Question for Sourdough Bread Makers

[street]

Thank You again Kings over Queens.

I have a kit, so I have all the tools and a basket to form the dough.

 

[arbeadub]

When the starter is divided and fed you are encouraging the fastest growing yeast to dominate, which makes bread rise higher and more rapidly. Since its an open system the natural yeast strains in your area will eventually take over.


The lacto bacteria will also change, maybe from good tasting to not as good. The bacteria convert the ethanol that the yeast make to the sour notes that make sourdough distinctive.

 

[Kork13]

So, what type of pan do you bake that bread in. In the picture I take it you just have it loaf resting on a rake and not that it was baked on that rake and a cookie sheet.

If you're making a sandwich loaf (vs. a boule), you can also just use a standard bread pan as well. But as KoQ mentioned, you'll want to have a second pan in the oven with water to provide extra steam. I always bake my sandwich loaves above a pie dish filled half-way with water.

 

[Chuckanut]

It's all experience, trial (and error).

One bit of advice or perspective I'll share...it's only flour, water, yeast (or starter) and salt. Even a bad loaf will taste better than store bought, or you can make it into croutons, breadcrumbs, or feed the racoons or birds.

In the end, don't sweat it. Really.

+1 on the basics.

And another +1 for the slow rise. I do that overnight on the kitchen counter because I don’t plan ahead far enough to do a 24 hour rise in the refrigerator.

I hardly kneed the dough at all. For to six stretches and fold over, and then let it sit to rise up. Really, it’s easy and tastes so much better than the ‘artisanal’ loaves sold in the grocery stores.

 

[street]

If you're making a sandwich loaf (vs. a boule), you can also just use a standard bread pan as well. But as KoQ mentioned, you'll want to have a second pan in the oven with water to provide extra steam. I always bake my sandwich loaves above a pie dish filled half-way with water.

Gotcha and we have all of those items. I can picture what you have described so that will be a huge help when I get to that part early next week.

Thank You.

 

[street]

Day 3 (72 hours) after the start of sourdough starter. Yesterday I marked the outside of jar with a piece of tape to see if it has grown. I don't see much if any expanding/growing of the starter. From a side view, it does have small air bubbles in the substants throughout.

I will be feeding it now after 24 hours. I have been till this morning feeding every 12 hours. Every feeding except this one I have noticed hooch on the top but not this time.

To be continued.

 

[Kings over Queens]

Progress!

Tape is a good tool to mark levels. I use a rubber band.

Excited for your progress.

 

[ERD50]

Sourdough bread very much depends on the climate. San Francisco is famous for sourdough because their cool foggy climate apparently brings out the best flavors.

Also yeast varies quite bit depending on location.

I used to be an avid bread baker, even made ciabatta which can be challenging. But we don’t eat bread anymore.

That's very true, and what most people don't realize is that bringing a sample of SF yeast home and using it to make your own bread only works for one or two baking sessions. The yeast and bacteria will adapt fairly quickly to your home environment and the flavor will change. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it won't taste exactly like it does in SF any more. The same goes for Alaskan or any other geographically specific strains.

Now that is very interesting!!! Wow

This scientific study seems to say (if I'm interpreting it correctly) that while you may start with a specific blend for your starter (San Francisco for example), it may only be 'true' to that blend for a few generations, but it sounds like the yeast and lacto-acid microbes in the flour are the elements that determine that, not the local climate:

https://elifesciences.org/articles/61644#s3

Contradicting widespread beliefs about the regionality of sourdough microbiomes (e.g. the famous ‘San Francisco sourdough’), our comprehensive sampling demonstrates that geographic location does not determine sourdough microbial composition. Previous studies using limited sampling have suggested that sourdough starters can vary across geographic regions (Liu et al., 2018; Scheirlinck et al., 2007b), but we are unaware of other studies that have rigorously explored sourdough microbiome biogeographic patterns in a distance-decay framework. The limited role of geography in explaining sourdough diversity may be driven by the widespread movement of starters across large geographic distances through starter sharing or commercial distribution. Flour, a major potential source of microbes in de novo starters (Minervini et al., 2015; Reese et al., 2020), is also moved across large spatial scales. This geographic homogenization of starter and flour microbes likely swamps out any regional differences in potential yeasts or bacteria that can disperse into starters.

It seems that baking the flour at pasteurization temperatures would kill off enough of the yeast and LBA microbes to allow the purchased starter to predominate. Something similar is done with other fermentation processes (pasteurizing no-boil beers, or adding metabisulphite to grape juice, to kill/weaken wild yeast before adding a specific yeast/LBA strain)

-ERD50

 

[Sunset]

I’ve used an 11 lb max $12 etekcity kitchen scale that has worked well for me for ten years. Highly rated on amazon fwiw. All my scale errors are user issues. I’ve owned it a long time. It’s not high end but does the job.

....

Does this scale have the ability for me to put on it a plate, and then reset to zero , so I don't count the plate weight when weighing stuff. ?

I don't really want to put various foods on the same surface, especially meat and vegies. But I can use identical plates.

 

[braumeister]

Does this scale have the ability for me to put on it a plate, and then reset to zero , so I don't count the plate weight when weighing stuff. ?

I don't really want to put various foods on the same surface, especially meat and vegies. But I can use identical plates.

Almost any electronic scale will have a Tare function to do that.

 

[Jerry1]

Does this scale have the ability for me to put on it a plate, and then reset to zero , so I don't count the plate weight when weighing stuff. ?

I don't really want to put various foods on the same surface, especially meat and vegies. But I can use identical plates.

Almost any electronic scale will have a Tare function to do that.

And I’ve always done it that way. I don’t think I’ve ever put any type of food directly on my scale - except maybe something whole like an apple.

 

[walkinwood]

Day 3 (72 hours) after the start of sourdough starter. Yesterday I marked the outside of jar with a piece of tape to see if it has grown. I don't see much if any expanding/growing of the starter. From a side view, it does have small air bubbles in the substants throughout.

I will be feeding it now after 24 hours. I have been till this morning feeding every 12 hours. Every feeding except this one I have noticed hooch on the top but not this time.

To be continued.

Keep it in a warmish place. I used to keep it on top of my water heater which stayed around 70F in the winter here. We keep our home at a cooler temp.

And.. this is extremely important. Your starter needs a name.
I started mine during the pandemic and she's called Quarantina.


Look through some youtube videos for beginners and find a non-fussy presenter whose style you like. I've learned so much from YT videos.


I found this guy hilarious and his method worked well for me when I was getting started. Since you got a kit, I'd just follow their instructions. However, the videos will give you an idea of what your dough should look like at various stages.

 

[street]

Keep it in a warmish place. I used to keep it on top of my water heater which stayed around 70F in the winter here. We keep our home at a cooler temp.


And.. this is extremely important. Your starter needs a name.


I started mine during the pandemic and she's called Quarantina.

Thank You! I been actually thinking that would be a great place to keep it. I will it there right now. Thanks!!

For a name I will ponder that and come up with one. Great idea. Lol

 

[braumeister]

Keep it in a warmish place. I used to keep it on top of my water heater

That's a great place for many people. Another, even more convenient for some, is in your oven with the oven light turned on. That will often keep the oven just warm enough.

 

[arbeadub]

Consider the name "Beth" or "Dutton", but then again may be not since they have made us wait so long to finish this last season.

 

[Kings over Queens]

Thank You! I been actually thinking that would be a great place to keep it. I will it there right now. Thanks!!

For a name I will ponder that and come up with one. Great idea. Lol

Mine is Lev, short for Levan, which is short for Levaning.

 

[ERD50]

Another topic for this - I see so many sources saying don't use chlorinated tap water, but is this a real concern, or just another thing passed down w/o question?

But if you are concerned about chlorine, you should be made aware that just leaving tap water out overnight, or boiling it (as many sites suggest) probably won't help. Most towns use chloramine, a more stable form of chlorine, and that won't boil off or evaporate. You need active charcoal filtering, or use campden tablets (metabisulphite) to neutralize it.

The initial sourdough starter may be more sensitive to chloramine, I don't know. But we've made regular yeast breads and I haven't noticed any difference in those since we've moved from a house with private well (no chlorination), and our current city water.

From what I've read so far, plenty of warnings about tap water, but also many saying they use it with no problems. I'm leaning to "no problem". We get Chicago water, which is soft-ish, so should be enough minerals for good yeast health, but not an excess.

BTW, I do now use a campden tablet to de-chloromine the city water I brew beer with, but not for the yeast. There is a reaction between the chlorine/chloramine components and the grain that produces unwanted phenol flavors.

in a similar vein, I've made sauerkraut a couple times. That relies on the Lacto Bacteria that occurs naturally on the cabbage, but no water is added. So I don't know if the Lacto is sensitive to chlorine products.

-ERD50

 

[Trailwalker]

Does this scale have the ability for me to put on it a plate, and then reset to zero , so I don't count the plate weight when weighing stuff. ?

I don't really want to put various foods on the same surface, especially meat and vegies. But I can use identical plates.

Yes, although if it's a big dinner plate it makes it tougher to see the readings. When I weigh out the ingredients for sourdough, I use a big Pyrex clear bowl, which works perfectly and reset to zero for each new ingredient (starter, water, salt, wholewheat flour and King Arthur bread flour).

 

[street]

Day four and named the starter Alveoli.

The starter had a thin dry crust on top and a slight layer of hooch this morning. Not sure this is a normal stage of the process or not. I had to discard a cup of the starter yesterday at feeding was getting too much in quart jar. The discard I did keep in another pint jar for now. Mostly because I might need it to continue on, but not sure.

A picture of the starter before I feed this morning.

 

[walkinwood]

The hooch is normal. The thin dry crust is surprising - are you keeping it well covered?


You should discard half each time you feed. That leaves enough micro-organisms to work on the added flour, but discards a portion of the spent flour. Think of it like feeding a pet - while the discard doesn't look "consumed", it is. There are recipes to use the discard to make pancakes and like if you google for it.



Nice name! Love it.

 

[street]

The hooch is normal. The thin dry crust is surprising - are you keeping it well covered?


You should discard half each time you feed. That leaves enough micro-organisms to work on the added flour, but discards a portion of the spent flour. Think of it like feeding a pet - while the discard doesn't look "consumed", it is. There are recipes to use the discard to make pancakes and like if you google for it.



Nice name! Love it.

The only thing I can think of the thin crust came from putting it in the oven with light on overnight. I had a thermomotor and said it was 78 degrees in there this morning. We have had negative temps here and with heat turned down at night it was getting too cold on the countertop. We only keep the inside temp at 67 darning the day and 62 at night.

I wasn't aware of wanting to be a more consistent temp till I was made aware of it here. It was great advice, and the oven was a great idea with light on.

Yes, cover it with a coffee filter and a rubber band.

 

[arbeadub]

I think the dry crusty is just due to the low humidity in your area, it also indicates its getting frothy from being an active culture.

 

[Kings over Queens]

Another topic for this - I see so many sources saying don't use chlorinated tap water, but is this a real concern, or just another thing passed down w/o question?
-ERD50

No something I've ever been concerned about. Most filters reduce chorine anyway, no?

 

[Kings over Queens]

The only thing I can think of the thin crust came from putting it in the oven with light on overnight.

the crust won't hurt it, but you'll want to make sure to remove it during your discard, just because is crunchy.

I don't have any scientific proof behind the following statement, but I personally wouldn't put my starter in the oven during the development stage, reason being, you want the natural yeasts in the air to find their way to the starter mix. This is also why you don't cover the jar tightly. I can't imagine there being a lot of airflow in a closed oven.

Once the starter is established and you need it active after a feeding, the oven with the light is a great place, especially in a cool house. Ours is at 68 year round (bane on my existence) and mine still responds.

 

[Kings over Queens]

Yes, cover it with a coffee filter and a rubber band.

Perfect.