Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:08:12 GMT -------------- BEGIN bread-bakers.v106.n038 -------------- 001 - "Werner Gansz" Subject: Sourdough Pancakes Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 08:01:02 -0400 Here is a recipe adapted from Joe Ortiz's Miners' Sourdough Pancakes in "The Village Baker". Assuming that you have a water-based starter, convert it into a milk starter: 1/4 cup refreshed, active starter 3/4 cup room temp milk 1 cup flour (white or whole wheat or percentages of both) Mix and let stand for 8 to 12 hours. It should be a thick batter. Do this the morning before the pancake breakfast. Ortiz has a procedure for making a pure milk starter on page 33 but I have found that the above conversion process works well enough. That evening refresh the milk starter: all of the milk starter 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup flour Mix and let stand (room temp) overnight The next morning mix the batter: all the above sponge 3 Tbs vegetable oil 2 Tbs sugar 1 egg 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda (not baking powder) Mix everything except the baking soda. Adjust to the desired thickness with milk or flour. The fermentation from the sourdough process should have produced enough acid to work with the baking soda so you don't need baking powder. However, the reaction is short-lived. I stir in the baking soda just before pouring the batter onto the griddle. It usually causes a big, bubbly reaction in the batter within 30 seconds. If you think the batter is very vigorous without the soda, you could try leaving it out. Fermented sourdough pancakes have great flavor but a different texture than ordinary pancakes, less cake-like and more bread-like, like a soft english muffin. --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.2 --------------- From: lobo Subject: Re: Substituting starter for yeast Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 08:53:52 -0600 Omit yeast, but do not omit the water used to proof the yeast. Substitute 2 cups of lively sourdough for 4/5 cup water + 1 1/5 cup flour (I based this on the proportions of my sourdough starter which is about 3 cups flour to 2 cups flour). No, I don't have a 1/5 c. measure ... I eyeball it. >Do you modify the other ingredients? if I feel like it ; ) ... often I substitute wheat germ or oat bran for some of the flour. Not too much, maybe 1/2 cup. >Do you let the dough sit and proof before baking? Whatever you would normally do with the recipe. Sometimes sourdough is slower than yeast, so let the dough proof to the same point you would with yeast (doubled in size, bubbly ... whatever the requirement is). >I've baked lots of sourdough bread, in fact I almost never use >yeast, but I'm hesitant to branch out and try other things without >some guidance. Don't be hesitant ... it's just flour and water and I understand that you can compost it if it turns into a brick or tastes bad. Lobo --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.3 --------------- From: debunix Subject: Re: Pretzel Bread Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 07:43:13 -0500 Must have missed the original post request on this one....but there is an excellent recipe in The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum, which also includes detailed information on the lye dip. The breads have a simplified shape, but the right flavor. They lye dip is absolutely key, and she walks you right through it. Really, the only reservation I have about the recipe is that it doesn't make enough, because I am entirely capable of eating the whole batch in a very short time.... Diane Brown in St. Louis http://www.well.com/user/debunix/recipes/FoodPages.html --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.4 --------------- From: Mike Avery Subject: Re: Substituting starter for yeast Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:41:25 -0600 I have a fairly good discussion about that on my web site at and a bit more information at . My rule of thumb for a starting point is to substitute 1 cup of starter for a packet of yeast and to cut about 1/2 cup of water and 3/4 cup of flour from the recipe, then adjust as needed. Hope that helps, Mike --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.5 --------------- From: Mike Avery Subject: Re: Feeding a starter Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 09:50:24 -0600 There are two points to feeding a starter. One is to get enough starter to complete one's recipe and still have some left over to continue the sourdough process. The other is to have a starter of known vitality. Most of the sourdough dropouts, as I call them in my sourdough cookbook, don't get their starter to a known state, and one time their bread rises too quickly, and the next it doesn't rise at all. Most hobbyists have starters that are at the ragged edge of death. The uncertainly compared to using yeast makes them give it up. As I told my employees, it takes a consistent process to produce a consistent product. Part of that is having a starter that is reliable and consistent. When baking commercially, I prepared the amount of starter I needed for each day's bake with little or no waste. However, I started feeding that starter about 7 days in advance. I'd start with a gram or so and over the next 7 days feed it up to the 30 kilograms or so that I needed. The controlled feeding regimen provided me with the quantity and quality of starter I needed. At home, I don't feed my starters that long. I feed them for about 3 days before using them. When I feed my storage starter, I tolerate the waste because the goal is to make sure I have a very healthy starter in my refrigerator. One that will revive well and work well. And I do use the excess to bake things. Mike --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.6 --------------- From: Mike Avery Subject: Re: Starters Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 10:13:33 -0600 "Allen Cohn" wrote : >Here's another way to justify using start just at the same point >when one would normally refresh it: > >When one makes bread using yeast, one measures it out so that you >consistently have the same number of yeast cells in the dough. By >using the sourdough starter just at the refreshment point, one can >have the same confidence that one is putting the same number of >yeast and bacteria cells in. Actually, I wouldn't, and don't, do that. First a bit of background information that might seem unneeded..... There are a number of cycles after the feeding of a starter. How long each cycle lasts depends in many factors, such as the culture, the hydration of the starter, the temperature of the starter, and the vitality of the starter. All cultures are, to some extent, different. Some are faster than others. A higher hydration, or wetter, starter tends to work more quickly than a thicker one. Lower temperatures reduce activity levels, higher ones speed things up - up to a point. And a starter that has been in storage will be sluggish, and not just due to it's temperature. First there's a lag phase as the critters start to digest the food and multiply. This could be as little as a few minutes or it could be several hours. During this time, the starter looks like it's not doing anything. As an old physicist's joke has it, "I may not look like I'm doing anything, but at a subatomic level, I'm a blur!" Then there's a growth phase, where the dough (or starter) rises. This can take an hour or five or six hours. Then there's a plateau where the tendency for the dough to collapse and the effort of the starter's critters to make it rise are balanced. That's where the starter has reached it's peak and stays there for a while. This is usually a number of hours, and as many as 5 or 6 with a thicker starter. Then there's a decline in the activity level of the critters and the starter recedes, or collapses. This can take hours, or longer. Many starters will take about 8 to 12 hours to go through the cycles and wind up at the same level as when they were fed, assuming 100% hydration, a healthy starter, and room temperature. Then there is a period where the critters slow down and start to die off for lack of food. If the previous phase is extended enough, unpleasant things will happen. Among them, your starter could die or develop unpleasant behaviors if you try to revive it. When teaching classes, I tell my students a starter is a living thing, like children or pets. If you don't feed them for a while, they get cranky. If you don't feed them for long enough, they die. So, feeding them often is important. We usually feed the starter when it is into it's decline phase, largely to keep from winding up with too much starter, or starter waste. However, I have not found that to be the best point at which to USE the starter. I like to use the starter when it is at it's peak and before it declines. When you make dough, it goes through the same phases as a starter when it is fed. If your starter is already in decline, the lag before the dough starts to rise is extended. The bread making process is more predictable when you use the starter at its peak. A lot of the work I've done with sourdough has the goal of making it predictable. When I started, sometimes the dough would rise quickly, other times it took a good while, and other times nothing happened. I knew that the bakeries that used sourdough couldn't afford that sort of inconsistency, so I read and experimented to get a more stable process. And for me, that means using the starter when it's at its peak. Mike --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.7 --------------- From: "mike fuller" Subject: By Hand Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:43:32 -0400 Dear bread lovers, I was kneading the other night and I reflected on how each style bread I do requires a different way to hand-le it. You must be vigorous with crocodile bread, but with splayed fingers and more tearing, like teeth. A brioche requires much more time but you can beat it into the marble kneading table like a French peasant would an errant queen. The oat brans and gurus are feel-good doughs and so popular I usually end up doing insane amounts. Can you imagine heaving overhead almost 10kg of dough and crashing it onto the table to stimulate gluten production? Sourdough is so enigmatic. In its most orthodox state, with absolutely no yeast booster, you almost have to plead it to rise and of course have to know how much to knead, how hard and with how much strength. Whenever I do bialys or onion bread I get these images in my head of New York´s lower East side. Rivington street or Bowery, with bands of wild street artists and Spanish speakers mixed in with the old school immigrant population. One of my favorites is challah. A change comes about in that one about three quarters of the way through. The clumps disappear and it becomes almost silky. It is at that point that the tiny hairs of saffron begin to release a blood red color and odor, which dissipates out into the dough and gives it an unmistakable flavor. Since no one we know is the inventor of that bread of ages it is easy to imagine it came from the higher power itself, and I almost always take a pause for reflection when I´m done. So like, I was thinking of all these qualities and I realized that even though I am far from Luddite, I don´t see myself ever purchasing an electric mixer. Baked love, Mike in Havana (mikesbread@gmail.com) --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.8 --------------- From: Coolchicki@aol.com Subject: Re: Baking Rolls in a Kitchen that is Open To Family Room Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 12:18:21 EDT This may be a silly question, but have you tried covering them with a dishtowel? One large enough to tuck under the edges so the heat is trapped inside. I also place them with the towel over them, on the stovetop, with the oven set to "warm". Figure out where the vent is for the oven and place them close to that. If they seem to get more warm on one side because the vent is in the back, then turn them periodically. --Barbie G. Lurker Supreme :-) --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.9 --------------- From: Jeff Dwork Subject: Administrative notes Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:50:03 -0700 The address checking emails are coming soon. >Over the next several weeks, we'll be sending an address checking >email to every bread-bakers subscriber. The email will be from > and the subject will be >"bread-bakers address check". The email will contain the address to which bread-bakers is sent. This is the address which needs to be unsubscribed if you change email addresses or leave the list. Please save it for future reference. We're making minor changes to the list software to prevent it from responding to incoming spam. There should be no change to normal operations (posting, subscribing, unsubscribing). If you get error messages or posts disappear, please email us. Thanks, Jeff & Reggie --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n038.10 --------------- From: Reggie Dwork Subject: "Crust & Crumb" in paperback Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:54:17 -0700 Peter Reinhart's "Crust & Crumb" is available in paperback, ISBN 1580088023. --------------- END bread-bakers.v106.n038 --------------- Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Regina Dwork and Jeffrey Dwork All Rights Reserved