Gluten Free Rich Yeast Dough – Perfect for Pastries and Scrolls

I have been experimenting with different individual gluten free flours to make a perfect mix for the yeast dough, enriched with eggs and full fat sour cream. The dough is similar to the brioche dough, but is not made with that many eggs and does not have any butter. I have found that when sour cream is used as the source of fat, baked products have additional softness and the texture of the pastry stays moist and soft  for longer. Gluten free products, baked from the yeast dough are notorious for going stale fast, which makes a huge difference in their taste when they cool down, and especially on the second day. This dough addresses this problem. Of coarse, freshly baked buns, scrolls or pastries are at their best when eaten still warm, but the beauty of this recipe is that baked products from it taste as good, when completely cold, and they have good qualities on the second day as well. Warmed up in the microwave or regular oven, they taste as if they are freshly baked.

I used this base recipe with different flour mixes and so far, the recipe below gave absolutely best results in taste and texture. Millet flour in the recipe beats even my favourite mix of buckwheat and quinoa flour. It gives the final product nice yellow overtone and its delicate, subtle taste. Rice flour and tapioca are the best background for millet flour, while flaxseed flour makes the dough less subjected to tears and splits during baking with less xanthan gum used. I have also found that 50g of sugar in the recipe makes the dough very flexible to be comfortably used both for savoury and sweet baking. For sweet baking there is enough sweetness in the dough itself, which is supplemented with the distinctly sweet filling in scrolls, either poppy-seed or cinnamon.

Sultana braided buns with simple icing sugar frosting are another type of sweet pastries that can be baked from this dough.

The recipe below presents this dough in spring onion and egg pastries.

This dough is perfect to bake gluten free pizzas with any toppings you like.

 

Ingredients:

dough

• 100g rice flour  (Well and Good)
• 100g millet flour  (Well and Good)
• 100g tapioca flour  (Well and Good)
• 20g golden flaxseed flour (Waltanna Farms)
• 50g sugar
• 6g sea salt Saxa non-iodised
• 6g xanthan gum (Well and Good)
• 100g full fat sour cream (Coles brand), room temperature
• 2 large eggs
• 1 sachet (7g) instant dry yeast
• 130g warm water

extra

• 1 egg to make egg wash
• butter to brush pastries after baking

spring onion and egg filling

• 1 bunch fresh spring onions
• 4 hard-boiled eggs
• 10g unsalted butter
• salt and white ground pepper for seasoning

Preparation:

spring onion and egg filling

• use only soft, top part of spring onions, leave the bottom, hard part for other dishes
• chop spring onions
• place them in a bowl and cover with boiling water for 15 minutes
• drain and rinse with cold water
• remove excess of water
• chop  hard-boiled eggs
• add them to spring onions
• add butter and seasoning
• mix well
• if eggs and spring onions are cold, use melted butter, if eggs are warm, use butter at room temperature

dough

• place rice flour, tapioca flour, millet flour, flaxseed flour, xanthan gum and salt in a bowl
• mix them well and put the mix through the sieve 2-3 times
• dissolve 20g sugar in 100ml of warm water
• add dry yeast, stir
• let the mixture stand for 5-10 minutes, until yeast starts to work, you will see bubbles appearing

• in a separate bowl place eggs, sour cream, add 30g of sugar and 30ml of water

• mix everything well, until fully combined

• add both wet ingredients to dry ingredients

• mix them together until the soft dough forms (I do it by hand to feel the texture, the dough, made with the help of a mixer might need less liquid)

• dust the working surface generously with gluten free flour (I used Crusty bread mix by Well and Good, but rice flour can be used, too)
• dust your hands with flour when working with the dough

• I cut the dough into 14 pieces, shape them into balls and spread each piece of the dough gently with my fingers into oblong shape (alternatively cut the dough in half and use part of the dough to make savoury pastries and another half to bake sweet scrolls)
• put the filling into the centre
• brush the edges with egg wash
• close the edges by pressing them tight, do not overstretch the dough

• you can bake pastries with the closing on top, or you can turn each pastry upside down to have it below

• place pasties (7 on one tray) on a baking tray, lined with baking paper, brush each pastry with an egg wash twice and place the tray into just warm oven (switched off) with lights on
• let the dough raise for 45-90 minutes (time depends on the temperature of the water used, and the temperature in the oven) until pastries nearly double in size
• set the oven to 170C fan-forced and start baking from the cold (that is how I bake my pastries and scrolls, if you have another favourite regime, use it, you know your oven better)
• bake until light brown colour, in my oven in takes 25-30minutes
• brush with butter
• transfer hot pastries on a wire rack
• cover with baking paper and kitchen towel on top for 10-15 min
• enjoy!

This dough can be transformed even further with some extra butter, to bake Danish pastries or buns with pastry cream. Pastries on the photo below show my own, gluten free version of a Coffee Bun (Kafijas maize), a very popular pastry, baked in every cafe in Riga many years ago.