Making Sour Dough Bread

[pwyll]

oh one more thing, sorry to be so long winded. If your starter gets funky you can bring it back almost all the time unless its really gotten bad. What you do is something called "Washing". To to do this you pour out all but a small amount of the starter and feed it in at least a ratio of 6 to 1, higher is preferable, two or 3 times a day. When this happens I don't usually bother to measure for proper hydration but I problably use a 10 to 1 ratio. It takes about a week, sometimes a couple of weeks but it will almost always come back

The other thing I wanted to mention about building starters. If you want to get sour bread just double the volume of the starter when you feed it and try to get a mixture that is rather thick, then ferment at about 85-90 degrees. If you want a less sour, potentially lighter bread you can triple or quaduple it. Remember that the bacteria casues most of the sourness and they grow rather slow in comparison to yeasts so you want to slow down the yeast by giving smaller feedings and increase the temp which makes the bacteria grow faster. The thicker consistensy gives the starter a more anerobic environment and reduces oxidation

 

[erinszoo]

Wow! Thanks for all the great info on this.

 

[wyoDreamer]

oh one more thing, sorry to be so long winded. If your starter gets funky you can bring it back almost all the time unless its really gotten bad. What you do is something called "Washing". To to do this you pour out all but a small amount of the starter and feed it in at least a ratio of 6 to 1, higher is preferable, two or 3 times a day. When this happens I don't usually bother to measure for proper hydration but I problably use a 10 to 1 ratio. It takes about a week, sometimes a couple of weeks but it will almost always come back

The other thing I wanted to mention about building starters. If you want to get sour bread just double the volume of the starter when you feed it and try to get a mixture that is rather thick, then ferment at about 85-90 degrees. If you want a less sour, potentially lighter bread you can triple or quaduple it. Remember that the bacteria casues most of the sourness and they grow rather slow in comparison to yeasts so you want to slow down the yeast by giving smaller feedings and increase the temp which makes the bacteria grow faster. The thicker consistensy gives the starter a more anerobic environment and reduces oxidation

When you say feed in a ratio of 6 to 1 - what do you mean?

Thank you for sharing your knowlegde and insight. I am becoming known as the bread lady of the block, most recipes I use make two loaves of bread and we typically only eat 1 loaf and give the other away. lol

 

[pwyll]

Sorry I should have been clearer. What I meant by a 6 to 1 ratio was that you take one part of your starter and add 6 parts of unfermented water/flour mixture the consistency of a thick pancake batter. If you weigh the flour and water, which helps determine how much four and water are in the starter so you can account accurately for them in recipes is equal parts by weight. I use different kinds of "starters" but I'm only talking about the "Poolish" style starter most people seem to use for sourdough to avoid confusion

What you are doing is giving the wild yeast, which grows a lot faster than the bacteria ( and also go dormant a lot faster), a chance to multiply. The nasty bacteria varieties grow rather slowly and as you continue to feed the starter those bacteria and their wastes start fading into the background and the starter starts cleaning itself up. At some point the starter will start to regain that clean vinegar odor when fermented and you can go back to the normal double to quadruple feedings depending on your preference and start using it again

You can convert recipes from conventional yeast to sourdough pretty easy, just make starter so that half of the weight of the starter is flour and the other half water, subtract from the recipe and substitute the starter. (Most of the time I don't add any additional water and just add enough starter to get the proper hydration). You can then mix up the dry ingredients and add starter till you get the right dough texture.

Bavarian pretzels

yeast recipe Sourdough

Flour 17.6 oz (3.5 cups) 7 oz
Butter 2 oz 2oz
Water 10.6 oz (1 1/4 cup) No added water
Yeast 0.2 oz (1 tsp) None
Starter none 21.2 oz

Coarse Salt 0.5 oz (2.5 tsp) 0.5 oz
(I use Kosher salt usually)

Baking soda for boiling 1/2 -1 cup for both (or even better use food grade lye and follow instructions but be careful)

Cut the butter and salt into the flour ( I use a food processor) transfer to a bowl, preferably non metal, and incorporate the water or starter using a heavy spoon, its best not to use metal but its not critical, (I use a heavy plastic spatula shaped scraper actually). When the dough gets too heavy to mix with a spoon use your hands, adjusting with more flour, water or starter. Knead until you get a rather"muscular" dough Shape into a ball place in a non metallic bowl, cover with plastic and let rise until double. Some people prefer let it rise only slightly but I think they have a lot more flavor if you let it double. Turn out the dough onto lightly oiled surface and cut into the desired size, generally 1/4 -1/2 lb. I generally make them 0.4lbs. You can make them any size but if you make them too big they get hard to handle when you boil them. Roll the pieces out into a long pencil shape 18-24 inches long (this takes a little practice). Shape into pretzel shapes and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Be careful not to use the cheap paper and it tends to stick to the pretzels. Cover with plastic.

If you want chewy pretzels immediately refrigerate. If you want more bread like pretzels let them rise a bit up to double. I usually let them rise just until its noticable, they will rise a bit more in the refrigerator and the retardation will improvve the flavor further. Refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 350. Bring 4 qts of water to a boil, add baking soda SLOWLY. It will boil over if you add it too fast Boil 3 or 4 at a time until the pretzels rise to the surface then flip them over and boil for an additional 15 seconds then place on parchment lined baking sheet and immediately sprinkle with Coarse salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, whatever you like, some people even like sugar.

Bake at 350 on middle rack for 30 -35 minutes or until reddish brown. The time may vary depending on the boil so you have to be a little flexible, remove and cool on a cooling rack

Sourdough breads keep a lot longer than yeasted ones so you can keep them about a week if you store them in plastic. To soften up the pretzels and bring them back a bit place in 350 oven for about 5 minutes. If you want hard pretzels store in paper bag and let dry out

 

[smilingcat]

thanks pwyll. I just printed out your post. Gonna try again with sour dough bread. I've had too many problems and read lots of books and still having trouble. Sometime, its just missing one key information...

 

[chickenbusiness]

thanks pwyll. I just printed out your post. Gonna try again with sour dough bread. I've had too many problems and read lots of books and still having trouble. Sometime, its just missing one key information...

How can you make starter. Once we had bread that someone gave us a starter to that could be frozen and used or you just keep adding to it. Where would I find this again or is the sourdough like it?

 

[pwyll]

You can make a starter from scratch a number of ways, I usually just use whole rye flour, its probably the easiest, just mix it up in a thick pancake batter consistancy, keep it warm and let ferment for a few days, it will start to develop a sour smell or something like apples. You can then discard 1/2 to 2/3 of it and replace the discarded portion with white flour and water, keeping it the same consistency, then wait a few days and repeat until it starts bubbling indicating an active fermentation. Often it will start and be pretty active before the first white flour addition, in fact it uaually does for me in about 2 days or less. After that feed it every day to keep it active. Some people claim you have to feed it twice a day to keep it going strong but thats pretty excessive unless you are making a business of it. After you get it pretty active and you don't need it for a while you can wait a few days until it settles and liquid forms on the top and even a few days after that, though the longer you wait the longer it takes to get it going strong again.. Some people get the starter active then put iit in the refrigerator. That works but you need to take it out and feed it again after it warms up for a few days to make sure its good and active. I don't do that with white starter, its not that big a deal to feed them every few days if I'm not using them but I do it with rye starters because they ferment so readily and the cycle is so short. You can also make starter directly with plain old wheat flour but rye ferments more readily and so will start faster and there is less chance of contamination, usually mold, which isn't really a problem, you just keep feeding it till that gets purged . That rarely happens anyway unless your flour is pretty old. Whole grain is better for starting though, it contains more of the organism you are trying to encourage. Rye also sours more readily , meaning it promotes the organism that produce acids that make the starter and the bread sour, in fact if you are having problems making your bread sour add a bit of rye to it and it will help. Ther is also white rye flour if you can get it, its like white wheat flour in that it doesn't include the bran. I use it for some things like New York deli Rye, which has carmelized onions in it and a fancier versionof Swedish rye. . There are other ways to make starters,, some people use pinapple juice etc. You can also make a dough, which some consider a superior method, instead of the pancake consistency but its more work

I make a Desem Starter for whole wheat but thats a bit harder. In that you make a dough out of fresh ground whole wheat flour and ferment it at colder temps around 60 degrees, usually burying it in flour, the times are longer but you do pretty much the same thing except for the temp and consistency. That makes for a rich flavor that isn't sour which is desireable for certain kinds of whole wheat bread and it rises much better than a "sourdough" There are a lot of diffferent kinds of starter.

Its good to use a very sour rye starter with Rye bread, especially 100% rye because rye has enzymes that tend to degrade teh delicate gluten of rye. Acid fermentations deactivate the enzymes to a large extent allowing the bread to rise better. I think sour rye breads have a better more complex flavor as well. I wouldn't high percentage ryest until you get good at making sticky bread though because they are more difficult, though I think they are worth it myself

 

[pwyll]

Sorry for the typos, guess I was in a hurry

 

[chickenbusiness]

Please post a recipe for the whole wheat loaf bread that would be so wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[erinszoo]

We made our current batch of sour dough starter from potato water. We were blanching potatoes to dehydrate and had some good starchy water from it, added a tsp of yeast, a tsp of sugar, and flour to make a batter. It sat for about 72 hours before it got that nice sour taste to it and liquid formed on the top. Now it stays in the fridge and gets fed once a week. The taste is the best we've ever done.