Hey there, I’m Alina, the founder of the Gluten Ratio. Thanks for stopping by! Here’s a little bit about me and the story behind the Gluten Ratio.

A while back, inspired by Michael Pollan’s love for sourdough in the beautiful documentary Cooked, I gave sourdough starter a try as a first attempt at bread making. Anyone who knows a thing or two about bread can predict how easily that can end up in failure, which is how my starter story finished. That trial was particularly frustrating because after several days of waiting and carefully following the recipe, it failed but I had no clue where it went wrong.

Fast forward a couple of years, I have since moved to the US. The supermarket bread is different here, it’s sweeter and packed with preservatives (what are those 30 ingredients anyway?). And so I decided to make my own bread, this time trying simpler recipes than the almighty sourdough. It’s been more successful and also quite intriguing.

One week I had a basic white bread side by side a 100% whole wheat bread. They varied so much in size it got me wondering how all these bread making elements impact the outcome. And so the Gluten Ratio was born, to find the answer to questions such as:

• What happens when you overproof your dough?
• How can you tell if you’ve overproofed your dough?
• Can you remove the sugar from a recipe entirely?
• How do different flour types impact the final loaf?

I’ve set out to tackle this type of questions in a series of trial and error experiments to improve my own bread making and help others with similar questions.

I hope you find some interesting insights to take into your own kitchen.

– Alina