The following is a photo essay on sourdough bread.
Collected over a few freezing days a few winters ago, the surviving organisms are cold enured. When the finished dough is put into the refrigerator to cold-proof, the yeast portion is supposed to arrest, but because it was collected in the winter, and because the organisms from that collection survived and thrived when cultured, the coldness of the refrigerator doesn't even phase it. It continues to grow more than double in size while nearly freezing in there, instead of arresting, and this is a bit of a problem. It does this even though the refrigerator is much colder than a cold-proof should be. I don't care. It's delightful and it's fascinating. This cold proof of a few days retardation is intended to give the bacterial portion of the culture time to catch up to the yeast portion of the culture, cause the dough to ferment much as beer ferments. It changes the dough, the organisms digest the complex sugars which produces carbon dioxide and alcohol, leaves an acidic tang, changes the texture, and adds much much more character to the crumb and to the chew of the final baked loaf.
These are the differences between breads produced from natural yeast cultures, so-called sourdoughs, and the foam type Wonder Bread™ that we're familiar with for making sandwiches. Commercial bread is produced from a single organism of yeast selected for its incredible reproductive proclivity and its outstanding gas production, and no bacteria at all. It makes bread fast. We don't want that.
Last week, I darn near lost mah starter! I forgot to reserve a portion and I was this -->| |<-- --="" a="" all="" and="" back="" baked="" baker.="" baking="" been="" before="" bench="" bit="" both="" buffs="" business="" can="" catastrophe="" close="" culture="" d="" days="" devotion="" div="" doubled="" dough="" eight="" entire="" exponentially="" fast="" few="" for="" forgot.="" from="" go.="" had="" have="" hour="" how="" huge="" i="" in="" increments="" into="" is="" it.="" itself="" last="" loaves="" lost="" m="" mass="" me="" minor="" moment="" my="" nails="" nick="" of="" off="" on="" oven="" over="" part="" pile="" rather="" ready="" realized="" recollecting.="" refrigerator.="" reliability="" rescued="" saved="" scrapper="" see="" shaped="" shirt="" sorts.="" sourdough="" start="" sticking="" tablespoon="" tablespoons="" take="" takes="" the="" them="" those="" threatening="" to="" trouble="" two="" used="" very="" was="" which="" with="" within="" worth="" would="" you="">
Incidentally, this same thing happened to Le Brea Bakery, Los Angeles. A disgruntled employee took the entire reserved starter for the day, and in a fit, dumped it in its entirety into the street. Mua ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa, he laughed sinisterly. Ewwww, that's bad. Another employee, the hero of the story, raced out into the street, whipped out his spoon, and pulled a few tablespoons full from the abused mass. From that, the bakery inoculated a larger batch and resumed production, a bit delayed but otherwise unfazed. And the moral of the story is ... um ... well, I don't know what the moral of the story is but there's one in there somewhere.
Four hours later. The dough is still cold to the touch. It has failed to achieve room temperature but hasn't failed to rise significantly.
Now fluff it up into a puffy bunch, and by cupping your hands, stretch the surface down around the sides. Pretend you're a professional and that you know what you're doing. The idea is to get a smooth skin of dough on the top, but not entirely because we want some trace of carefree rustic roughness here, of the sort that's so impossible to achieve.
2 comments:
I don't suppose you'd be willing to give away/sell a small amount of your starter? I live in the Denver area by Regis and I'd rather not have to order and reconstitute a starter from halfway across the globe.
The starters are all dormant. I'd have to bring them back to life very slowly to preserve their unique characteristics. They're a bit difficult and you wouldn't like them.
Best of all, and fastest and most rewarding is to take some of the flour you intend to use and mix some with water and let it sit there for four days.
If you add warmth it goes faster but that makes a little problem with transition to room temperature proofing.
I did that recently, it was very good, kept the thing going until I got tired of it then washed it all away. That would be the best and fastest. You can start that right NOW.
But yes, I do have flakes that I can mail and you can start by bringing that up bit by bit if you would prefer the long way.
I've written a lot here about starters and levain, and sourdough and natural bread and artisan bread, the search in the corner is a little bit helpful and so are the tags, somewhat, I was a bit slow on the uptake about the purpose of tags.
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