calling out all home-bread makers!

Anything Else!

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Postby bruceb » Sun Oct 25, 2009 8:26 pm

Well, yeast and mold both belong to the kingdom fungi, so it's a bit difficult to generalise. I have never had yeast get moldy, but eventually the microorganisms die and it smells bad and certainly would not be usable. We buy 42g (for historical reasons) cakes of fresh yeast for about 0.20 € and they keep in the refrigerator for at least 2 weeks. I would not buy a larger amount in any case.

BTW, I did some experiments with freeze dried yeast and am convinced that the bread made with it is virtually identical to the bread made with fresh yeast. I know that this will cause a lot of people to foam at the mouth (C02 from the fermentation), but I am personally convinced of it. It is necessary to awaken the freeze-dried yeast first with a bit of sugar and tepid water and then give it time to reactivate. In my undergraduate years in microbiology I even did a study of this in which I compared CO2 output, active yeast cell count and finally subjective taste testing of baked products. It was not possible to detect an objective or subjective difference if the procedure was followed carefully.

Some bakers have their own yeast cultures which they guard with their lives. I know that they give very different results to the normal fresh yeast from the supermarket and to the standard 7g packets of dried yeast. I tried to get a baker from New York to give me a sample of his yeast for testing, but he wouldn't even consider it. Beer brewers are less protective and you can occasionally get one to give you a sample of his yeast. With some adaptation it can be used for bread making. They're all Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but different strains can be quite different.
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I decided I needed a bit of a change so I roasted some Monsooned Malabar. That was a change!
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Postby dr.chris » Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:00 pm

The Bertinet course was interesting - just focused on the basics of handling dough. and a couple of hints and stuff which fits well with what I already do. Also made fougasse and foccacia which is something I hadnt done before because the recipes seemed too complex or used ingredients we didnt really like. Like most things they were actually considerably simpler than I had imagined - especially after you get past the mystique.

Considering the cost it would have been nice to get some notes rather than end up buying the book (which I didnt) but you cant get everything and I will probably be back to do the french bread course when we save up enough extra money to do it- (and we just went thru the coffee upgraditis thing so cash isnt plentiful)

Thing about how sour sourdoughs taste is usually at what point you refresh them before using them. Yeast grows fast and makes bread sweeter- but then it uses up most of the available food then starts dying out. Bacteria grow slow and make the dough more sour. So for the sweetest loaves you have to time when you do the final refreshment for maximum yeast numbers when you use it. Something like 2 hours or so (depending on temperature) before actually starting to make the bread is what I would do.

For my normal loaves I use a rye sourdough which I typically refresh in the morning (but at least 2 hours before making the bread) I do keep the sourdough in the fridge before refreshing tho and only leave it at room temperature after that last refreshment. I then add a teaspoon or less of dried yeast which I mix with water and the sourdough before adding to the flour. The dried yeast just seems to make the process more reliable but all the rubbish about mixing dried yeast with warm water and sugar to get it going is in my experience just that - rubbish.
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Postby Jasonscheltus » Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:22 am

I did a course very recently too. And I will describe the method he taught us to make our own leaven from scratch. It was the method they used in the bakery, and the bakeries leaven smelt AMAZING, a little stone-fruit, like apricot and pear, but also a little sharp like sweet apple cider - lovely.

He used potato skin for the bacteria and yeast. His idea was that bacteria (or yeast?) that wants to eat starches, like flour, can be found in similar places - like potato skins. He said this was more of a Great British method, the French and German methods relying more on grape skins etc..

2 peels of potato skin in
1/3 cup of water
add enough whole rye flour to stir into the consistency of hummus
leave for 36 hours.

take one heaped teaspoon of this mixture and add to
1/3 cup of water
add enough whole rye flour to stir into the consistency of hummus
leave for 24 hours

take one heaped teaspoon of this mixture and add to
1/3 cup of water
add enough whole rye flour to stir....etc
leave for 24 hours

NOW take one LEVEL teaspoon of this mixture and....
1/3 cup of etc.
add enough whole etc etc.
leave for 24 hours

Now repeat this last step (the level teaspoon) every day for the rest of your life....

I am on day two, btw.. wish me luck!!

The bread we made on the day with this starter was lovely, I'll photograph some for y'all.

-Jason
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Postby dr.chris » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:15 am

That technique sounds right

Rye flour is supposed to be particularly good for making sourdough. yeast is present everywhere and yes I have heard of using grape skins. I can imagine that using potato peel may help speed up the process but you are just as likely to get the yeast you need from the air. Its still yeast.

The main book I use - (Bread Matters Andrew Whitley) recommends keeping just a rye sourdough and using it to start other sourdoughs if you need them

A few years ago I read this article about this 'hot new chef' who used peaches for the yeast. Sounds great but its still just yeast but was probably a nice line to bullshit the interviewer with..

Last time I tried making a leaven I used spelt flour and it was bubbling away after 3 days without any help- I was quite amazed.
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Postby bruceb » Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:57 am

We have always made our own sourdough starter just from yeast in the air. We have never successfully started a new batch in the winter and we have only used rye flour.

Once we have the starter established we make something called "sourdough crumble" by adding enough dry rye flour to about 100g of starter that is left over after baking, stirring and mixing until it forms something like crumble topping. We put that in a tight screw-lid jar and it keeps in the refrigerator for weeks and weeks. This saves having to refreshen it regularly. Using it and renewing it about twice monthly we have kept a batch for 10 years this way, but sourdough does not live forever regardless of how you keep it. It gets weaker over the years and it's definitely worth making new when that happens.
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I decided I needed a bit of a change so I roasted some Monsooned Malabar. That was a change!
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Postby dr.chris » Mon Oct 26, 2009 11:09 am

Just as a matter of interest bruceb why do you think the sourdough becomes weaker over time?
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Postby bruceb » Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:17 pm

dr.chris wrote:Just as a matter of interest bruceb why do you think the sourdough becomes weaker over time?


I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. I know that it does become weaker from personal experience and from many conversations with bakers and other bread makers, although it is somewhat controversial. It may be that if you religiously bake daily or weekly and are very careful with your replenishing efforts the mother sponge may last indefinitely. Careful questioning of bakers who say they have been using the same sponge for decades makes me think that they would like that to be the case, but they have "strengthened" the starter with new cultures now and again.

If you are asking about the mechanism behind this process of weakening I can only speculate: Slow selection processes whereby certain bacteria and yeasts gain the upper hand and those are not necessarily the most effective organisms for leavening is one possibility. One-sided nutrition and life conditions may not just be unhealthy for humans, but for microorganisms as well. I'm only guessing here.

Sourdough is a complex culture of bacteria of the lactobacillus family and a number of yeasts (fungi)of the Candida family or Saccharomyces exiguus. The sourness of the bread results from a lactic acid fermentation by the bacteria. Things can go wrong with the mother sponge resulting in unusable results such as "ropey" bread, off flavours and poor texture. The reason for this is almost always a "spontaneous" repopulation of the mother sponge. Back in the dark ages I took a course in "Food Microbiology" at Purdue Univ. in Indiana. We were given a number of starters that had gone off and were supposed to find out what the cause might have been. If I remember correctly there was no one reason, sometimes a "foreign" bacterium had taken over, in other cases it was yeasts. I guess this can happen over time, not leading to disastrous results, but just leading to loss of leavening and acidifying strength.

Edit: I forgot to mention that adding potato skins or adding the cooking water from potatoes actually provides the microorganisms with more free starch, improving the leavening characteristics of the starter.
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I decided I needed a bit of a change so I roasted some Monsooned Malabar. That was a change!
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Postby Bertie_Doe » Mon Oct 26, 2009 2:44 pm

I used to use fresh yeast from Morrison's s/mkt, available in the chilled section in 4 oxo-cube sized foil blocks. My buds are similar to Bruce and I couldn't tell the difference between fresh and Dried Active, so I changed to Allison's 125g tubs for £0.90p - a lot less hassle than fresh. I start by adding the water to the Kenwood bowl, add tsp sugar and 10g of dried yeast. 10 mins later, when there's a raft of surface bubbles, I add the flour and fire up the motor.

One of the best places to lurk and get info on things yeasty is rec.food.sourdough. I don't bother to post as most of them are geeks with beards and anoraks - and that's just the women!! http://preview.tinyurl.com/yhdafqz
You can get commercially available wine yeast cultures, Burgundy, Reisling etc, but in the States you can also get cultured sourdough starters - I don't know if these are sold in Europe yet. If you look at the obove link, there seems to be 2 schools : those that prefer natural flour yeast s/d and those who prefer cultured. I'm guessing here, but maybe overtime, your precious rye flour yeast you cultivated on the windowsill, will get inoculated with wild airborn yeast and change it's characteristics. It's down to individual tastes whether you want to refresh a favourite starter or start new each week.

BTW you can get Bertinet etc books on Amazon at half price (I did). 'Used' is quite often a euphemism for 'new, gathering dust, I need the warehouse space'.
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