Recipes

[ScarletDove]

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@gardenman wrote:

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I've been researching sourdough breads and watching a lot of the Northwest Sourdough videos. I'm going to try sourdough breads this fall. I'm already stockpiling supplies I'll need and even bought the canned pineapple juice this morning for starting the starter. (It's expiration date is September 2020, so it should be fine until August.) I make homemade bread nearly every Saturday during the college football season, typically timing it so the bread is done by noon. Sourdough breads being slower rising will likely have me doing most of the work on Friday, then letting the dough rest in the fridge overnight, before shaping it, letting it have a final rise, and baking it. Teresa Greenway of Northwest Sourdough has lots of helpful videos on YouTube. It'll be something new to try. There are tons of online resources for anyone interested in sourdough. I'll probably start my starter three weeks ahead of my first planned bake to give me a margin of error time-wise. So, around the end of the first week in August (not that far away now) I'll try making the starter and go from there. In a week after starting it I should have a starter for waffles/pancakes, then by the end of week two it should be strong enough for bread. Then it's just a question of keeping it fed and healthy. 

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@gardenman   Best of luck with your new sourdough ventures.  When you play with the starters, do you know if you like your bread mildly sour or stronger?  You will play with the starter and how it is created to achieve the "sour flavor" you want for your finished breads.....let us know your process when you start and your progress!  Bakers and sourdough afficionados will appreciate your future postings....

[gardenman]

@ScarletDove 

Initially I'll just be following the Teresa Greenway basic recipe. Once I'm comfortable with that I'll branch out a bit. I first found her videos while researching shaping high hydration doughs. I had a recipe (using conventional yeast) that made good tasting bread, but was so wet that getting it to hold a shape was nearly impossible. Her videos helped me overcome that.

The pineapple juice gives the starter an initial acidic boost lessening the chance for the starter to fail early. A lot of starters apparently fail around day three when the starter isn't acidic enough. The pineapple juice solves that problem and you only need it the first four days. By day four the cultures should be established enough to maintain a low ph on its own.

I've got a ton of baking books with sourdough bread recipes to play with, so if I'm not happy with one, I can try another. It'll be something a bit different to play with. The longer rise times complicate matters a bit for those like me who want it noonish, but by starting it the day before and then letting it chill out overnight I should be able to stay on schedule. I'll be starting the starter around the end of the first week of August. The worst of the heat is gone by then. Starters take about two weeks to be ready, so I'll have an extra week if needed. We'll see what happens, but her methods seem reasonably foolproof. (Remind me I said that.)

[ScarletDove]

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@gardenman wrote:

@ScarletDove 

Initially I'll just be following the Teresa Greenway basic recipe. Once I'm comfortable with that I'll branch out a bit. I first found her videos while researching shaping high hydration doughs. I had a recipe (using conventional yeast) that made good tasting bread, but was so wet that getting it to hold a shape was nearly impossible. Her videos helped me overcome that.

The pineapple juice gives the starter an initial acidic boost lessening the chance for the starter to fail early. A lot of starters apparently fail around day three when the starter isn't acidic enough. The pineapple juice solves that problem and you only need it the first four days. By day four the cultures should be established enough to maintain a low ph on its own.

I've got a ton of baking books with sourdough bread recipes to play with, so if I'm not happy with one, I can try another. It'll be something a bit different to play with. The longer rise times complicate matters a bit for those like me who want it noonish, but by starting it the day before and then letting it chill out overnight I should be able to stay on schedule. I'll be starting the starter around the end of the first week of August. The worst of the heat is gone by then. Starters take about two weeks to be ready, so I'll have an extra week if needed. We'll see what happens, but her methods seem reasonably foolproof. (Remind me I said that.)

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@gardenman  I hope you have as much fun as I did playing with starters and breads when I first got involved.  If you have made breads before, which it sounds like you have, just remember, baking is chemistry and it is affected by the yeasts in your enviroment, ingredients, humidity, difference in milled grains, etc.  As far as scheduling to fit your timing, sourdough takes more time involvement but you will get it to flow to your needs and/or preference.  When I bake yeast rolls, I put them in frig overnight to slow rise and age a bit which adds to the flavor. Have fun with this new area, it is extremely satisfying...  I have gotten away from baking sourdough, but your postings expressing enthusiasm and research sound like me although there was no YouTube or internet when I started, very few good bread/sourdough books and only available at libraries, most of what I found unique or unusual was out of a food magazine called "Sphere" back in the 70's; an article in one of their issues tweeked my desire to try some of their very unusual bread recipes using whole grains, flax, millet and other ingredients readily used today, but not readily available and/or used back then; it got me into unusual bread baking with different flavors, grains, sourdough, etc. etc.  Bakers over the millennia have used whatever they had available to put in their breads, so many recipes were dependent on what was in surplus. It is possible that many of the unusual recipies were european or european inspired. A whole different area that excited my baking... All those experiments with breads, grains, flavors and ways to handle and bake breads rolled over into other areas of my cooking although baking is what brought great pleasure to my kitchen!

[gardenman]

I'm now sixty and I've been baking bread since my teens. I just enjoy it. I tried a sourdough starter once before, many years ago (I think from the Best Bread Ever Cookbook) that used organic grapes as a starter and used a ton of flour. (And I mean a ton of lfour.) Each feeding was several cups of flours and I used over five pounds of flour just feeding the starter for the first few weeks. It just seemed horribly impractical to me and I wasn't thrilled with the results so out it went and back to yeast. (Just making the starter cost something like $20+ between the flour, organic grapes, muslin to wrap the grapes, etc.)

My favorite bread recipe right now is Bernard Clayton's Pain Ordinare Careme. It's a weird recipe in that you start with a batter you beat for ten minutes, but it makes great bread. That's kind of my go-to recipe. It never fails. I'll make rye bread, whole wheat bread, Italian bread, focaccia, soft pretzels (and yes, I use a lye dip,) flat breads, and whatever my desire is, but I never ventured back to sourdough. My local grocery store sells some store-baked sourdough bread, but they use artificial sour flavor in it and I'm not a big fan of that.

I watch way too many bread baking videos on YouTube and Teresa Greenway's videos on sourdough have been getting a lot of my attention lately. She makes beautiful bread and gives great step-by-step directions, so I'll give sourdough another shot and see what happens. Probably twenty or more of my bread cookbooks have extensive sourdough sections, so I can dust those off and try different variations. Who knows what kind of weird yeasties I have floating around my kitchen? I could stumble onto something wonderful. (Or not!) There's only one way to find out though. Teresa's approach seems less wasteful and the only thing I had to buy extra was the pineapple juice which wasn't terribly pricey. Technically you don't even need the pineapple juice, but you're more likely to get good results with it, so I'm using it.

Doughs like my homemade donuts and sticky buns spend the night in the fridge now so I can have them ready for breakfast the next morning, so I'll just toss the sourdough bread into the fridge just before shaping it, then pull it out in the morning, shape it, let it have one final long rise and bake it. With my cats getting me up at five-ish most mornings that gives me about seven hours before noon. Shaping the dough takes just minutes, then a five or six hour slow rise, a half hour or so to bake and some cool down time and I should be just about ready for kickoff.

[gardenman]

@ScarletDove 

"Best of luck with your new sourdough ventures.  When you play with the starters, do you know if you like your bread mildly sour or stronger?  You will play with the starter and how it is created to achieve the "sour flavor" you want for your finished breads.....let us know your process when you start and your progress!  Bakers and sourdough afficionados will appreciate your future postings...."

And the starter is now started. I'm using the Pineapple Juice Solution method featured on "The Fresh Loaf" web site. Today is day one and it starts with two tablespoons of pineapple juice and two tablespoons of whole wheat flour. The pineapple juice creates a very acidic environment while the whole wheat flour provides the natural yeast and enzymes along with food for them. Tomorrow and Sunday I'll add two more tablespoons of pineapple juice and whole wheat flour then starting day four it transitions keeping two ounces of starter and discarding the rest and adding 1 ounce of flour and two tablespoons of water each day. I'll likely transition to Theresa Greenway's (Northwest Sourdough) feeding regimen from day five on as I'll be using her recipes initially, so that way I'll have the right amount of starter for them.

Any starter method works over time (the early pioneers weren't especially flush with pineapple juice) but there's a transition that takes place where acid takes over and by starting with an acidic liquid (like pineapple juice) you create a shortcut to that takeover and make creating a healthy starter more of a certainty. My one previous attempt at creating a sourdough starter (many years ago) used two cups of flour per day which became insanely expensive and wasteful and also required organic grapes as the starter source for the yeast and distilled water. One ounce of flour a day and some pineapple juice is not so bad in comparision. In theory, within a week I'll have a sourdough starter that's ripe enough for pancakes and waffles, and in two weeks it'll be strong enough for bread.Which will be nicely timed for the start of the college football season. College football Saturdays are my typical bread baking day. 

My starter should just sit there and do nothing today, but by day four there should be signs of life. We'll see what happens. In two weeks it should be good to go. I'll mix the first dough on that Friday (8/23, starter permitting) and let it rise overnight and then bake it off on Saturday the 24th. I have my two old round bannetons and I just got a new cloth-lined oblong one to play with also, so I can have some fun with shapes. This'll be a fun new experiment for me with the sourdough. I may even try it for my soft pretzels. I love sourdough hard pretzels, so why not soft pretzels. (And yes, I'm one of those crazy baker people who dips them in the hot lye solution and buys barley malt extract to give my pretzels a more pretzelly flavor.) I'll post back on Sunday for an update, but nothing much should happen between now and then.

[shortbreadlover]

you can also dry your  starter.  just spread it thin on a piece ofparchment paper and then let it dry..

when you want to use it just put 1/2 tsp in warm water amd then feed as usual then use as needed or desired

[Sooner]

The problem with using starter is you have to tend to it so often, and you get busy then you're out of luck. 

[gardenman]

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@Sooner wrote:

The problem with using starter is you have to tend to it so often, and you get busy then you're out of luck. 

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The first two weeks are a bit busy, but then it quiets down afterwards. The first week isn't terrible, just discard some and feed the rest. The second week, depending on the speed and strength of the starter you have to feed it two or three times a day, then once it's mature you can refrigerate it and just feed it once a week. In addition to drying it, you can also freeze it. Starters have been around forever, so it's not rocket science. Oddly, science just recently started studying sourdough starters, so more will be learned.

[gardenman]

Today was the transition from pineapple juice and whole wheat flour to the normal feeding. The normal feeding involves keeping two ounces of starter each day and tossing the rest, then adding one ounce of flour (I'm using a half ounce of bread flour and a half ounce of whole wheat) and one ounce of water. If things play out as expected I may have to start feeding twice a day later in the week, but by the weekend I should have a starter strong enough for waffles/pancakes/biscuits, then next weekend strong enough for bread. So far, so good. Some minimal bubbling and activity already, but nothing overly energetic.

[gardenman]

The starter is doing very well. It's very active and bubbly/foamy this morning before the feeding. Here's a photo of it pre-feeding.

It has a nice, yeasty smell to it. There have been no negatives to report at all so far. There's four ounces of starter in there and each day two ounces get tossed and then one more ounce of flour (half whole wheat and half bread) gets added with one ounce of water. The mix gets stirred and set out at room temp again for 24 hours. Given the way it's behaving I may have to step up to two feedings a day in another day or two. This has been a very easy process so far and very successful so far. I'm quite pleased with the results. There's no scent of the pineapple juice left now. All you smell is a nice, yeasty smell. 

If I want to make a rye starter out of it all I need to do is switch over to feeding it rye flour for a bit and it'll become a rye starter. RIght now I'm getting good results from the half and half (half whole wheat and half bread flour) so I'm sticking with that for now, but come fall I'll convert some over to a rye starter for some rye bread.