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This is truly phenomenal work! Have you experimented with any traditional additives, such as adding a small amount of citric acid to increase diacetyl production during fermentation?
Hey hendricius! Just wanted to say thank you for your free material. I discovered you months ago and I love your 'scientific' approach Looking forward to that Kickstarter campaign :)
I have a pet at home, having another spoiled one like sour dough is too much for me
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The present work is a merger of that effort he claims.
The current repo combines most of my experience from the past years into one single framework that you can use as basis for other recipes.
As an occasional amateur baker with a five year old starter in the fridge and lots of hard learned lessons (aka. tasty failures), this looks like a well researched but probably slightly intimidating book on the subject. I started out like many by watching some Youtube movies. Except I did it a few years before Covid. So, slightly before it got really hip to do it. Some things that I've learned over the years (with th…
* Timing is flexible. Especially if you toss in a tiny bit of yeast.
* The dutch oven is great, but it complicates baking. You get to do one loaf at a time. OTOH, It's a relly good loaf. Sadly though, the electricity costs are high.
* Wet doughs can use basic flour, which is good because hi-gluten bread flour has been scarce in Ireland for the past couple of years.
What I do:
540g bog standard white flour. (lidl, definitely _not_ self raising or with raising agents like most of the flour in Ireland). Replace up to 200g with coarse wheaten flour.
280g water
1 tbsp salt
1/8tbsp yeast if it's cold.
300g 1:1 flour/water starter.
In the morning, Mix the dry ingredients with a spatula, mix in the wet ones to a mixed dough. Let it sit for 1/2 hour. Lightly knead in your hands for 30 sec or so. Oil the bowl, put the dough back in and wiggle it around, then cover with plastic wrap. Do other stuff till dinner time.
Quickly (1-2 turns) form the loaf, plop it on a baking paper back in the bowl.
In an hour or two, depending on how warm it is and if it's final rising fast or not, start the oven with the dutch oven in it. Preheat at least 30 min. Bake 30 lid on +30 min lid off at ~180c fan.
Things not to do:
* Forget to start the oven, get ready to go to bed and realize that the loaf is still sitting on the counter.
* Worry too much. It's all grand.
* Forget to take it out, though an extra 30 min is surprisingly ok. Just thicker crust.
The starter gets equal weights of water and flour, supposedly every night, but more likely the night before baking and the morning of baking. I bake every 2 days.
Your introduction suggests that you know people's input variables (type of flour, environment, other ingredients, etc) have a heavy influence on the end product. It might be easier to generate custom instructions rather than generate content for every possible combination.
From the intro: > It is crazy if you think about it. People have been using this process despite not knowing what was actually going on for thousands of years! Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever
Have you considered making a standalone tool to take input variables and generate custom instructions? Your introduction suggests that you know people's input variables (type of flour, environment, other ingredients, etc) have a heavy influence on the end product. It might be easier to generate custom instructions rather than generate content for every possible combination.
The concept is appealing but the name seems reductory. Sourdough, despite its fame, is but one type of bread. Seing that you had another book called the bread code I went to check that out but it's marked deprecated by this one. So is this a case of an ill-fitting name that does not do justice to the content, or is the content just limited to sourdough as the end-all of bread making? I'm personally not found of the s…
I think that the sour taste reputation comes from particular styles like "San Francisco sourdough" and the fact that many folks over-do it with the starter or allow the dough to rise for too long.
Try bread from some artisanal bakers, you'll very quickly experience the range of naturally leavened bread.