sourdough.faq David Adams dadams@cray.com ____________________________FAQ.sourdough______________________________________ Ya know I've learned alot since I wrote the following, which was mostly before I started this mailing list. There are many alternative ways of handeling sourdough. The following should not be considered gospel, but it will serve to get you started. Davids's rules for handling sourdough culture: I learned *everything* I know about sourdough from the book by Dr. Ed Wood, "Sourdoughs from Antiquity", mentioned by Darin Wilkins below. As he points out the book comes with a free start of your choice. I highly recomend this book. Rules: #1. Start with good breeding stock. The little critters (wild yeasts and lactobacilli) come in thousands of strains, millions of comb- inations. Most of these are good for nothing. If you want a quality start, get one from some- one who makes good sourdough bread, or mail-order from one of the sources mentioned below. I highly recomend Dr. Wood's Sourdoughs International. #2. Get a good book on sourdough. I felt that Dr. Woods, "Sourdoughs from Antiquity" was a wealth of information on the subject. Downside: It was printed on real poor quality paper. #3. Never feed your culture anything but flour and warm water. That is what the little critters eat. #4. Don't let the culture get too hot. Heat will kill the culture. When you do a proof keep the temperature between 85 and 90 deg. F. Don't add water which is warmer than 100 deg. F. #5. When proofing keep the culture warm. Between 85 and 90 deg F. When the culture is exposed to adverse conditions; when it gets too cold, or it dries out, the yeast and lactobacilli create spores and then die. Get a good thermomoter! Try the University Chemistry Store in your area. #6. Get to know your culture. Does it rise extra fast or is it slow. If you let it go too long is it too sour to eat, or does the flavor get better. These things vary by strain. Experiment! #7. Keep your start in a GLASS jar. Glass cleans easily. A wide mouth quart jar is recomeneded. #8. When making any sourdough recipe the first step is preparing the culture. Take the culture out of the fridge. Add 1/2 cup warm water, and 1/2 cup flour. Stir it up good. Let the culture grow for several hours. Time required depends on the particular culture. My culture needs 1 to 3 hours. Others may need 6 to 12. When you see the bubbles foam up on top thickly it is ready. See rules #4 and #5. #9 When the culture is prepared, you need to grow more. Pour the start with a bunch of flour and water into a large mixing bowl. The amount of flour and water will depend on the recipe. Many recipes call for 3 cups of white flour and two cups of warm water at this stage. Mix it up good, but lumps are ok; the culture will smooth them out. Proof for many hours. My culture requires 4 to 6 hours, others require 12. #10 After rule #9, REMEMBER TO SET ONE CUP OF THE CULTURE ASSIDE FOR FUTURE USE. #11 Before returning the culture to the jar, wash the jar out thouroughly with hot water. You don't want anything growing in the jar but the culture which you are returning. #12 The rest of the culture grown in rule #9 is for use in your recipe. Now you are free to add other ingredients. #13 If you are going to use the culture again right away and not put it back in the fridge, you can skip rule #8. Otherwise add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of warm water, proof it for 1 hour, and then put it in the fridge. As the temperature goes down the yeast and lactobacilli will form spores and the culture will store this way for at least a month, maybe two. #14 If more than a month or two go by and you haven't done any sourdough cooking then refresh your culture by repeating step #8. Pour off the extra or give it to a friend. (So you have about one cup left.) Repeat step #13. When you first take the culture out of the fridge after a long stay, it will have some liquids on top. These consist of some alcohols and mild organic acids made by the yeasts and lactobacilli, and are responsible for the sourdough flavor. Stir them in and procede as above. #15 For long term culture storage, store your culture in dried powder form. Ed Woods book doesn't tell you how to do this right out, but I sort of discovered it on my own. Actually I believe it is an old trick. Spread a three foot long section of wax paper on the Table WAX SIDE UP. Smear one tablespoon of fresh culture (from step #8, 9, or 14) around evenly and thinly over the surface of the wax paper. Let it dry overnight, and then scrape the dry flakes into a bowl and crunch them (Mortal & pestle style) into small pieces. Put the powder into a labeled zip lock bag and press the air out. The culture forms spores when it starts to dry out. The culture will store in a zip lock bag at normal temperatures like this for 6 months. It will store even longer in the frezer. I find that a zip-lock bag is very convenient way to carry a culture when traveling or moving. Make sure the bag is labled and don't flaunt those little bags of white powder! I find it convenient to do several sheets of wax paper at once. Then when friends ask for a start I spoon two teaspoons into a new bag, and carry it to work, or where ever I will see them next. Another reason I find this convenient is that if you own several different cultures, they don't all have to occupy a bottle in the fridge at once. And it is fairly easy to include a small zip-lock with a teaspoon or two of start in a letter. An easy way to share starts. #16 Dr. Wood recomends the following steps for activating dried sourdough cultures: Mix a couple of teaspoons of the dried powder with 1/2 cup of water at 95 to 100 deg F. Mix briefly and let stand for 15 min. Add 1/3 cup of white bread flour, mix well and proof for 24 hours at 85 deg. F. (My start needs 12 hours.) "The jar lid should not be tightened. During the first 12 hours the culture should be stirred once or twice as convenient. "At the end of 24 hours the culture should start to bubble but the time varies depending on which culture is to be activated. Regardless, add an additional 1/2 cup of 85 deg. F. water and 1/2 cup of flour. Then stir vigorously to whip some air into the mixture. Return it to your warm place for 12 hours. When the culture has a layer of foamy bubbles on the surface, it is ready to use. Some of the cultures will fully activate in 24-48 hours, but some may require 3 to 5 days. During this time, keep the culture at 85 deg. F., add water and flour at about 12 hour intervals and stir briskly." (Copied by permission from information sheet sent with culture sample from Sourdoughs International.) Here is the recipe I used for my bread. (Copied by permission from Ed. Wood's book "Sourdoughs from Antiquity.", p. 38 & 39) I will add my own comments with "dca>" STEP I: CULTURE PREPARATION 1) Remove the culture from the refigerator 2) Add 1/2 cup of white flour and 1/2 cup warm water to the culture jar and mix briefly. The total mixture will be about 2 1/4 cups. It need not be lump free. 3) Proof at 85 deg. F. for 6 to 12 hours until actively fermenting (as shown by bubbles on the surface). dca> The Russian Culture requires about 2 or 3 hours to reach this stage if the correct temperature is maintained. Time depends mostly on how many spores remain in culture at time of use. STEP II: THE FIRST PROOF 1) Mix all of the active culture with 3 cups of white flour and 2 cups of warm water in a 4 quart mixing bowl. It need not be lump free. 2) Proof at 85 deg. F. for 12 hours. dca> The Russian culture requires only 6 hours at this stage. 3) RETURN 1 cup of culture to the culture jar. Add 1/3 cup of white flour and 1/3 cup of warm water and proof at 85 deg. F. for one hour. Then refrigerate immediately. STEP III: THE SECOND PROOF REMEMBER TO REFRIGERATE one cup of culture from the first proof before proceeding. INGREDIENTS 4 cups culture from the first proof dca> (if I have more I use it all.) 2 tablespoons butter 1 cup milk 2 teaspoons salt 2 tablespoons sugar 6 cups white flour 1) Melt the butter over moderate heat (or heat in the microwave), add the milk to the butter, warm briefly, add the salt and sugar, and stir until dis- solved. Add this mixture to the culture and mix well. 2) Add the flour a cup at a time until dough is too stiff to mix by hand. Then turn onto a floured board and knead in remaining flour until the dough is smooth and satiny. dca> I knead about 15 min by hand. 3) Divide dough in half and form two balls. 4) Pat each ball into a one inch thick oval and form loaves by rolling from the long side, pinching the seam together as you roll the dough to form the loaf. dca> I often put a flattened ball of dough in the Dutch oven. 5) Place in greased loaf pans and proof at 85 deg. F. for 1 1/2 to 3 hours. When the dough rises 1 to 2 inches above lip of pan, it is ready to bake. dca> It helps if the dough can rise in a very humid place. When I am baking in the regular oven, I put the dough in a camping cooler with a bucket of hot water. This keeps the dough warm and humid. Problem: I have to stack the pans. If the dough rises above the lip, it hits the next pan and ruins the texture. This is why I want to build a new proofing box. dca> If you use so much dough that it rises above the lip of the Dutch oven, then you have trouble. Takes experience to know how much dough to use. This recipe can make 3 loaves for a 10" dutch oven, or one 10" and one 12". If it isn't quite warm enough, I place one or two coals on the lid of the dutch oven to let the bread rise. 6) Preheat the oven to 375 deg. F. Ten minutes after putting the bread in, reduce heat to 350 deg. F. and bake an additional 45 minutes. dca> I find this to be too long. Watch out! dca> Elsewhere in the book Ed. Wood recomends putting a tray of water in the oven for the first 10 minutes. This is supposed to improve the crust and give it a French bread texture. You see if it works. dca> For the Dutch oven I put 4 coals on the bottom of a 10" oven and 9 on the top. I cook it for about 35 minutes. I use 5 coals on the bottom and 11 on the top for the 12" oven. If it is very cold outside, it may take more time, and you probabably need more coals. I baked bread in -20 deg. F. weather in January once. 7) When the bread is removed from the oven, brush crusts lightly with melted butter. Turn out of pans and cool on a wire rack. dca> When using the dutch oven, I just turn the oven over and the bread falls out onto the wire rack. My kids call it circle bread. David's Wheat and Rye Bread. I will pick up the recipe assuming you start with 4 cups of culture from the first proof of the Russian starter. (Since all the recipies begin the same way.) I doubled the recipe; the one I modified this from started with 2 cups of culture. Ingredients 4 cups culture from the first proof 2 tablespoons dark molasses 2 tablespoons honey 1 cup milk (I am going to try using water sometime) 2 teaspoons ground coriander 2 teaspoons salt 3-4 cups finely milled rye flour 3-4 cups finely milled whole wheat flour (The total here should be between 7-8 cups.) Note: The recipe I modified called for 2 cups rye 2 cups wheat and 3 cups white. I use the K-TEC kitchen mill and mill my own flour from grain. I have recommendations on buying grain if you are interested. I can also pass on information about K-TEC. ( K-TEC has a toll free number 1-800-748-5400.) Note 2: The recipe I modified called for 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil. I omited it and I liked the results. Directions: 1. Warm the milk to lukewarm 2. Add Milk, molasses, honey, salt and coriander to the culture in a large mixing bowl and mix briefly. 3. Add most of the flour and mix well. Add flour until too stiff to mix by hand. Then turn onto a floured table and knead in the remaining flour until satiny. (I knead about 15 min.) 4. I have made loaves in regular bread pans and also laid loaves on a greased baking sheet. If you use the baking sheet I think the loaf needs to be stiffer. Proof at 85 deg F for 2 or 3 hours. 5. Bake at 350 deg. F. for about 40 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. 6. I find that the slicing properties improve after the bread has a chance to sit and gel for a day or two. I slice the bread very thinly, about 3/16 of an inch thick. The bread could be sliced thinner but my shaky hands can't manage it. >From: wilkins@scubed.SCUBED.COM (Darin Wilkins) Recently a local newspaper's food section had an article about sourdough bread starters that might be of general interest. My summary follows: In the mid 80's a pathologist, Dr. Ed Wood, held a position in Saudi Arabia. Wood is an avid bread maker and, realizing he was in the birthplace of bread, explored local bakeries in his spare time. In particular, he searched for sourdough cultures that had been passed down from the beginning of civilization. He persuaded local bakers to part with some of their historical starters and took them home to Cascade, Idaho. There he dried the starters to a form that allows them to be reconstituted with the addition of warm water and flour. He also subjected sourdough starters from other parts of the world to the same treatment. His collection now includes bread starters from 8 regions: the Yukon, San Francisco, France, Austria, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Each starter imparts a unique flavor or texture to bread. French sourdough is mild, but rises well. Bahrain sourdough is one of the most sour, while Yukon sourdough is moderately sour. He says the Saudi sourdough has the most distinctive flavor and the most overrated is from San Francisco (!). He calls the Russian starter his most aggressive starter, able to handle heavy doughs. He has started a business selling the starters, which may be ordered by credit card at 208-382-4828. They cost US $10.50 each. Also, they can be ordered by sending check or money order to: Sourdoughs International PO Box 1440 Cascade, ID 83611. In addition Wood wrote a cookbook, _World Sourdoughs From Antiquity_ (Sinclair Publishing, $23.50), which includes 137 recipes for sourdough baked goods. The book, which comes with a free starter of your choice, may be ordered with a credit card at 800-888-9567. (or at the previous number. This is the number for Sinclair Publishing. The previous number is the number for Sourdoughs International.) From: okunewck@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Phil OKunewick) Someone else wrote: >>But more to the point: how do you post a starter recipe?... > > So what you're saying is that this ever-so-special culture has to >be obtained from some Merlin-like individual, and cannot be "started" by >combining the ingredients in a RECIPE and letting the microbes take it from >there? GOLDRUSH Sourdough says that people can mix potato water or milk with flour, then let it stand for several days. After that, discard the mixture, because that foul-smelling swamp muck is nothing you would want in your kitchen, much less in your bread dough. But seriously, contact: Gold Rush Sourdough Company, Inc. 122 E. Grand Ave SO. San Fransisco, CA 94080 They sell supplies, cookbooks, and dry yeast "seed" packets waiting to be made into an active yeast culture. It's not the best sourdough I've ever tasted, but it's the best I've tasted east of the Sierra Nevadas. I think I read somewhere that it's descended from beer yeast. I recommend ordering the Junior Baking Kit (around $8 in 1986) and the book, "Adventures in Sourdough Cooking and Baking" ($8). A sourdough packet, which is the Junior kit without the storage pot, costs around $2.25. These prices were at Knotts Berry Farm over the past few years; your mileage may vary. You might also ask around your friends. You'll be amazed how many people keep a yeast culture in the back of their refrigerator. Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Goldrush; I simply bought my starter from them and have been happy with it ever since. >From: okunewck@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Phil OKunewick) Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking Subject: Re: Sourdough Starter kiniry@omicron.cs.fsu.edu (Joe Kiniry) writes: > >Earlier I asked for someone to give me the ingredients for a Sourdough >Starter, but I was told the only way to do it is to buy it. Snooping >around I found this in _Rival Crock-Pot Cooking_: > >Sourdough Starter >1 package active dry yeast... > >Did anyone ever try to do this starter? Any comments anyone? I've never tried a recipie like this, but it sounds like you're making an active wet culture of the same yeast you get in the packets. It'd be fine for bread making, but I don't think you'll get the really tangy flavor characteristic of sourdough. But since it's exposed to air, you'll get other nasties in there besides the descendants of the dry yeast. Hopefully you'll get more tasty nasties than putrid ones, which makes for good bread. You can recognize a good culture by the smell - if the culture smells good, the bread will taste good. The bad nasties often don't breed as fast as the good nasties, so even if the culture smells bad the bread might come out good. Baking the bread should be enough to kill all the nasties, so you don't wind up proofing more starter in your gut. BTW - IDEAL PROOFING FOR A STARTER BATCH: Proof it on top of your refrigerator, at 85 degrees. 95 degrees or more will probably kill it; be patient. If you are happy with previous loaves made from this culture, cover the bowl with plastic wrap to keep out other nasties. Normal proofing time for a lively culture is around 8 hours, but this can vary - a _lot_. A sudsy foam will form on top after several hours (or a couple days); soon as the foam starts to settle down, the starter is ready. If you don't get the foam after about 4 days, throw away all but one cup and try again. Once your culture is going nicely, feed it only flour and water (preferrably distilled). Anything else may kill it. You can add other stuff to your bread mix after returning a cup of starter to your storage container. >From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking Subject: Re: Sourdough (ya gotta have culchah) [The problems of a starter recipe, given that sourdough really wants a culture of particular yeast and particular bacteria] > So what you're saying is that this ever-so-special culture has to > be obtained from some Merlin-like individual, and cannot be "started" by > combining the ingredients in a RECIPE and letting the microbes take it from > there? Where do the microbes come from??? The rest of the "recipe" is trivial-- all you really need is flour and water. It's the particular yeast and bacteria that will give you a good sourdough _versus_ a nondescript, slightly-sour yeast culture _versus_ a means for rotting wet flour. Maybe you've got the right stuff in the air where you are; maybe not. If so, it's trivial; if not, a recipe won't help. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind.