18.5 scooped cups, that's one gallon of flour +2.5 cups. 4 lbs, 9.3/4 ounces. That's 5 and 1/4 ounce short of 5 lbs, not bad for guessing the weight of grain pouring out of a chute.
The grain came from downstairs brewery school.
They have a million different types of grain in bulk-bin containers. Possibly fifty or so different grains, wheat, barley, rye, rice and such. They're roasted to various extents by the method of malting, allowing grain to germinate just so then BAM! Kill it with heat. The extract from such treated grain is the malt that goes into chocolate. It's added to bread to enhance it, but here it's the actual roasted grain that's intended for bread, not non-roasted grain with malt extract added. This flour is different. The grains are roasted. I have no idea how that will work so far as making bread. Will gluten molecules still develop? I don't know. Maybe it can be used with regular white bread flour to flavor it. It's an experiment. We'll see.
I have sourdough starter rejuvenating presently. It's been languishing in the refrigerator unfed for months. I'm tired of it taking up valuable space.
The thing about sourdough is it tends to take over. You have to keep it going so the levain stays at peak activity.
You see, *strikes a professorial pose* the reason why commercial sourdough is so disappointing is they're making bread the usual way with regular commercial yeast for its outstanding properties and adding sourdough culture to it for flavor. This provides a hint of sourdough, a suggestion of sourdough flavor with none of its authenticity.
Real sourdough is made from sourdough starter cultured to full blast activity and the only leaven used. It's the farting activity of a multitude of different types of yeast organisms. And that's a tremendous leap in flavor and character, but there's more, after the dough is formed the entire batch is allowed to ferment, just like beer, so that time becomes another ingredient, and that fermentation makes all the difference in the world. That is true sourdough. It takes three days to make.
So then, beginning from scratch, starting a brand new sourdough culture, or rejuvenating an old tried and true one, takes three days at least, then three days fermentation before baking, then all day rising, so one week after beginning the project you finally get your sandwich.
There's not that much work to it, but true sourdough bread is for people who can stick with a project, feeding their culture, managing its size, as a living and demanding pet.
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