Now I am treading on slippery ice. I don’t want to get into a fight with anyone, but on the other hand, there are so many scammers who sell complete nonsense and, worse, turn it into an (e-)book and try to sell it to you for a lot of money. I am really sick of that, so I am going to unmask those who really hit it off.

You may be thinking: isn’t it a bit strange for a writer to judge other writers? No, because I am not here to make friends or create a network of like-minded bakers. I’m on a different mission. I want to raise the standard of all gluten-free bakers, put an end to the spread of nonsense, and ensure that everyone who needs to eat gluten-free can bake the best and healthiest bread at home and no longer has to rely on starchy products from the supermarket or from cookbooks.
As long as authors and influencers do not take their job seriously, I will seize the opportunity to help others. I will do this with my book by explaining how it should be done, but in the meantime, I will also take action against baloney, especially when they are spread by slick influencers who call themselves experts and try to sell you their flawed information. And when someone like Aran Goyoaga, who has such a huge reach, makes such big mistakes, I feel it is my duty to correct her. If that makes me seem less likeable, so be it. I know what the greater good is.

Here we go:

  • Sourdough with Rebecca: Big avoid. She creates beautiful images and….nothing else. The information in her e-book is copied from other writers and there is nothing that will bring you further in your baking skills. It’s an empty shell of nothingness, just an inch away from fraud. Don’t fall for it!
  • The Loopy Whisk, a.k.a. Kat: No one on the internet is as hysterically enthusiastic about their own recipes as she is. “Amazing! Gorgeous! It tastes like wheat-based bread!”, “It’s perfect!”. Well, its not and the advice she gives is way off. “Never use psyllium powder!”, “If you do, use roughly 15% less!”, “Make a psyllium gel!”. Apparently she feels no responsibility to do some proper research and provide her fanbase with accurate information. She misleads her 2 million followers on Instagram with pure lies. All that counts is clicks. Keep screaming for attention Kat.
  • What The Fork Foodblog a.k.a Sharon: Her 4-ingredient gf sourdough bread recipe is just preposterous. She considers the flour mix as 1 ingredient, but it alone consists of 6 ingredients. So it suddenly becomes an 8 ingredient bread. Curiously, still one ingredient is missing: psyllium. How Sharon, how? On top of that, the flour mix consists mainly of starch, white rice and xanthan gum and she uses it not only for the dough, but also in the starter… It gets worse. She prescribes to use a lot of ‘un-fed’ levain. No wonder people complain their bread gets gummy. But gumminess in her bread is completely normal according to Sharon. Stay very far away from this charlatan.
  • Bakerita, a.k.a. Rachel: Activate 150 grams of starter with 80 gram of flour? Use 330 gram of levain on 305 gram of flour mix? Use 20g of whole psyllium husk or 16g of powder? Rachel exhibits a total lack of knowledge. Please refrain from this recipe.
  • Creative in My Kitchen a.k.a. Claudia: whole psyllium husk, psyllium gel and bulk fermentation is what she preaches. We have seen husk and gel mistakes before, but bulk fermentation, seriously? “The foundation of making sourdough bread is the starter, a fermented mixture of flour and water that captures wild yeast and beneficial bacteria from the environment”. Well, Claudia, this is an unsubstantiated claim giving people the idea that yeasts and bacteria fly into the starter. In fact it’s mainly the flour where all microbes come from . Also, iodine in salt at normal proportions does not inhibit fermentation!

Other examples of jaw-dropping bad gf sourdough bread recipes (and why do all those website look the same?):

  • Farmhouse on Boone
  • Natasha’s Home
  • Gluten Free On A Shoestring
  • Let Them Eat Gluten Free Cake
  • Gf Jules
  • Mama Knows Glutenfree
  • Homestead and Chill

The list goes on and on. Unfortunately I have not found any website with 100% accurate information. That’s how bad things are in the gluten-free world. The only webpage that has some valuable information is this recipe by George Eats, but she makes the same mistakes with the psyllium variety, creating a psyllium gel, making a preferment, referring to gluten techniques, closing seams (a gf dough shouldn’t even have a seam) and she uses too much functional flours (starch and rice).

 

Aran Goyoga’s The Art of Gluten-free Bread

I was looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time: Aran Goyoaga’s new book, The Art of Gluten-free Bread. Her first book from 2019 introduced me to gluten-free sourdough bread, which was a real eye-opener. It was the first bread I thought was really edible. It helped me getting enthusiastic about gluten-free bread, so a big thank you to Aran. Other, sweet recipes in that book as well as in its successor, Bakes Simple, are also excellent, so she quickly became a reference for me.

Lately, I’ve been seeing books about gluten-free bread popping up everywhere, and with Aran at the forefront, I expected her new book to be a strong competitor. Or so I thought.

Unfortunately, her book is a big disappointment when it comes to sourdough. She tries to create depth, but to be honest, it is disappointingly superficial and contains a whole range of disturbing errors. Aran has come to a standstill: the information is not substantially different from that in her previous books, and in the year 2025, that information is really outdated. Moreover, her knowledge of the fermentation process is flimsy, at best. No change in insights after five years of writing books indicates saturation. Commerce over progress. Style over substance.

She still promotes her pet subject, making psyllium gel. As a result, probably half of the gluten-free world will continue to make gels, which is a disgrace. The same applies to flaxseed, which she thinks is indispensable, because “it provides additional elasticity to the dough without making it gummy”. So she uses it in every loaf of bread. In real life flaxseed has nowhere near the qualities of a psyllium and it has a much higher density, both boosting a negative impact on the crumb structure and volume.

As in her previous books, hydration levels are very low and she has not included a recipe for bread without added starch, except for the Flourless Fermented Buckwheat And Red Lentil Bread. But that bread doesn’t contain psyllium or levain either, because ‘the batter is fermented for 2 days, so it does not require an established sourdough starter’. You might wonder why she doesn’t stop using sourdough culture altogether.

Her recipe for miso baguettes contains only starch, so it makes sense to mask the unpleasant taste and texture with miso, sugar and sesame seeds. Confusingly, in the chapter on flour types, she states: ‘Use too much starch and your bread will become gummy and inedible’.

Aran introduces a new term: elastic flours. Wholemeal flours are said to provide elasticity, implying that this has an effect on the rising power or volume of the bread, but that is complete nonsense. Elasticity is a term that has no place in gluten-free flours. It is a fabrication to spice up her distinction between starchy and whole grain flours. Which is inaccurate anyway.

Where Aran really misses the mark is that she links the fermentation speed of a starter to hydration and flour type. It’s bizarre to see her claim that a sorghum starter ferments less quickly than a brown rice/teff starter. She doesn’t mention temperature at all, which is a factor that determines 99% of how fast fermentation goes. It is a curious and serious mistake, I’m beginning to wonder who read and edited this book.

Fortunately, the sourdough percentage of the levain has changed. In her previous books, she allowed the starter to peak with half the weight of flour which results in a suboptimal levain. Now it’s equal parts, but strangely enough, not with the Country White. Whether this is a mistake or intentional, I don’t know, but it all feels very messy. Maintaining a 1:1 ratio is risky anyway, as weighing errors can easily occur. Always use  more flour than sourdough culture, then you’re safe. It’s a very simple rule, but it’s not mentioned anywhere in the book. Quite shocking if you ask me.

Behaviour of starters and different fermentation methods are not covered. Fermentation is ready when, well, it’s ready. She simply does not explain how you can judge whether the dough is done fermenting, which completely undermines the concept of creating a sourdough bread. Instead she wants you to put in lots of levain and chill the dough immediately. Probably in order to avoid talking about fermentation schedules.

The amounts of levain in the dough she is using are really mind blowing. 90% in the Teff Oat Rolls, 126% in the Buckwheat Baguettes and no less than 142% in the Whole Grain Teff Sourdough Boule. Disturbing quantities, unprecedented. In her previous books she used ‘only’ 104%. Bakers know that around 20% is what you should use. Putting in more than 100% means you don’t want your bread to ferment. Think about it. So why Aran keeps on increasing levain levels is a mystery to me. In the Country White recipe you even get a double whammy: she wants you to under-feed your levain and under-feed your dough. Are you already gasping for air?

Unfortunately, I’m not done yet. Aran calls the Whole Grain Teff Boule a long fermented bread, but then says that the dough is ready to bake after 1.5 hours of fermentation at room temperature. The latter is correct, because there is so much levain in it that the dough is ready to bake almost immediately after mixing. This dough is impossible to ferment for a long time, because it will over-ferment very quickly. Dough development requires time and heat. Not adding a Matterhorn of levain and immediately putting it in the refrigerator, which is the other option she promotes. This has nothing to do with sourdough bread, let alone a long-fermented bread. With the Country White, she goes even further: 148% levain and letting the dough ferment for up to 4 hours at room temperature. And now let’s hope that no one trying to make the bread has a warm house at that moment…

In short, the chapters on sourdough bread are full of errors and inconsistencies, and are seriously outdated. I’ve come to the conclusion that Goyoaga always has and is still presenting kindergarten versions of sourdough bread: a simplified approach to satisfy the least demanding home bakers, but also one that ensures that any slight deviation from the recipe leads to catastrophe. Anyone who really wants to understand what a sourdough culture does to your bread, what proportions it should have and what effects it has at different temperatures, is treated like a small child who should not be given too much information. She should apologize for the mountain of misinformation about sourdough bread in all her books, which is spread out all over the internet and will continue to mislead people for years to come.

Goyoaga is either displaying a knowledge gap or she’s making a conscious choice so that she can provide just a little more information in her next book and thus justifying its existence. I guess you understand that Aran has fallen from her pedestal. But even more distressing is having to say that those chapters should never have been published.