>"Elaine Padden" <elaine.padden@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>I hope you can help me. I sometimes bake bread at home, which is very
>pleasant as a therapy (better to thump the dough than whack my
>children). But I have for a long time wondered if I am correct in
>believing that it is possible for the home cook to keep her own continuous
>supply of live yeast instead of having to rely on "easy-blend" packets, or
>indeed to improve her own Yeast-plant by caring for it properly. If you
>can give me advice, I would be very grateful,
Until commercial baker's yeast was introduced in the 1880's, most bakers
did just this. They used the sourdough or barm processes, as has been done
for almost 10,000 years.
Some baker's cringe when you say sourdough for one reason or another, but
that's usually due to misunderstanding.
Some thing sourdough has to be sour. After all, they call it SOURdough,
don't they? Considering that most breads made before the 1900's were
sourdough based, and not all of them were sour, we can see that this isn't
true. The flavor profile of sourdough can be varied depending on how you
handle it, what kind of flour you use and many other variables under the
baker's control. Most of what is sold in supermarkets as sourdough
isn't. It's bread made with baker's yeast and with chemicals added to make
it taste the way people think sourdough should taste. It's hard to
duplicate a chemistry set with a natural process ..... your bread probably
won't be similar to what the commercial bakeries churn out.
Some people are afraid of sourdough because it's too hard to work
with. For quite some time, sourdough was almost a lost art, and the
handling of sourdough was shrouded in mystery and old husband's tales. Now
there is a lot more understanding of how to use sourdough easilly. You
might check out Dr. Ed Wood's books on sourdough. While some people aren't
fully sold on his bread recipes, his sourdough handling instructions are
excellent. You could also check out my web page,
http://www.sourdoughhome.com for more information and links to better web
sites.
I'm not familiar with the barm process, but I am told it is virtually the same.
In the end, if you maintain a yeast culture without the knowledge and tools
a micro-biologist has, the yeast culture will become a sourdough culture
... so you might as well start out where you're going to wind up.
Good luck,
Mike
--
Mike Avery
MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com