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Make your own sourdough

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Re: Make your own sourdough

#51

Post by tomcooks »

chrissnell wrote: post #4

I had a starter for several years that was descended from the one kept by Dick Proenekke [1]. He lived alone in a cabin that he built himself--by hand--deep in the Alaskan bush. He made sourdough pancakes daily and his original starter came from a friend of his back in town. Someone related to this person sells the starter (on a wooden spoon) that you can buy [2] and use to create your own descendant. There's a fasci…

He also contributed science with data taken from the field during his outings, when he wasn't busy being a badass

Re: Make your own sourdough

#52

Post by tomcooks »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #32
eps wrote: post #27

Wait, wait... there's no salt in the sourdough?

No mention of salt in whole page. That is a huge omission. It's not even bread without salt. If you follow this recipe it will taste awful. Use salt if you want your bread to be like bakery bread. And there is no "salt to taste" in baking. 10g per 500g of flour is a good start but the point you add it is important so check a proper recipe.

Considering where it's hosted maybe it's time for a fork, no pun intended.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#53

Post by bgaluszka »

chrissnell wrote: post #4

I had a starter for several years that was descended from the one kept by Dick Proenekke [1]. He lived alone in a cabin that he built himself--by hand--deep in the Alaskan bush. He made sourdough pancakes daily and his original starter came from a friend of his back in town. Someone related to this person sells the starter (on a wooden spoon) that you can buy [2] and use to create your own descendant. There's a fasci…

Correct me if I'm wrong but if you get sourdough made at some other place after couple of weeks your local culture will take over thus sourdough will loose that other place uniqueness so to speak. But I'm not an expert just something I remember when I was interested in sourdough and pizza making.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#54

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

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.

It's not a great "engineer's guide" though.

My main issue at a glance is it's too linear "Day 7 Add another round of ingredients. Day 8 You are done".

it doesn't work that predictably. You have to describe the outcome you're waiting for, it might happen on an earlier day or later. For SW engineers, it's a "while (!ready())" loop, not a "for (day in 1..8)" loop.

Maybe it worked that way once for the OP. But it will vary. For SW engineers, this is a "works on my machine" type issue.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#55

Post by lmilcin »

Recipe is fine for sure, and I was doing this for a long time, but some time ago I have learned superior way of keeping sourdough.

The oft cited recipe asks for feeding it every day and also keeping something like 100% hydration. Remembering to feed it every day is a major hassle for me.

My sourdough is a piece of bread dough that is enough to use for my next batch. Basically, after first rise and before I shape my bread, I will cut something between 50-200g of dough, put it in a glass container with a small hole for air circulation and store it in the fridge. I will not feed the starter. Next time I make bread I will take it out of the fridge and mix it with measured amount of warm water that is going to be used for the bread.

Advantages:

- no separate feeding, you cut a piece of bread, and you use it as part of next one,

- hydration and salt level matches your bread recipe which means you can add way more or less starter and the bread will still have the same hydration and salt level,

- the hydration and salt level makes it stable in a fridge for a very long time, I have tested up to 3 weeks with no ill effects and I decided not to stretch it any more. I was only able to keep the traditional 100% hydration no-salt starter for only about a week or risk it spoiling.

I also use a spreadsheet to aid calculations (I plan to make android app but I somehow never have time to finish it): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lSBl3kjAeitBUH75DEIR...

Re: Make your own sourdough

#56

Post by hendricius »

etrautmann wrote: post #50
hendricius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really interesting, thanks for the links. I would be curious to see how that starter behaves differently then mine. I really need a good microscope to analyse the different doughs in detail.

I have a colleague who sequences the genomes of the yeast in her sourdough starter to characterize how it changes over time :)

That's amazing! What are here most important learnings? TLDR :D.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#57

Post by hendricius »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #54
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.

It's not a great "engineer's guide" though. My main issue at a glance is it's too linear "Day 7 Add another round of ingredients. Day 8 You are done". it doesn't work that predictably. You have to describe the outcome you're waiting for, it might happen on an earlier day or later. For SW engineers, it's a "while (!ready())" loop, not a "for (day in 1..8)" loop. Maybe it worked that way once for the OP. But it will va…

Haha that's true. The beauty and difficulty is that there is always a little bit of random in every recipe. We would need a docker machine as kitchen in which we bake to avoid any side effects. Every oven, every flour is different.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#58

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

hendricius wrote: post #57
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a great "engineer's guide" though. My main issue at a glance is it's too linear "Day 7 Add another round of ingredients. Day 8 You are done". it doesn't work that predictably. You have to describe the outcome you're waiting for, it might happen on an earlier day or later. For SW engineers, it's a "while (!ready())" loop, not a "for (day in 1..8)" loop. Maybe it worked that way once for the OP. But it will va…

Haha that's true. The beauty and difficulty is that there is always a little bit of random in every recipe. We would need a docker machine as kitchen in which we bake to avoid any side effects. Every oven, every flour is different.

I like making sourdough because it's tasty, you can experiment, and unlike software it's entirely analogue and biological not digital. We're dealing with bugs not bugs.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#60

Post by ktpsns »

As a German, I appreciate this. I don't like the idea of nations, but in cultural terms, bread is one of the best innovations in this country. I always miss high quality bread when going to the US.
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