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Make your own sourdough

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Re: Make your own sourdough

#201

Post by irremediable »

irremediable wrote: post #200

I've been getting into baking bread lately, so it's very cool to see an article like this on HN. That said, if you're new to baking, I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point unless you strongly prefer sourdough to other breads. Sourdough is trickier, and this recipe is quite minimalist: lots of ingredient ratios and timings should actually vary with your ingredients, equipment and supposedly even atmospheric con…

These Paul Hollywood recipes are a pretty good starting point. They don't mention the buttermilk trick, but it's easy enough: squeeze half a lemon into your milk.

The nice thing with Hollywood's bloomer recipe is that lots of people have tried it, and share tips for debugging problems you may encounter.

Bloomer: https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/paul_hollywoods_bloomer_846...

Soda bread: https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/soda_bread_24837

Re: Make your own sourdough

#202

Post by bootsz »

> Learn how to master the art of baking the programmer way. If you love programming, you will also enjoy breaking some bread.

As a hobbyist sourdough baker and professional software engineer I definitely think there is some truth to this.

For me bread baking is a great complementary pursuit to programming. It is entirely manual and rooted in the physical world, which makes it a great way to "unplug" and decompress. But it also requires a similar type of analytical skills and problem solving mindset that developers tend to have.

If you are interested in getting into baking sourdough I would highly recommend this blog as a resource:

https://www.theperfectloaf.com

The tutorials and recipes are very beginner-friendly and have tons of hi-res photos. I own about 6 books on bread baking but would say this site is probably a better overall resource for a beginner. Interestingly, the author of the site is himself also a software engineer. It definitely shows through in the precision of his recipes :)

Re: Make your own sourdough

#203

Post by bitL »

hendricius wrote: post #147
bitL wrote: post #139

Hey, how do I clone source code? All I get are some Markdown files :( I'd like to compile and execute it quickly as I am hungry! Thanks!

You can also speed up the process and have your bread ready in 1 hour. You just have to kneed the dough way more. When I have guests I use my machine to kneed the dough.

Where can I get a dough coprocessor? Can't see any on eBay :(

Re: Make your own sourdough

#204

Post by vram22 »

John_KZ wrote: post #109
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.

>The same kind of process applies to yogurt.

Yes, lots of people in India make yogurt (called curd here) at home daily in that way - just add a spoonful or so of the previous curd to the warm milk of the next batch to be made. I doubt anyone adds any separate starter culture - the old curd plays that role.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#205

Post by hendricius »

sjosji wrote: post #142
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…

Also.. 450gr flour needed, but day 1: 100gr flour + 6*50gr makes 400gr in total. Off by 1 error?

Thanks :D. My bad.

Re: Make your own sourdough

#206

Post by poulsbohemian »

hendricius wrote: post #23
poulsbohemian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I tried it based on stories I'd heard about old timers using it as the mortar in log cabins between the logs, and later reconstituted. Don't know if anything really survives or not, but I was able to get it to rise and make bread so...

Re: Make your own sourdough

#208

Post by 0Sam »

bsder wrote: post #195
verelo wrote: post #129

On the topic of bread for a moment: I recently started making my own bread. I bought a book on the topic by Ken Forkish "Flour water salt yeast", and I've fallen in love with the process. The recipes are great, but the first few chapters that cover his journey to making bread, a bit of the science behind it and talking about the less scientific components of what almost sounds like "luck" (Really, just super detailed…

> I bought a book on the topic by Ken Forkish "Flour water salt yeast", and I've fallen in love with the process. Does this book actually have a process that makes a "fluffy" interior like the baguettes and boules I can get everywhere in France? Normally, my bread excursions always come up what I term "artisanal"--nice flavor, but kinda "chewy". I have no idea what I need to change to fix that, and I can't seem to fi…

I've been searching for the same answers and from what I've found online, you want to make a higher hydration loaf.

I've been following recipes from a blog called The Perfect Loaf, going to try this one next: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/higher-hydration-sourdough-br...

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