Brian Wood asked:
> Has anyone successfully baked sourdough in an ABM, as opposed to
> mixing the dough only? I have had very variable results, and most
> 'advice' comments seem to suggest it can't be done -
> but............................
I haven't, so what follows is annecdotal. There is a
good bit of information on this in Ed Wood's "World
Sourdoughs From Antiquity" book, available at his home
page, at Amazon, and at half.com - which is the
cheapest of the bunch usually. His 1996 paperback is
available at
http://www.half.com/products/books/detail.cfm?isbn=0-89815-8435
He also published a book just on bread machine baking
of sourdough, but he seems to regret that book, so look
at the 1996 book, or the more recent one he did that
should be out any time now, if it's not out already.
Here are the general concerns - sourdough isn't as fast
as a regular commercial yeast, so use the sourdough
starter at the peak of it's activity. It should be frothy
and lively. You can't, therefore, start it at night and
leave it until morning. You may need to purchase a
faster culture if yours isn't a very fast culture.
Next, most bread machines will do little kneads of the
dough throughout the rise. These nudges or paddle
bumps help regular bread and cause sourdough to
collapse. If you can't tell the machine to cut it out,
then you'll have to pull out the paddle after the
machine is done kneading.
The deal with most bread machines is you have to
adjust your recipe to fit the machine. So, the rise time,
liquid/solid ratios, and so on all have to fit it's cycles.
You might try making some bread by hand to see how
long it takes your bread to double. And then checking
your bread machines manual to see if it has a cycle with
similar timings. Some bread machines are programable,
and you could play with programming them to not bump
the dough, and to handle everything else the way you
want.
In the end, I think that just baking it by hand is easier.
Mike
--
Mike Avery
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