About Dana C Expertise I have learned all there is to know about bread from a teacher who loves wheat and yeast more then his own wife. I went to culinary school for baking and pastry arts and for a while was an executive pastry chef at a gourmet restaurant in Miami. I can help you with all your doughs and batter questions as well as give you excellent recipe suggestions.
Experience Work experience and Studying baking and pastry arts at a private university.
Education/Credentials I was accredited and degreed by a university in baking and pastry food sciences.
Question I have used all fresh ingredients for a gluten free coffee cake. I have baked it in a glass 7 x 11 pan and it looked fabulous and tested done. Within 15 min. it deflated and tasted undercooked (doughy). This is the 2nd time this has happened, hence all the fresh ingredients. I'm using a combination of flours, as directed in a gluten free cookbook. Any ideas? I miss all bakery items and feeling sorry for myself.
Answer Okay then, I think the book is fooling you, I don't know about this combination method, in what you are combining, but unless the recipe has xanthan gum, then it wont hold.
If you simply take gluten out of your baking, you're likely to have disappointing results. Gluten is sticky stuff which helps prevent your baked goodies from crumbling. It also traps pockets of air, improving the texture of your bread, cakes or biscuits.
Bakers replace gluten with xanthan gum, guar gum, or pre-gel starch. Xanthan gum is a natural product made from Xanthomonas campestris. This microorganism is grown in the lab for its cell coat, which is dried and ground to form xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is added as a powder to the dry bread ingredients. One teaspoon is needed for every cup of gluten-free flour. You can buy this product at your local health food. You can also use Guar Gum, a vegetable gel, which is cheaper than Xanthan gum.
So in your combination flour, for each cup of flour you have add one teaspoon and I believe your coffee cake will stand tall.
However, once you come to adding the dry gluten free flour to the wet ingredients, care needs to be taken in the mixing which needs to be as gentle and for as short a duration as possible to avoid knocking the carbon dioxide and oxygen from the more fragile gluten free structure.
So try altering some of your methods and let me know if this helps.
