Make your own sourdough • Hacker News Board

Re: Make your own sourdough

#101

Post by bonesss » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:28 AM UTC

cup-of-tea wrote: post #94

riffraff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while cooking is more about knowing your ingredients and tasting as you go, baking absolutely requires strict adherence to a recipe. I am not sure I agree (or maybe I don't understand). It is fairly common to mix a dough and have a recipe step like "when it's smooth and doesn't stick" or "when the consistency is of a thick goo". Ambient humidity, what sort of surface you use for kneading, temperature of your leavin…

When presented with a selection of vegetables and other ingredients a good cook could make a nice meal by just making stuff up. Want a thicker sauce? Reduce it more, or maybe thicken with flour, it's up to you. You can just taste and adjust as you go. You can't do that when baking. If you add too much liquid to a batter you can't just add flour to make it perfect again. You'll ruin the other ratios. You can't just ba…

Ummm... contextually: this is incorrect for a bread baker.

You can totally bake bread without a recipe, and adjust while you go. You can check breads before they're done and let them bake longer. Maintain a rough 1:2:4 ratio of starter:water:flour, adjust hydration/process for the kinds of flour you use, and you can bake 'whatever' and have it be very tasty.

Bread making goes back stupid long in human history. 5,000 years of fermented breadmaking... Until very recently breadmaking was just a skill you learned from someone else who could do it, baked entirely by estimation, and transmitted that knowledge orally. Grandmas buns call for "enough" flour. The pros tell you to reserve flour/water until things look "right".

For other kinds of baking I don't really agree either... it's more about ratios and observation, though. If your batter is too thin you absolutely add more flour -- you just can't ignore the other agents in the bake. Temp and size will affect cooking times, but you can change those while baking. You check cakes to see if they're done before taking them out. You lower temps if you see edges darkening too quickly...

I mean, if you burn the outside of veggies they tend to be ruined too, and cooks use experience and trial & error to navigate the difference in the same way bakers do.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#102

Post by cup-of-tea » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:34 AM UTC

atomical wrote: post #40

jvkersch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bread has increased in quality so much by (a) mixing the ingredients (without the yeast, or with only a little bit of the sourdough starter) the night before (i.e. making a poolish), and (b) taking a full day to prepare: you knead a little, let it rest for a couple of hours, give it a few turns, rest, etc. As a result, the bread is much more flavorful, and the flavor is more delicate: not too sour, not too sweet,…

My bread has much better flavor if I let the dough sit in the fridge for four days.

I've tried chilling dough but I've found the yeast never fully recovers and just won't give the rise I want in the oven. It's been a source of frustration because everyone else says it works!

Re: Make your own sourdough

#103

Post by bonesss » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:34 AM UTC

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…

Fermentation goes through four phases, roughly paraphrased into: wheatey, champagne, alcohol, vomit.

You're describing a starter that is too 'old'. Very 'young' starters have little flavour, and then get sweet and honey-like before getting souuuuuur. Personally I'd recommend just leaving it on the counter and going to a 24 hour or 12 hour feeding schedule.

Flavour: you can absolutely scrape the bad stuff off the top and feed the starter to keep it alive. But if you're going to bake, remember that you're blending out the original product... If you start with some 'alcohol' or 'vomit' and mix out half, bread made the next day will be 33% bad-stuff. You want to mix out for say a week or so to get back to mostly tastey happy stuff.

Also: not sure if this applies, but in general making a mature starter is a 5 week process from scratch. Bubbles in the first few days are generally bad bacteria dying in the container you're using... You can still bake with it, but keep going for a week and a half and see what kind of lovely smells start coming :)

Re: Make your own sourdough

#104

Post by nwatson » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:37 AM UTC

"As a baker it is your job to ensure that [the yeast and bacteria] feel happy and enjoy their home."

... until you impose hell upon them in the form of an oven. That is one awkward "light-hearted" sentence.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#105

Post by bonesss » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:38 AM UTC

slimbods wrote: post #9

Nice article, thanks. Losing your starter can be painful as it takes at least a week to build a new one. So it's good to have a backup; build a bit extra then freeze it. Should you lose your starter, you can defrost the backup and carry on right away. Especially handy if you go on holiday or can't bake for a few weeks.

You can order dry starter online, which can be a nice way to start up and works as a distributed backup plan ;)

Re: Make your own sourdough

#106

Post by Amygaz » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:43 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #68

lmilcin wrote: post #55

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 b…

I’ve got a lazier option. Get some starter, add 70g of flour, 100g water and leave it overnight. Then stick it in the fridge and use it like you’d use a very slow working shop bought yeast (and maybe 20g at a time). Don’t feed it till it gets low. Treat it mean, any more effort on it is wasted. Mine’s coming up on 10 years old now and is just fine. I accidentally put it in the freezer and lost it for a month, I think…

I have the same recipe here. Stick it in the fridge

Re: Make your own sourdough

#107

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:45 AM UTC

collyw wrote: post #85

Would this have appeared here is it wasn't hosted on github? Don't get me wrong, I am quite interested in fermentation (I make my own sauerkraut for probiotics), but it seems strange for it to appear at number one on the front page of HN.

[deleted]

Re: Make your own sourdough

#108

Post by hendricius » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:48 AM UTC

firmgently wrote: post #79

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…

Yes! I'd been baking all my own bread for years but had repeatedly failed to cultivate a sourdough starter despite following lots of guides to the letter. I finally got mine living nicely when I completely let go, stopped measuring and worrying, just learned to smell and watch. I pour flour in straight from the bag and splash water from a big container, as long as the consistency is somewhere between thin mud and thi…

Well done. I have the same issue. I have to weekly commute to another city. I have a really small apartment there with a super tiny oven. It's a challenge to bake, but that won't stop me. You can bake bread everywhere.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#109

Post by John_KZ » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:50 AM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #55

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 b…

This is actually the "right" way to do this, or at least the way sourdough bread has been made traditionally almost everywhere I've looked into. The same kind of process applies to yogurt. You make the starting batch of bacteria in a similar way but then you just use a portion of the previous batch.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#110

Post by hendricius » Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 11:50 AM UTC

punnerud wrote: post #100

Been thinking about an automatic machine to make bread this way. Everything you need is flour, water and power if you have the machine.

Yes, but it is really to to have one machine to rule them all. It also depends on each flour you are using. The machine would work better in some countries than others.