May 14, 2020 - 10:56am
Rice flour coloring yellow during baking
Hi folks!
New user / novice baker here. I started out using home-made rice flour (rice ground in a vitamix) to dress the top of my bread. I noticed during baking that it colored yellow. I had assumed that this was maybe because of the vitamix not grinding the rice fine enough. Well I finally got my hands on some real rice flour and I still have this issue. I am baking at 450, and I'm fairly certain my oven is pretty true to that (did the sugar melting test). The color of the bread looks fine, I'm just not getting that nice pure white contrast on top.
Anyone else have this issue?
Thanks in advance!
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1) What's in or on your dough that might turn it yellow? Are you using durum or Kamut flour?
2) Do you have a convection oven, or maybe a gas oven?
3) Did you use whole/brown rice flour? When I use brown rice flour it turns a little yellowish/brownish.
4) Are you using the top (broiler) heating element at all? The radiant heat could darken even rice flour.
1) In this case, bread flour (turkey red heritage white flour), though I've had the same issue with my gold medal bread flour as well.
2) gas oven
3) whole rice flour
4) no broiler usage: I am baking at 450, using the middle rack with a tray of water for steam in the bottom rack plus a spritz of water on top of the bread, the water gets removed 20m in when i rotate the bread tray for evenness; another 20m without the water
And the answer is... white rice flour, not brown/whole. There's oil in rice bran, so it is literally frying. The nice pretty patterns you see made with rice flour on loaves is all white rice flour.
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For a gas oven, you really need a covered baking vessel (dutch oven, covered casserole dish, Graniteware roaster, or cloche) or... an inverted pot/bowl over a baking stone, or... an inverted pot over another matching sized pot. A gas oven just doesn't hold steam well, and really dries out the crust. And that might be _part_ of the reason why the brown rice flour is darkening.
But brown rice flour is going to darken regardless of oven.
Actually for (3) I misspoke: I am using white rice flour ( https://www.iherb.com/pr/Bob-s-Red-Mill-White-Rice-Flour-24-oz-680-g/8893?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2PP1BRCiARIsAEqv-pSEBQ5nXcHt1UYh5QohKD3LJUsm1mYfoRfJU0YiLPJgGmvJ9teBy68aAooGEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds ) .. its possible that the second issue you mentioned is happening.
I had read that I was supposed to remove the steam for the 2nd half, maybe I should keep the steam going all the way through? I do have a lodge combo cooker on the way.. i don't have a temp-safe bowl big enough right now to act as a covering...
may also be a factor in turning it darker.
What about a glass or other type of covered casserole thing?
Tenting the loaf with aluminum foil might help a little too.
Is there any/much oil in your dough?
Interesting that the spritz might be factor -- wouldn't humidity from the steam create similar effect? Maybe the spritz is overkill now.
Not much oil in my dough. I've on occasion used oil instead of flour on the board while shaping but this particular one was flour only.
Other than the color of the rice flour, is the crust of the bread to your liking?
Maybe search TFL for: gas oven steaming
or
gas oven boiling water
and look at the pictures of loaves of people having trouble with the crust of baking an open loaf in a gas oven.
I assumed the color of the rice flour was the only problem, but maybe that is just a symptom of the bad crust that comes from a gas oven.
I'm happy with the crust in general, this more has to do with coloring -- on a white loaf with a golden crust, the rice flour colors a yellow that's closer to the crust color which reduces the contrast for any scoring patterns I attempt. Thanks for the tip about looking for gas oven crust pics.