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Make your own sourdough

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Re: Make your own sourdough

#21

Post by hendricius »

keithpeter wrote: post #15

Nice guide. I have tried a couple of sourdoughs but mine nearly always end up with a lot of alcohol (acetone smell, bitter liquid). As OA says, you can just scrape the liquid off the top and feed the sourdough to refresh it, but then the bread I bake has a slight acetoney taste. Suggestion: add a description of the sourdough after each day so people have a rough idea if their sourdough is growing. The photo helps - y…

Thanks for the suggestion.

I think what you describe is natural. Don't worry. As you feed the mother dough from time to time that taste will diminish.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#22

Post by hendricius »

th0ma5 wrote: post #19

Get some starter for the price of a stamp: http://carlsfriends.net/source.html Or choose from many others for sale: http://www.sourdo.com/our-sourdough-cultures-2/

You can also go to many local bakeries. Here in Germany the are happy to give you some starter for free. But I still think making your own one is so easy, it's 14 minutes of time over a week.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#23

Post by hendricius »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #18
hendricius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't freezing kill the bacteria and yeast?

At one point in the past, I dried mine out and put it in an envelope in a drawer. I was able to reconstitute it from this at a later point. The starter I have came from here: http://carlsfriends.net , for anyone interested in sourcing their own.

Also really interesting. I would be curious to know whether both yeast and bacteria survived in this dried setup.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#25

Post by hahla »

I find it funny that this is post is popular because the title includes “an engineers guide.” As a hobbyist bread and pizza maker there are so many amazing resources across pizzamaking.com, YouTube and reddit that have years of community input I’m almost insulted that this is more popular.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#26

Post by jvkersch »

hahla wrote: post #25

I find it funny that this is post is popular because the title includes “an engineers guide.” As a hobbyist bread and pizza maker there are so many amazing resources across pizzamaking.com, YouTube and reddit that have years of community input I’m almost insulted that this is more popular.

I agree but I do like the fact that it's written in Markdown and hosted on GitHub. I don't know many recipe books that allow for issues to be raised and that accept pull requests ;)

Re: Make your own sourdough

#28

Post by cup-of-tea »

Baking is a surprisingly geeky thing to do. While cooking is more about knowing your ingredients and tasting as you go, baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe.

I can't actually remember why I started baking bread. But when I first started the product was horrible. I would let the dough rise in a warm place and "make it big" as quickly as possible. For me the rising was just about CO_2 so it made sense. It took me a long time to realise that time is a crucial ingredient. You want the rise to take more time, not less. The difference is astonishing.

I never had much luck with sourdough but I actually prefer the taste of "fresh" bread anyway in the French style. Sourdough is in fashion right now but don't think using cultured yeast gives an inferior product!

Re: Make your own sourdough

#29

Post by exDM69 »

Excellent article!

We've been baking sourdough bread at home for about a year now. When the starter is done, baking bread is a lot less work than when using yeast. The work is spread over a few days but there are no laborious processes involved.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#30

Post by hendricius »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #28

Baking is a surprisingly geeky thing to do. While cooking is more about knowing your ingredients and tasting as you go, baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe. I can't actually remember why I started baking bread. But when I first started the product was horrible. I would let the dough rise in a warm place and "make it big" as quickly as possible. For me the rising was just about CO_2 so it made sens…

Excactly. You mentioned a good point. It's a different kind of taste simply. However you can replace the yeast in any regular recipe with sour dough.

I failed so many times. But usually there is a good explanation to why your baking failed. I love it, you really have to use your brain.

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