Artisan Bread Bakers

[Erisianmonkey]

I wish I could make sourdough. When we lived at our old apartment I used to always keep a starter going. Here, though- just a few miles away, mind you, there are some different little beasties in the air that make my starter taste horrid. There's a few reasons I want to move from the apartment we're in right now, and the lack of fresh sourdough is near the top of the list!

[Dall_Piobaire]

Can't you keep a cheesecloth over the top to keep the wi beasties out, or do you use what I guess one would call a "native culture?

[Old Hippie]

I wish I could make sourdough. When we lived at our old apartment I used to always keep a starter going.

Instead of capturing a wild culture, stir some flour and water together and add a quarter-teaspoon of yeast. The first few times you use it, it will be pretty bland -- but let's face it, yeast mutates regularly in response to its environment. As you keep using it, it will develop more flavour.

Particularly when you're using sourdough, long room-temperature rises are good. The cooler temperatures put the yeast and lactobacilli on a more even footing, so the sourness can develop before the yeast is blown out.

I find even with yeasted breads that cutting back the dose of yeast and going for long rises really helps develop the flavour and texture.

[Bugbear]

Hmmm, I never had a problem with it. I usually kept the starter in a jar with the lid loosly screwed on, and you can keep in the fridg after it gets yeasty. There's no reason you couldnt start a starter with a yeast culture for bread, or even throw a grape in there with it.

You can grow the loaf over a couple of days to make it extra sour if you keep track of how much flower you are adding. I think I did half fresh flower and half starter a lot of times, maybe more. I always waited to ad the salt and oil until the last kneading though; I oild my hands to work with the dough.

Oh, and sometimes I rubbed the top of the bread with butter a short time before it was done baking so it had a hard crisp top.

It's been about ten or so years since I baked bread, so it's hard to remember all the little details...

[Dall_Piobaire]

The long rises help a lot with Spelt bread, Spelt is much higher in protein and lower in carbs, and thus sugars. I add honey to feed the yeast let it go a day then do the bread.

I really want to try the spelt as a sourdough, tasty and healthy, should ever the twain meet!

[Bugbear]

Ya, I like bread that has the flavor already in it.

[Erisianmonkey]

Instead of capturing a wild culture, stir some flour and water together and add a quarter-teaspoon of yeast. The first few times you use it, it will be pretty bland -- but let's face it, yeast mutates regularly in response to its environment. As you keep using it, it will develop more flavour.

Particularly when you're using sourdough, long room-temperature rises are good. The cooler temperatures put the yeast and lactobacilli on a more even footing, so the sourness can develop before the yeast is blown out.

I find even with yeasted breads that cutting back the dose of yeast and going for long rises really helps develop the flavour and texture.

I've tried using a cheater like that. It works for about two weeks and then the nasties creep in. So, while it does work, it peters out just about the time the flavor would really be developing. I'm thinking therefore that it isn't the strain of yeast in the area, but rather the lactobacilli here. Or some other bacteria that creeps in from the ponds in the area. Indeed, some days the ponds cause the whole neighborhood to stink, so....

I like to go for long rises myself sometimes, but I am a rather impatient cuss. I rise for about an hour first rise, form or pan my loaves, then rise in the pans or on baking sheets for another hour or so. NOt sure about how others would handle it, but the way I do my bread I get a nice really dense crumb and a flaky/crumbly but still chewy crust. When I was doing sourdough in our old apartment, I would do rises of about 4-5 hours.

One thing I think I'm going to start doing when I bake is to use bottled water. I don't know if anyone else has run into this in their community, but here in Aurora at times there's so much chlorine in the water that cutting open a fresh loaf just a few minutes to an hour out of the oven it can smell like opening a bottle of bleach. Ewww. Given some time, however, the smell dissipates and it doesn't really have an effect on the taste.

[Bugbear]

I don't know about the chlorine, But the PH balance of the water might do something. I think bottled water tends to have a low PH, and our tap water has a very high PH down here.

I seem to remember doing much much longer rises with sour dough and letting the yeast populate the loaf a lot more... But like I said, it's been a long time.

[BEEDEE]

Most of the breads I bake now are two day breads with either a preferment or an overnight retarding in the refrigerator. And my sourdough starter is from Nancy Silverton's Breads from the LaBrea Bakery. Took two weeks to get the starter running. Now it lives in the refrigerator and takes about a day to bring it back. Wonderful starter that I can recommend to anyone who has the time to mess with it at the beginning.

Brian

[Dall_Piobaire]

As far as bottled water goes, spring water should work well. additionally, put about a half cup of water in the oven, in an oven proof container when you bake it helps.

Does anyone use bricks, or those brick sheets for baking on? I once had a pizza stone, made a huge difference!

BeeDee, that sourdough starter, it will last you forever if you feed it regularly won't it? Did you order it online?