Baking Bread & Cultivated Yeast - You can make better bread than anything at the store with just a starter of flour and water.

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Unshakeable Optimist said:
I've been experimenting with feeding my starter more often, and thus have had a large quantity of unfed starter. So far, I've made garlic flatbread and cornbread muffins. Anyone have other quick recipes for using up leftover starter?
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I tried making European-style pancakes with it (replacing about an equal part milk/flour and adding an extra egg). It was honestly less different to normal pancakes than I was expecting but pretty good, it made them a bit more savory.
 
I'm new to sourdough and I have been able to get a good active starter going.

Do all recipes require multiple days? One bread baking book I have has a recipe called "Three-Day Sourdough" and the other book has a recipe that's much shorter but adds activated yeast.

So I guess I'm retarded and the time is for the fermentation but I guess I thought I'd be able to use an active starter to make a loaf in a day. I wasn't expecting to plan a loaf so far in advance.

Or have I just not come across the right sourdough recipe? I'm not really a fermentation nerd so I don't know all the science or whys behind what I'm doing.

And why did I make a starter if the recipe asks for activated yeast?
 
TardiX said:
I thought I'd be able to use an active starter to make a loaf in a day. I wasn't expecting to plan a loaf so far in advance.
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That's a little surprising since multi day sourdough, at least overnight bulk fermentation, is the norm by far.
I like this recipe for same day sourdough without relying on added yeast:
 
So my interest in this topic, plus the mycology I already do, has me wondering if you could sterilize the flour in a pressure cooker, use sterile water, and a bacterial culture in order to ensure no bad bacteria make their way in. I've got a still air box that I could do feedings in as well, although I'm worried that might contam it and prevent further myco work. I'm sure that open air normal sourdough is 100x easier then what I'm proposing but it might be a fun experiment to try. What bacteria cultures would y'all wanna see?
 
Sounds interesting, from a "just because I can" perspective, especially if you have the ability to test what comp you end up with.

I'd suspect any contamination would be your house's natural yeast anyway. Shit's everywhere.

My very first try got contaminated early on. After that I sterilised my jar more thoroughly and, despite having a cavalier attitude towards these things, it's been fine ever since now that I have something strongly established. I use live sour whey from yoghurt making most of the time which might have boosted its defense force.

Interestingly, when I was making yoghurt and similar stuff more regularly it seemed to boost the protection for my entire kitchen.

In the summer my kid would leave cups of milk on the table for too long for the heat. However instead of going rancid, it would solidify. Not into something I was going to necessarily try, but it didn't smell bad or anything (I believe that we've evolved pretty good instincts for these things).

Kid accidentally tried to sip some once (how we discovered it in the first place!) and much as she was pretty pissed that it wasn't what she wanted, she didn't develop the raging shits from it either.
 
Matzo Nazi said:
What bacteria cultures would y'all wanna see?
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I can't say I'd have any particular interest in just seeing any particular bacteria alone, but there's a lot of interesting things you can do with comparison:
  1. Does a starter treated with a high concern for contamination develop differently from a starter with normal level of cleanliness, all else equal?
  2. Compare two starters, one focusing on high LAB and another minimizing it
A comparison of the bread from two very different starters in the same recipe would be cool to see.
 
If you're serious about getting the crispiest, loftiest sourdough of your life, while still doing low discard style maintenance, get yourself a copy of Tartine Bread (ISBN 978-0811870412).

Goes through the fundamentals of hydration, bulk fermentation, shaping and additions without being overwhelming.

Nothing replaces the experience of making your own batches though.
 
On the subject of making bread and books about bread... How many kind of flours do you guys actually enjoy/use in the pantry for the purpose of making bread?

I have been perusing my library card to go through whatever sourdough books are out there, and much like the average cookbook one of the downsides of them is that they keep making recipes with ever fancier ingredients. As a scrooge budget-conscious Kiwi, I am finding it hard to even justify buying a dutch oven my sourdoughs are all in sandwich loafs so far, let alone fill my pantry with multiple kinds of fancy flours.

On a similar stingy note, it gets fucking cold where I live so to keep my starter warm I put it near my internet modem. It's a appliance that's always on so I don't have to keep something else on specially for my starter.

It likes being there a lot. Almost makes me sad when thinking about banishing it to the shadow realm (the refrigerator) soon so I stop having too much discard. Currently testing leaving about 10g and feeding 1:5:5 daily to keep the output more manageable.
 
Lucky enough to own a Dutch oven, but i still just make loaves in a tin, and put a tray of water in for steam. I'd recommend a cast iron dutch oven in general as it's my favourite pan and theoretically should last a lifetime. However as a Poor who only has one because I married a guy who already had one himself I can understand holding back.

Unless you're bored, want to experiment or just want to expand your range I would just stick to normie supermarket bread flour. Works just fine.

Saying that, I probably do plenty of things in a "wrong" or wasteful way. I just keep to a rhythm and system that works for me. I keep mine in the cupboard, feed it daily using 50:50 45ish grams each flour and whey (have whey as a by product from making yoghurt anyway) and bake one tin loaf that uses a lot of starter per week alongside a pizza base to keep things from getting out of hand. Any leftover loaf gets grated into breadcrumbs which usually freeze well due to being pretty dry by that point.

I can imagine in warmer climates, or to be more economical, wanting to fridge your starter. I just cba with having to put extra steps into baking and I have a v small fridge with limited real estate in there.

It might be boring, non-artisanal or not the most correct way of doing things but it fits nicely into the rhythm of the week around my other responsibilities. I like having real bread on hand and, much as i go through a lot of flour, the cost isn't one that I'm too worried about. It costs about the same between the nearest supermarkets to me. Slightly cheaper at Aldi but not enough to make a special trip and often one of the loyalty cards offer me discounts/bonus points seeing as they know i buy a lot of it.
 
I use a 50/50 mix of regular white flour and pizza flour just because it makes the dough stronger and easier to work with, but honestly just regular supermarket flour works fine and tastes great, you don't need fancy flour to make amazing bread.
I have experimented a lot with coarser types of flour like rye, whole wheat, graham and whatnot but it mostly just makes the dough a pain in the ass to handle due to how grainy it becomes. I do feed my starter a 50/50 mix of wheat and rye though, it seems to make it more active and shortens the fermentation time.

If you bake a lot and are looking to make nice loaves, a Dutch oven is probably the single biggest upgrade you can get. I don't think I would bake nearly as much or even at all if I didn't have one, but I also find the moment where you remove the lid to get a first look at the rise of your loaf to be unreasonably thrilling, so I'm probably pretty biased towards it.
 
Does anyone have experience creating their own 100% einkorn sourdough starter? What differences have you found or adjustments needed for recipes which call for traditional wheat?
 
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