On 15 Feb 2002 at 22:17, Jerry Ulett was heard to say:
> I am confused. I have read several books on sourdough baking and each
> author seems to have a different opinion on how best to do it. Some
> say that you must use bread flour, others say all purpose is best.
> Some say proof the starter at room temperature, others say at about 85
> degrees. Some use a thick starter, others a thin one. Some say use
> bottled water, others find tap water to be acceptable. And on and on.
> It reminds me of an old saying that "A man with one watch knows what
> time it is. A man with two watches is never sure!"
I'd suggest using one book, and jumping in. I have read Peter's "The Bread
Baker's Apprentice" book, but haven't baked any recipes from it, so I can't
comment on it. It's beautiful, it's got some great stories, the bread
looks great, and many of my friends are swooning over it. I hope to try
the Pain Ancienne this weekend, and I am looking at his sourdough recipes.
I have looked at a lot of books on sourdough, and many make my hair stand
on end. They are just WRONG!
My three suggestions when looking at books on sourdough is.. skip books
that have you start a starter with fruit or vegetables. The yeast on them
is not the appropriate type for sourdough, and while the starter will take
off like gangbusters, it will take that much longer for the right yeasts to
move in and take over. It's better to just start with flour and water, or
to buy a known culture, or get one from a friend. Some people say that the
fruit feeds the yeast. Odd... that's what I thought the flour was for.
Next, skip books that have you use baker's yeast to start the
starter. It's the wrong type for sourdough. It can't take the acidity of
a good sourdough starter, and it doesn't help "attract" wild yeast. (This
reminds me of a Daffy Duck cartoon where Daffy flew into Porky Pig's house
because of a stuffed duck on the mantlepiece. It just doesn't work that way.)
The final suggestion is to avoid books that suggest using baker's yeast
with your sourdough starter. This suggests that the people either don't
understand sourdough, don't trust their starter, or don't have their
process under control.
When I started playing with sourdough, I was very, very frustrated. It
just didn't work reliably. It was torture. I knew that there had to be a
way to make it reliable, since bakeries had used sourdough (or natural
leavens) for millenia before commercial yeast was developed.
The book that first tied it together for me was Dr. Ed Wood's "World
Sourdoughs from Antiquity". He has a new book out called, "Classic
Sourdoughs" if memory serves. I have both, and like both. If you have
neither, just get the newer book - there is a fair amount of overlap
between them. He sells it at his home page http://www.sourdo.com and you
can find it at amazon, half.com, and all the usual suspects. I found a
number of neat flax seed bread recipes in his new book that are becoming
family favorites. (Also, flax seed has as much omega-3 as salmon, and it's
a WHOLE lot cheaper!)
Dr. Wood understands how to culture and maintain sourdough. Some people
aren't wild about his recipes, but they are an excellent starting
point. You'll learn how to keep a culture going, how to use it to rise
bread, and how to rise bread with nothing but sourdough. Then, if the
recipes aren't quite to your liking, you can use what you've learned to
modify other recipes.
One of the most frustrating resources is the sourdough news group faq
because it has so many different views. My feeling is that all the
information given there is valid, it's just different people's
experiences. Different people have different goals, different ways of
working, and if it makes bread they like, that's cool. Which is part of
the problem of looking at too many different sourdough books.
Mike
--
Mike Avery
MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com
ICQ: 16241692 AOL IM: MAvery81230