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Overnight milk fermentation

Wcsjohn@aol.com
Sun, 18 Jan 2004 09:49:02 EST
v104.n006.3
>Okay. A recipe for waffles/pancakes involving setting out a batter 
>containing such a perishable ingredient as milk at room temperature for 
>(gasp!) 12 hours? What do you want to do, poison your progeny?
>
>Food safety is paramount. Heed or recede.

In a yeasted batter at room temperature the yeast is so active and greedy 
that very few bacteria of any sort can compete with it. The few that can 
are lactobacilli, non-pathogenic and, because they produce a pleasant 
sourness are the reason for the overnight rest. Besides which the batter 
will be cooked in very thin layers and sterilisation temperature will be 
reached throughout the cooked pancake or waffle.

There is a tendency nowadays to end arguments by repeating the mantra 
"Safety is all important" and too many people aquiesce and agree. I don't. 
life is full of risk from the day you're born and attempts to make life 
completely safe are doomed to failure and even if they weren't the only 
safe life would be a life where nothing is achieved because nothing is done 
because all human activities carry risk. Just crossing the road is out of 
the question if you want to be "safe".

It's very easy to be critical and find hypothetical risks in other peoples 
recipes. I'd be alot more impressed if you bolstered your expressions of 
horror with a recipe for batter that tasted as good as soured milk ones 
without the "unsafe" overnight ferment.

And what, pray, does "Heed or Recede" mean?  A new slogan to my ears. But 
then I'm just an old fart who like some savour in his food and doesn't have 
an immune system compromised by being brought up in the kind of sterility 
that is the lot of many children in these enlightened times.

Whoops, off on a hobby-horse again John. A litttle off-topic I would say. 
Still at least posting off-topic would be difficult to condemn as "unsafe".

John "Dangerous" Wright