Ken's Sourdough Try #1

[Ken]

After reading the thread on sourdough, I thought I would give it a go. It has been 7 days now and it looks and smells right (according to a friend who does this all the time). Just thought I would share the results. I am yet to make and sourdough bread, maybe next weekend.

ps I took the thread's advice and used whey for the liquid.

[Boofer]

Thanks for sharing, Ken. Looking forward to seeing your pictorial progress.

-Boofer-

[iratherfly]

I LOVE using whey in breads. I am not actually a fan of sourdough (love the texture, not into the sour) but I bake at least a loaf of bread a week these days.  Do you know of a good starter that isn't sour?  I recently had bread that had Cabarnet starter and was delicious. I would love to get a formula for Cabarnet starter if anyone knows. It was just slightly sour-ish but definitely not sourdough.  Does anyone have any good starter tips for non-sourdough?

Here is a bread I baked this week. It's a whole wheat French batard that I made with whey from cheesemaking from the previous night. The whey had bacteria in it (B.Linen, Yeast and Mycodore) which did all kinds of really funky things to the dough and yeast. It  ended up tasting very hearty. A tiny bit of sourdough tang but not sourdough at all.

...has anyone else used cheese starter for bread? This is very funny idea but I suspect it can actually work

[Gürkan Yeniçeri]

Hi Ken,

I know a starter which is not sour. It is made with chickpeas. It is naturally sweet in taste. The recipe is, (courtesy of ekmeksanati.com)

1 cup chickpea (old dry ones work better)
2 tbsp flour
2 cup hot water
a smidgen salt

Crash the chickpeas into four or five (they jump everywhere, so be careful  )
Prepare a sterile glass jar with lid
Chuck in all of the above and mix well
Wrap the jar with cloth and keep at about 30C for 16 hours.

When it bubbles and smells, drain it from a plastic strainer and use this watery solution in your bread recipe as yeast. Use a mixer or bread maker to knead the bread for 5 minutes. Or use a spatula to get a homogenic mixture. Wait till the dough rises and double the size.

I think, Cabernet starter is made with grapes. You need to find some organic black grapes and replace the chickpeas above with these grapes. Black grapes (and most of the grapes) has yeast bacteria on their skin but they need to be trained a bit more to use in baking. Use only half of the watery solution with flour and make a realy wet dough. Wait till it rises and use this as yeast.

[MrsKK]

I have used clabber as my liquid in bread making and it makes a sort-of sourdough type bread.  Not enough tang to bother me, just enough to make my hubby happy.

[iratherfly]

Thanks for the tips!

Can't make clabber.... raw milk too expensive for that.  I am beginning to imagine that a starter is very liberal. Will mixing buttermilk, salt, yeast and bread flour work? Leave it in room temp for 12 hours?  what if I use ale, salt and flour and let that work for 12 hours?

I just made some standard starter and put too much yeast in it. It's not nearly as wet as yours Ken. It looks and feel like dough. Is that normal consistency?

[Ken]

I have no idea, I just got the idea from a thread a couple of threads ago, started by carter.

[iratherfly]

Made one bread with starter this week. Was interesting. then I realized that the classic no-knead 18 hour bread is really just a baked bread starter...
I am trying to do a gluten free bread for my fiancee (who is gluten intolerant). I am going to attempt to feed yeast with mashed potatoes. I will then mix them in gluten free flour which is a mix of potato flour, tapioca flour (AKA tapioca starch) and brown rice flour. It usually soaks up too much moisture and resists yeast as well as bakes in lower temp and very expensive so if you have an interesting formula... please share!

[DeejayDebi]

Nice and crusty! Mmmmmmm

[morfeo]

If you want to make a sourdough bread that is not to sour you can do it by let the dough ferment for a couple of days.
You can do it with the french  baguette  recipe, all you ha to do is to make the dough and let if ferment from 18 hours to 3 days (the longest you let  it ferment the richest and sour the flavor will be). once you have what is call Pâte fermenté (or old dough) you can add par of the dough to your recipe.
This is a recipe for Pâte fermenté

1/4 cup of water at 80 degrees
3/4 cup of flour
a pinch of Dry Active yeast
a pinch of salt 

Or what you can do also is whenever you make bread save like 200grams of the dough in your fridge and let it ferment for the next bread.

[iratherfly]

Strange, I never understand why one would want to use salt in a ferment starter. Doesn't it inhibit the fermentation itself?

I have been baking lots of no-knead breads lately when it dawned on me that a no-knead bread is nothing more than a baked fermented bread starter.

One of my best discoveries was to use the whey.  I am now fermenting tommorrow morning's bread:

1 1/2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
optional - 1 tbsp flax meal (nutty flavor, crunch, more healthy fatty acids)
optional - 1 tbsp wheat germ (nutty flavor, crunch, more healthy fatty acids)
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/2 cups slightly warm goats millk whey (from Crottins! There is a bit of yeast and other strains in it, complex flavor, really nice)

Mix and put in an oil-rubbed bowl, covered loosely with plastic wrap. Wait 12-16 hours.
Sprinkle flour and wheat germ (wheat germ is optional. Can also use corn meal instead or nothing) and some unsalted roasted sunflower seeds (optional as well, trying to get to a 4-grain bread instead of just whole wheat). Empty dough onto it. flatten it slightly (one motion, try not to de-gas it) and sprinkle some more sunflower seeds on it (so they will be baked inside the loaf too). Fold like an envelope to create a batard loaf (very wet dough, don't expect it to be very controllable). Put seam-up in a brotform or benneform (bread rising basket. If you have none, don't worry about it and rise it in a towel that is covered with generous amount of flour. Let rest for 2 more hours. In the last 30-45 minutes of the rest, heat up the oven to 500F and arrange the shelves so that the bottom can contain a pan full of water.  Make sure the dough takes in some of the heat to help it rise more. a couple of minutes before the end boil some water

Empty your loaf onto the hot brick, baking stone, baking sheet, clay baker or whatever it is you use to bake bread on in the oven, seam side down.  slit the surface a few times to enable the bread to expand without tearing the sides or exploding (and it looks great too). Don't worry about it too much because this dough is so wet that the slits will be hard to make and inaccurate.

Put the boiling water in the pan at the bottom of the oven to create a generous steam situation. (about 1-2 cups, enough to give you steams through the first 15 min of baking or so). Bake right away. 15 minutes, then turn the loaf around to get an even bake. 5 more minutes after that, turn the heat down to 450 and continue to bake for about 20 more minutes, until the crust is chestnut color and sticking a thermometer in it reads 200F. Cool on a rack for an hour and eat.

Well... this is my plan for this loaf. I will let you know if it worked!

[Ken]

Well I've made 3 sourdough breads now and the second one was by far the best (sorry no pictures, of it). For that one I left the dough to rest for about 3 days and it made the nicest sourdough bread I have ever tasted. My wife liked it so much that she nearly ate all of it by herself.
My latest creation needed longer in the oven but still tastes nice. It was left for about 12 hours. I haven't really found a recipe that I like so I make up my own now, without measuring anything, and the only reason this didn't cook long enough is b/c I couldn't wait for it. I do think I need to start measuring ingredients and recording data so I can get the best sourdough I can.  here is a picture of my 3rd attempt, cooked last night. Any suggestions on crust cracking badly (oven temp is at 180C).

Ken

[morfeo]

The salt will not kill the yeast completely what the salt will do is to control the fermentation  process. The more salt you add the slowest the fermentation will be.

Here is a link that explain it in more detail.

http://www.dakotayeast.com/help-fermentation.html

And if you want to try different kinds of sourdough you can go to

http://www.wildyeastblog.com/

I love that website.

[mtncheesemaker]

Thanks for that website. That looks to be just what I have been needing!

[iratherfly]

Oh, cool sites. I use http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/, http://breadbasketcase.blogspot.com/ and of course http://www.thefreshloaf.com/ - great sites. though I am not contributing on any of them as I do here.

Here are the results of the weekend bread experiement (the one with the Goats' whey, as I described in my post above, 3 days ago). My only comment is that I should have made it as boule in a covered French or Dutch oven.  Making it a Batard and using steam in the oven instead of a covered French/Dutch oven meant that the bread was too hydrated and the dough was too soft so it flattened a bit before it got the oven spring, giving me a flatter loaf (yet still very airy and light, just long and low).
This also meant it was too soft to score prior to baking.  I came up with a great idea - slit it when it's a few minutes in. Unfortunately I came up with this idea about 5 minutes too late and did it at the 10th min instead of the 5th min (as you can see from the sharp cuts on the bread, it didn't have any more give at that point, but I would do it right the next time)

The bread I got was so hydrated that the crust became soft right after cooling on the rack. I returned it to the oven for 10 min at 500F and it fixed the crust nicely, which has held crispy for over a day.

Overall, I learned how to make this bread and I am very happy with the results. It is yummy and hearty, feels like fresh baked even today (day 3). No more $5 loafs in fancy NYC bakeries for me!

Adjustments for next time:
1. Either reduce the liquids by 1/3 OR bake it as a boule in French/Dutch oven.
2. Can be more liberal with the wheat germ and flaxseed meal, maybe add some oats or whole flaxseed.

Really good bread this time!