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Starter and Home Ground Flour with Goldrush

cetfers@cco.caltech.edu (Caltech Env. Task Force)
Mon, 9 May 1994 16:27:12 -0700
v005.n018.7
(Also Posted to Newsgroup rec.food.sourdough)

Hi folks,

I've been cooking with home ground hard wheat for a while and I have
observed that commercial yeast (in this case red star active dry) would 
go haywire in the home ground flour. I mean forget using the french 
setting on the bread machine, as the loaves would come out tasting 
like beer. 
Reducing the yeast by 50% on all recipes and using a short rise cycle 
does the job of creating loaves that won't smell like a brewery.

This lead me to trying an interesting idea: lets use some wild yeast 
with the home ground flour.

I used some gold rush starter, and for starters, I first worked with 
Bob's red Mill unbleached bread flour (Hard red Spring wheat 
endosperm) just to gain enough experience with sourdoughs. My first 
loaf was a veritable brick. Great door stopper. The next loaf rose a 
little more, but still pretty flat. And I followed the instructions 
quite closely. 

Finally, I decided it was time to try out the big experiment: lets 
use some home ground wheat. 

I made a sponge using 1-1/2 cup starter (The starter was made using 
unbleached flour) and 1-1/3 cup freshly home ground hard winter wheat. 
After proofing overnight in the oven, something fantastic happened.

The goldrush yeast went absolutely haywire in the home ground flour.
The sponge smelled so bad like pure alcohol I threw it out. 

I started over with new starter (1-1/2 cup starter, 1-1/3 cup home 
ground flour) and this time I skipped the proofing altogether. I 
just dumped the rest of  the ingredients into the breadmachine and 
pressed start for the french cycle. And 3-1/2 hours later, I got a 
nice 3/4 of the way risen, flat top loaf of bread.
This was a wonderful loaf of bread with plenty of holes.

Conclusion: Wild yeast likes wild flour!

Looks like domestic yeast for bread making was created to 
accommodate the modern over-refined flours. 

Based on this experience, looks like I wont be using commercial 
yeast anymore. 

Has anyone had similar experiences?

California Institute of Technology
CETF - Caltech Environmental Task Force
Send E-mail to cetfers@cco.caltech.edu

"An earth is a terrible thing to waste"