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Sourdough and Possibly a Bedpan?

Farnes_Quinn <Farnes_Quinn@Allergan.com>
Mon, 8 Sep 2003 09:42:32 -0700
v103.n039.15
Gabriel,

I've been experimenting with sourdough off and on for several years.  I 
started by using packaged starters, then began using food-grade acetic, 
lactic and fumaric acids like the bread machine mixes (and supermarket 
sourdough _read the label_) use, and am currently maintaining a sponge 
starter made from yeast, flour and water in the refrigerator and using that 
to inoculate the dough.  I bake sourdough the same way you do, except my 
starter was made from commercial baker's yeast and developed its sourness 
as it aged.

Here's how I make sourdough bread:  I dump about a cup of starter in the 
bread machine bowl, which mixes and kneads better and faster than I can, 
add about two cups (~300 g) of bread flour, about 1 tablespoon (15 g) of 
salt, and mix in enough water to make a firm dough.  After the flour has 
hydrated, I add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and continue mixing.  All 
measurements are very approximate.  It is hard to screw this up.  After 
mixing/kneading and about 1 hour rise time, I dump the dough into an oiled 
plastic bowl with a tight-fitting lid, and place it in the refrigerator 
until I get home from work the next day.  Then I take the bowl out, let it 
warm on the counter, and dump the dough into a bread pan.  It usually needs 
to rise for 3 to 4 hours at room temperature before baking.  If I want to 
make a round loaf on the baking stone I usually knead in more flour by hand 
because by this time the dough is pretty slack and somewhat sticky.

I then put the pan in a cold oven, set the temperature to 350 F (176 C) and 
bake for an hour.  If I want more sourness, I just punch the dough down and 
allow it to rise again.  There is a point, however, at which the yeast, 
swimming in their own waste, become incapable of producing enough gas to 
rise satisfactorily, at which time I've managed to save the dough by 
kneading in more flour and adding a little baker's yeast.

When I started making bread this way, I was pleased with the increasing 
sourness I was achieving, but most striking was the chewy texture and 
crispy crust the bread developed.  I thought one needed a fancy 
steam-injected oven to get that kind of texture.  I suspect that if one 
added sugar to the recipe, instead of allowing the bugs to convert starch 
into sugar, the texture would be more WonderBread-ish.

I'm still playing around with technique, however I've found that sourness 
is related to the amount of starter used, and its age, as well as the time 
the dough sits prior to baking, and the temperature of the dough.  To make 
a more sour bread, use more starter, or use older starter, or allow the 
dough to stand longer before baking, or place the dough in a warmer place, 
or do any combination of the above.  The buffering capacity of the flour 
you use will also affect the sourness, and the ease with which starch is 
converted to sugars by enzyme activity varies, so using different flours 
will achieve different results.

Like Ed, of B-I-L fame, opined earlier with regard to another aspect of 
bread baking, I'm surprised at how much bad information has been published, 
propagated and otherwise promulaged about sourdough over the years, and how 
nobody has challenged the claims made, save for some food chemistry types 
in academic settings, one of whose doctoral dissertation on sourdough bread 
microbiology I was fortunate to stumble across some time ago.

On another matter, Fredericka's mysterious half-moon shaped lidded pan 
sounds very much like one of those pans they use in the hospital.  If you 
choose to bake in it, I don't think it would be a good idea to tell your 
guests what kind of pan you used!  ;-)

Quinn