Single-Ingredient Sourdough

If you want a hands-on beginner's course in lactofermented flours, I personally suggest you start with garbanzo bean flour. Known by many other names, including gram and chickpea, it's the ingredient that makes The-Gluten-Free-All-Purpose-Flour-Mix-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named taste so terrible.

A starter is like a baby... but you can give up and start fresh anytime you want, no strings attached. Come to think of it, it's more like Tamagotchi.

I know, I know, who could refuse such a glowing recommendation? Well, let me tell you something. It's also the ingredient that makes the best gluten-free sourdough starters. I don't know if it's the protein, but for whatever reason the cultures love it. And here's the thing: souring it makes all the difference in the world.

For ages, other cultures have been making a very simple flatbread out of soaked chickpea flour (sounds so much cuter than "garbanzo bean," right?), so I took it a step farther and used the soured stuff. I borrowed ideas here and there from recipes for socca and farinata, but never ended up with an exact recipe.

I keep my starter very thick (for one thing, this saves space, and for another, it allows the cultures to metabolize the flour more slowly, giving you more time between feeding the starter and more time between... well, feeding you!) Maybe you wanna eat this stuff every day. I dunno, I think I'm happier with my poops when I stretch it out to once a week (the eating, not the pooping).

So the "recipe" as it were:

I scoop out about a cup of my thick starter (always use a wooden spoon unless you want your starter to slowly - or not so slowly - languish before your very eyes). I add filtered water until it makes a pourable batter. A dash of salt, a grind of black pepper, a few more grinds for good measure. Whatever green spice I'm feeling at the moment - basil? oregano? dill? Whatevs, it's all good.

You can bake it for however long it takes to get done at whatever temp you think it needs, but I haven't done that.

I preheat a cast iron skillet to pancake heat, add olive oil (wait till the last minute to add your oil or it will begin to polymerize and make your pan sticky), pour in the batter (a thin layer of it should start cooking on the surface of the pan almost immediately, but there shouldn't be a lot of steam or sizzling) and drizzle tiny streams of olive oil over it after the top has gelled a bit. That part's optional.  So's another grinding of black pepper, but I never skip that!

I can tolerate sheep's milk cheese, so I spread a handful of shredded Pecorino Romano on top, but you can leave it plain or dress it up however you want. Sundried tomatoes sound amazing right now!

When it seems relatively cooked through, stick it under the broiler for a few minutes to get nice and crispy.

Let it cool for a bit, slice it up or dress it like a pizza and serve that sucker!

I always intend to do something fancy like dip it in marinara, but it's so tangy and delicious I give into the temptation to eat it scalding hot and bare as a newborn baby.

As for the starter:

Yeast is all around you, floating in the air. Mix your chickpea flour with water, leave it lightly covered, add twice as much of each twelve hours later and so on, for at least three days. You'll catch the yeast! It's pretty dang cool. Watch the mixture for changes, and over time you'll be able to tell what its metabolism is like. When the marks on the glass are above the level of the frothy mass, you'll know it's risen to its max capacity and is starting to fall. That's when it needs more food.

Start with small amounts (like, teaspoons worth) and build your way up so that you don't have to throw any out and will have a good strong culture going by the time you're ready to experiment with it.

And if farinata seems intimidating, there's always pancakes!