridays in the next few weeks at the Modern Stone Age Kitchen. We will also have it available par cooked and frozen as an option for customers to take home, top with whatever they like, and cook themselves.

Currently, we are in the process of developing a gluten free sourdough loaf of bread that meets all of our criteria and will announce when that is available.

Let us know what other gluten free items you would like to see in the future as we build out our wild, long fermented, low oxalate sourdough program! 

Bill and Christina with Figg's Ordinary owner, Ingrid Hansen outside of the soon-to-be Modern Stone Age Market

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