The accidental bread baker

[DesertBlossom]

2 hours ago, Spy Car said:

Looking good!

You are clearly a natural. Indulge your new hobby. You have talent!

Bill

Your compliment is much appreciated! And it will help me as I try to justify buying new gadgets for baking. 😊

At the moment I am preparing dough for focaccia. I am really excited about it!

[Spy Car]

2 hours ago, DesertBlossom said:

Your compliment is much appreciated! And it will help me as I try to justify buying new gadgets for baking. 😊

At the moment I am preparing dough for focaccia. I am really excited about it!

I'm good at enabling the purchases of good cooking (now baking) supplies 

Your loaf really does look nice. I sooth my envy by telling myself I'm dealing without white flour.

But I want to bake one of those. Making me hungry.

Bill

 

[vmsurbat1]

Inspired by this thread, I've been looking into sourdough starters.  I tried years ago but gave it up. I actually bake European-style bread very often, but with all the Stay-at-Home orders, I thought I'd revisit sourdough now that I have time to babysit it.

An article on NPR led me to this interesting intersection of Sourdough and Science.... http://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/  I think I'm going to give it a try and add to the body of knowledge!

[bolt.]

I've been maturing a sourdough starter over the past few weeks. The way I'm using it is to bake sour-and-yeast hybrid loafs using my 20+ year old bread machine. As my starter gets stronger, I've reduced my yeast to 3/4 tsp per loaf. This gets me a nice sour flavour, but a more reliable rise -- especially with the mechanical knead and automatic bake. It works with the 'french bread' program in the bread machine with no homestyle flourishes (or mess, or effort).

[Corraleno]

I started trying to get a sourdough culture going about 2 weeks ago and was perplexed by the lack of action. After a week where I didn't get more than a few bubbles, with no rise, I divided what I had into two jars and fed one with AP flour and one with whole wheat to see if that would make a difference. I still wasn't seeing much action, so then a started a new culture, but kept feeding the other two. Then yesterday all three went KABOOM at the same time and more than doubled in size and now I have about 6 cups of starter. 😂  Anyway, I finally got to bake my very first loaf of sourdough! It's 70% bread flour and 30% whole wheat, and the oven spring was crazy! It was delicious and I'm super happy with it. 👍

[Miss Tick]

Super yum looking!

Bill - how liquid do you make the starter discard? Do you pour it directly on to a cookie sheet? What temperature do you make it at? I've been making "pancakes" with different flavors, but I would like to try crackers.

In case anybody has a starter that fails, there is a scientist studying them. NPR had an article this morning.

[vmsurbat1]

4 hours ago, SusanC said:

Super yum looking!

Bill - how liquid do you make the starter discard? Do you pour it directly on to a cookie sheet? What temperature do you make it at? I've been making "pancakes" with different flavors, but I would like to try crackers.

In case anybody has a starter that fails, there is a scientist studying them. NPR had an article this morning.

A few posts up, I linked the study mentioned in the NPR article above--it is here: http://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/  And, just to clarify, the study is seeking anyone from anywhere (I live in Europe) who wants to try their hand at a sourdough starter with the method they outline on the above page, not just failed ones.....  I mixed up my starter this morning. 🙂

Edited April 23, 2020 by vmsurbat1
add link

[Miss Tick]

2 hours ago, vmsurbat1 said:

not just failed ones..

It makes me wonder how many "fail"? I've never heard of one failing right off the bat. I have killed them in the past from neglect, but really, if I had been so inspired, could I have brought it back to life with a few days of coddling? I have resuscitated some really gnarly ones out of a sense of guilt. Perhaps if your water has a high enough amount of chlorine nothing will grow. Dunno.

[Pawz4me]

My first attempt failed. Or maybe I gave up too soon, but after a couple of weeks of nothing happening I threw it out. I think the problem may have been that I had it in a glass jar and it was sitting on a granite counter, and the granite kept it too cool. The second attempt used the same method (from the King Arthur Flour website) except I kept it in a plastic container sitting on a silicone trivet. It worked just as the directions said. Of course that's just a guess as to why the first attempt failed.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Pawz4me

[crazyforlatin]

For sourdough starter, would kamut flour work?

[Corraleno]

6 hours ago, crazyforlatin said:

For sourdough starter, would kamut flour work?

I found the advice below on this blog, and it has been true in my (limited) experience. The starter that I was feeding with WW flour bubbled easily but never really rose, the AP flour didn't bubble as quickly or actively but rose a little better, and then I started a third with bread flour, and then fed all three with bread flour and they all suddenly took off at once — the one that was only fed with bread flour was raring to go in just a few days while the others were about 2 weeks old and never took off until I tried the bread flour. So if you have some bread flour I would use that, otherwise maybe try sifting out as much bran and germ as you can from kamut or WW?

 

Flour for your starter

Technically, any grain-based flour works for making a sourdough starter.  Flours made from rice, rye, spelt, einkorn and wheat all work. However, bread flour works the best and yields the most reliable starter. Even if you raise your starter on bread flour, you can still make bread with other flours.

• Whole-grain flours make tricky starters. They’re high in vitamins minerals and food enzymes. While high nutritional content is generally a good thing, when it comes to sourdough starters, it means that they behave less predictably than white bread flour.  
  Starters made from whole-grain flours typically need to be fed more often and are more difficult to maintain. They’re also prone to false starts, where they bubble quickly, but lose all activity later.
   
• White bread flour works particularly well because, once it’s established, it rises and falls predictably with little fuss or extra maintenance. That’s why it’s an excellent choice for beginning sourdough bakers."

[crazyforlatin]

12 hours ago, Corraleno said:

I found the advice below on this blog, and it has been true in my (limited) experience. The starter that I was feeding with WW flour bubbled easily but never really rose, the AP flour didn't bubble as quickly or actively but rose a little better, and then I started a third with bread flour, and then fed all three with bread flour and they all suddenly took off at once — the one that was only fed with bread flour was raring to go in just a few days while the others were about 2 weeks old and never took off until I tried the bread flour. So if you have some bread flour I would use that, otherwise maybe try sifting out as much bran and germ as you can from kamut or WW?

 

Flour for your starter

Technically, any grain-based flour works for making a sourdough starter.  Flours made from rice, rye, spelt, einkorn and wheat all work. However, bread flour works the best and yields the most reliable starter. Even if you raise your starter on bread flour, you can still make bread with other flours.

• Whole-grain flours make tricky starters. They’re high in vitamins minerals and food enzymes. While high nutritional content is generally a good thing, when it comes to sourdough starters, it means that they behave less predictably than white bread flour.  
  Starters made from whole-grain flours typically need to be fed more often and are more difficult to maintain. They’re also prone to false starts, where they bubble quickly, but lose all activity later.
   
• White bread flour works particularly well because, once it’s established, it rises and falls predictably with little fuss or extra maintenance. That’s why it’s an excellent choice for beginning sourdough bakers."

Thanks so much! I don’t have bread flour, but I think there's a shop locally that still has it. This is going to be DD's project, so given the time required for a starter, I would like to use a type of flour that will lead to success. There's no active yeast to be found anywhere, and not being a baker or really even a bread eater, I had no idea that there is an alternative. 

[vmsurbat1]

Those of you with a love for the science behind sourdough might appreciate a new series of mini-lectures (approx 20 min) being developed by the team with the Wild Sourdough project I mentioned earlier.   There are a total of 20 mini-seminars scheduled. Three have taken place thus far and this week, Peter Reinhart (of baking bread fame) will be hosting one on baking sourdough bread!

Find out more here: https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/04/the-great-sourdough-mystery/  

To view the already-held seminars, visit their youtube channel here: Fermentology YouTube Channel

BTW, I'm up to day 10 of nurturing my starter. 🙂

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by vmsurbat1
typo