I am working with sourdough. As a German, naturally, I love Bread. I am rather good an baking simply yeast/wheat based breads but what I really miss over here is rye  and rye/wheat bread (so called grey bread). And for rye one needs sourdough. For those of you who are capable of reading German there is a terrific site on Sourdough here:http://www.der-sauerteig.comStarting a fresh sourdough is fairly easy, if you get lucky. Basically you take about a handfull of flour. Wheat or rye or even a glutenfree flour like rice flour or teff, all is possible. Then, you add as much tepid water as you need to make an almost runny dough like for thin pancakes (see picture). You place this in a clean bowl, best is stainless steel or glass, cover it with a clean (maybe even ironed) piece of cloth and place it somewhere warm. Not overly hot; around 79 F (26 C) and stable. And then? You do nothing. For about 24 hours. You do not need to add yeast. The yeast will develop by itself. And if you add baking yeast at teh beginning, chances are that it will overpower the other organisms and take over the starter dough. Which is why the recipes calling for adding yeast always suggest that you throw out the sourdough after a couple of weeks at the latest while the sourdough community in Germany pampers the lovely doughs for YEARS. (you can dry the finished product and then it can be used like instant yeast)This no-yeast-starter is, how they will have made their bread 'well leavened' as Anthimus put it. There are some lovely legends on how sourdough was 'invented' by an egyptian slave girl'. The technology was definitely around even if the particulars of this legend sound more fanciful than reality based. Sourdough was definitely around in ancient Egypt. After about a day, you add another handfull of flour and add as much water as you need to get the almost runny consistency again. do this for about 4 to 5 days. during this time, make sure of the following: (a) leave the *starting dough* alone when you are not feeding it. The stuff that is developing is a multitude of organisms some feed aerob and others anaerob so, when you add the flour mixx the solids and the liquids well, but: hands off inbetween. (b) try to keep the sides of your bowl clean (my first try ended when I stopped fungus on the sides of the bowl, i had been sick and hadn't wanted to handle the starter while I was sneezing and after ignoring it for three days I saw this and had to throw it out. I had used nice handthrown and ornamentally glazed pottery.The second try I did wit[Image]h pyrex glass and that worked wonderfully. (c) when it starts to smell vinegary (maybe even agressively so) be happy, you are doing it right. (d) when the starter starts bubbling, be happy you are doing it right (e) when the solids seperate from the liquid, don't fret, leave it alone until feeding time then mix it in well After about 5 days of feeding you 'young' sourdough can be used. I am at that stage now. This evening I started the actual bread dough. The rye part is done with sourdough and accounts for about 2/3s of the overall dough and the wheat part with normal baking yeast (even if it is a very tiny amount). This particular bread is a modern Paderborner Landbrot so that is ok, if you make a rye bread you need more sourdough than with wheat. The wheat only needs the yeasts which are part of the sourdough, though the other organisms help to stave off staleness in the finished bread. More later |
