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on: May 24, 2009, 06:00:05 PM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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I see several attempts every day to register and leave comment spam. I have blocked several IP blocks, like someuser@mail.ru, someuser@clubua.com, someuser@gawab.com, and several others. They can not be registered because they forge a fraudulent address. They can not get the double opt-in activation email, so their accounts remain inoperable. Because I check each and every new member, if I get a 'No reverse DNS' or any of a number of other indicators -- RIPE.NET is a huge offender -- then I simply nuke and ban that user and his originating ISP. So far it hasn't affected anyone in the US, but I'm sure there are a large number of frustrated Ukrainians, Russians, North Koreans, Romanians, and Chinese who wasted their time signing up to register, only to be removed a couple of hours later. Recently, I deleted 683 comment spam messages, (and almost that many bogus users) in one wild two day weekend orgy of spam commenting. I have been applying some simple rules, and blacklisting entire ISPs and national Top Level Domain IP blocks. Should any legitimate Ukrainian or Russian seller of Viagra, Cialis, or other pharmaceuticals, natural breast or penis enhancements, offshore gambling, or travel and real estate bargains actually want to contribute something on the subject of sourdough, or baking, they can send me an email, easily obtainable in the users list, with particulars to include a legitimate email address, to ask to be allowed to register. Because I think the chances of that happening are something between slim and none, I'll just continue with incrementing my growing list of off-shore SPAM enabling ISP's What set this rant off was what I found spidering the latest bogus registrant, and finding a website with this single line. "<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html> A bogus website using a forged and stolen IP address, from a block that is not assigned by IANAN. I guess it is time to add RIPE.net to my blacklist. It's a good thing I have lots of time! Just keeping the bad guys out could be a full time job. |
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on: May 04, 2009, 12:07:03 PM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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Dear Nosey,
You say your two starters have different flavors: one is tangy and one buttery. Somewhere I read that if you want a tangier sourdough, one should add a bit of vinegar. What do you think?
* * *
Dear Karen,
I have serious doubts about the vinegar thing. It is not food for the yeasts, or the lactobacilli, and all it adds is an artificially sour taste. The guy who is running 'Carl's friends' the 1847 Oregon Trail group agrees. I can see the point in putting in skim milk, instead of water, occasionally, because the skim milk (or dry milk powder is almost all lactose -- milk sugar -- and the little lactobacilli will think they've died and gone to heave, with pure food available to them.
It is the lactobacilli that cause the sour flavor, lactic acid, and in the case of the Columbia River culture, they are making butyric acid, I think, along with the sour lactic acid, which is the smell of fresh butter, and is very close to lactic acid in structure. That doesn't seem at all far-fetched to my chemist's mind.
Another tip that I've read over and over is to use potato water from boiling potatoes for mashed. That would also have gobs of free fruit sugars in it, without the contamination of potato yeasts and lactobacilli, because you've boiled the water and killed all the live flora and fauna that were on the potoatoes.
The advice to use rye flour, instead of white would work, because I think the rye flour has a different, much sourer culture of lactobacilli on it. But then, you will not have the same mainline culture that you started with. You will have inoculated your starter culture with the yeasts and bacteria from the rye flour. If you dplan to try that, feeding your starter with rye flours, first save some of your mainline starter in the freezer, so that you can get it back should your rye flour experiment not work out satisfactorily. Using dry milk powder, or skim milk just provides your CURRENT population of bacteria what they want and need to grow and prosper. That should make it sour enough.
Also, it is the amount of time that it rises that allows the full flavors to build and develop. Good bread doesn't lend itself to becoming fast food. It's mostly hurry up wait, anyhow -- mix, knead, wait, punch down, wait, shape, wait -- so just let your culturetake all the time it wants to do its thing, and I think you will be much happier with the developed flavors.
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3
on: May 04, 2009, 11:47:47 AM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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Dear Nosey,
Tell me about the risings. I read that it wasn’t as important for the first rising to have the dough be totally double, but it is for the second? What does the first rising accomplish?
* * *
Dear Karen,
To answer your question, let me approach it from the point of view of the bread dough. When we make bread from wheat flour, we are doing something that is ultimately very simple. Wheat, ground into a near microscopic powder is almost pure starch and ’small’ sugars, with a significant small percentage of proteins, called ‘gluten. We are making a paste that will become gummy, and elastic. That gumminess and elasticity is what will trap the gas bubbles that make the bread rise, and will give the bread its airy texture and bite.
Both starch and sugar are long chain molecules that are nothing but carbon and water. Remember high school biology, and the subject of photosynthesis? Green plants take carbon dioxide out of the air, combine it with water and produce sugars and starches. The starches and sugars will be food for the yeasty-beasties and for the lactobacilli that produce the flavor of sourdough, and provide the leavening power — the gas to blow up the little bubbles. The yeast actually takes the starch and sugars, and turns it back into water and carbon dioxide — the gas that makes the dough swell. That is what makes the bread dough rise.
The gluten is a long chain protein that hooks itself together into long strings that form net-like structure inside the dough. Those nets of protein form the walls of the bubbles in the dough, and holds the carbon dioxide gas inside, like miniature balloons. Flours come with various gluten contents. Cake, or pastry flour, which includes tortilla flour has a very low gluten content, about two percent. All purpose flour, often abbreviated ‘AP’ flour on the various bread websites, generally has a three percent gluten content. Bread flour usually has four percent protein,, with some specialty flours with even higher percentages. King Arthur Mills has an entire line of flours, to suit any use.
Back to your question, though. As with the question about sour flavors being best developed the longer the dough is allowed to rise, multiple rises and punchdowns give time for the gluten proteins to get hooked up with each other to make a more and more consistent network within the dough. The first rising inevitably has a lot of voids, bubbles, of various sizes in it. When you punch it down you burst some of the bubbles, and rearrange the gluten ‘net’ in the dough. As the dough regains its gas, or rises again, the bubbles or voids will be smaller, on average, than they were after the first rise. If you are going to make multiple punchdowns and risings, the first one isn’t so important, and you might not want to wait the extra half hour or so to get a true doubling in bulk.
This is a partial answer to another issue, ‘To Knead Or Not To Knead’, which I will address in another article.
I make all of the bread and rolls I consume. the last time I bought bread in a store was simply to get two good sized bread bags! The birds lucked out in my back yard for a couple of days.
For a regular ‘French Bread’ loaf, and I mean a long, irregular batard, or football shaped loaf, I only let the dough rise once, punch it down and shape it into a loaf. That will produce big voids, medium voids, and some small voids, which is exactly what we want from a bakery style loaf of French bread.
For my toast, or sandwiches, I use a three rise method plus the final shaping for the loaf pan. That almost guaranteeds a uniform small void size, and a chewy crumb, with enough substance to stand up to a bread knife for slicing.
For my hard rolls, like kaiser rolls and breakfast rolls, I compromise. I punchdown and let the dough rise a second time before dividing the dough by weight, and shaping the rolls for the final fairly rapid rise before going into the oven.
For bagels and soft pretzels I do the shaping after the first rise and punchdown, and retard the rising un the refrigerator overnight before boiling and baking them.
The bottom line is that you need to decide what textures you like in your breads and rolls, and use these notes to achieve the result that you and your family like best.
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4
on: May 04, 2009, 11:46:35 AM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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Nosey,
If I have one batch of starter to use, I know I can make one or two loaves of bread, but can I make four? Ten? How does that work?
* * *
Dear Karen,
My first thought was that it wouldn’t matter at all, it would just take longer for the dough to rise. On consideration, I decided that that is not exactly true.
Again, lets look at the question from the point of view of the little yeasty-beasties and their partners, the lactobacilli. Instead of thinking about this as a matter of quantities, let’s look at it as an issue of numbers.
I am a single, lonely little yeast, and I’m holding hands with an equally lonely little milk-eating bacterium. She is my friend, and we always work together. Usually she and I are surrounded by ‘Bill-yuns and Bill-yuns’ (thank you Carl Sagan) of our closest friends and neighbors. We weren’t always this way, though. In the beginning there were only a few of us, all dried out, and hungry and dehydrated, ensporulated, as a matter of fact, shipped through the mails in an unappetizing plastic bag. Our new owner fed us, cared for us, and cossetted us, and generally treated us like the valuable house plants that we are. We rewarded her efforts with veritable orgies of reproduction whenever she would feed us more starch, or milk sugars. She wasn’t interested in us, so much as all the gas and milk vinegars that we produced.
Nonetheless, we reproduce at a profligate rate, as long as we have some warmth, and some food and water. Still, my little milk-eating girlfriend and I can only make one copy of ourselves every few minutes. I can make another like myself, then we two will make four, and those four will make eight, and so forth, but that takes time. Simply putting a few of us in front of a veritable hog-trough of goodies, fresh starch and sugars, will not speed up our rate of reproduction.
If you need lots of us little critters, all at one time, you need to plan ahead. Instead of discarding or using the extra pint of starter when you feed your culture, just move all of us to a larger container temporarily. When the activity in the new bowl slows down, feed us again. We will now have doubled in numbers twice. (1 -> 2, 2 -> 4, 4 -> 8, and so forth) so instead of the pint you started with you should now have 4 pints. That is enough for six loaves, and a pint to keep as a starter. If you want to make ten loaves or twelve loave, save out your starter pint, and double the three pints again, to make six pints. Of course if you are feeding a whole herd of people every day, or bake large quantities of bread often, it would be a good idea to simply get a larger crock and keep a larger amount of starter, and just double the entire starter whenever you need to bake.
To double your pint of starter twice, it needs to be fed twice, and allowed to reach its peak of activity twice. To double it three times, plan on three feedings. You will still need to portion out what you plan to save for the next time.
It’s just simple math, Karen! Just one organism can eventually fill the surface of the Earth with its culture, but we only have to culture what we actually need at any one time.
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5
on: May 04, 2009, 11:41:21 AM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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Dear Nosey, To knead or not to knead; what is the difference? A friend told me he likes kneaded bread because the texture is chewier, I prefer a softer bread. Is kneading really the difference? * * * Dear Karen, For this I went to the Internet, and gathered some expert opinion and some anecdotal evidence. The very first piece I looked at was an article on Slate, Can Nancy Baggett’s Kneadlessly Simple help me make a decent loaf of bread? http://www.slate.com/id/2216080/pagenum/all/#p2 from which I pulled this key concept: But a critical aspect of the no-knead method’s popularity is that it doesn’t force you to abdicate credit to a machine. Its steps are long, but lazy. Five minutes here and there over the course of a day or so, and—this is critical for people who work outside their homes—there are even several moments when you can use the refrigerator to delay the rising process further to fit your schedule. Here’s the basic idea: In the modern past, bread recipes had you develop gluten—the springy but strong network of proteins that capture the carbon-dioxide bubbles the yeast creates in the dough—by manhandling the dough by hand or mixer. If you didn’t knead efficiently or long enough, you’d end up with tough, unpleasant bread. But if you slow the rising time down—in fact, an older approach to baking—the agitation caused by the bubbling yeast itself can bring together the gluten matrix. It’s what Baggett calls "micro-kneading." Baggett adds another tweak to Lahey’s standard no-knead MO: The dough is first mixed using ice water and chilled for several hours before rising. This step stuns the yeast into submission and lets enzymes get to work converting the flour’s starch into sugars, which makes for a browned crust and a better-tasting loaf.
The idea is certainly sound, as it is the method used to make bagels and soft pretzels. Let your little yeasty-beasties develop at a much reduced rate, and let them have their lusty little way with your starches and sugars for a much longer time, to achieve the same effect — the development of the stretchy gluten protein matrix in the dough. Apparently, the answer to your question is that it is *not* necessary to knead your dough to activate the gluten matrix. It time is a constraint though, a little kneading is better than none at all, I think. I use a bread machine for the sole purpose of saving my aging muscles from the task of, as Ms. Dickerman says above, ‘pummeling the gluten into submission’. I usually do not make my bread until the day I run out of my current loaf. For that reason, I would rather have bread yet that day, and not tomorrow. The exception, as I’ve remarked before, is bagels and soft pretzels which are always made with a cold retarded step. When I first started making bread, and before I invested in my bread machine, I used a ’sorta-kinda’ kneading method. A two loaf recipe called for about seven cups of flour and the other ingredients. Unless you have arms like Chyna, the big WWF wrestler, you are *not* going to be able to incorporate all that flour into the amount of water in the recipe. You will come out about a cup shy. No matter, put some of the extra cup or so on your work surface, and flop your moist doughball-to-be out on to it. By flopping and stretching the dough, and adding more flour, you will very quickly incorporate all of the required flour. That is the point where you can gather up your now respectably coherent doughball and put it into your oiled bowl for its first rise. If you do this the night before, just put the entire bowl into the fridge, otherwise just cover it and let it sit and work on its own. Eventually, you will have a big shiny doughball with a nice, matte elastic surface. From there on, you are free to go on to multiple risings, or punch it down, let it rest a few minutes, and shape it for baking. Time is the only consideration, it seems. If you’re an organized person, and plan to make bread for your family every day, just leave your starter out on the counter, instead of refrigerating it after you feed it, and leave your unkneaded dough out for as long as it takes to rise. |
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6
on: May 04, 2009, 11:13:48 AM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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Dear Nosey, I’ve received your packet of starter in the mail, but I’m confused by the instructions for how to reactivate the dry starter. There seem to be three different methods listed. Which one is the best?
* * *
Dear Karen,
I included activation instructions from several different sources on the Internet. One from a woman, Cyndie Hamley, who has the information on her website, takes five days to follow. I’ll include it here. My opinion is that of the three I offer, the last method works best, takes the least amount of time, and has perfectly satisfactory results for any dry starter that I know about.
Baking with Sourdough by Cyndie Hamley
Activating Your Sourdough Starter Your pack contains enough for two starts. Mix ½ cup flour, 1/2 cup lukewarm pure water, and about 1 tsp. starter powder in a glass 1-quart jar. Don’t tighten the lid. Keep it at warm room temperature, 70-80F is ideal, but cooler is just fine. After two days you should see bubbles and signs of life. It’s alive.
Feeding your starter daily for about 5 days will help it reach full activity. (3/4 cup flour + 3/4 cup water = 1 cup starter) Organically grown flour and non-chlorinated water are suggested because they contain no chemicals that might kill the wild yeast. At day five you may continue to keep your starter at room temperature feeding it daily or put it in the refrigerator and feed it at least once weekly.
Feeding Schedule: Day 1 put starter powder in 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup lukewarm water. Day 2 add 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water Day 3 add 1 cup flour and 1 cup water Day 4 pour off about 1 cup of starter and add 3/4 cup flour and 3/4 cup water to the remainder. Day 5 pour off about 1 cup of starter and add 3/4 cup flour and 3/4 cup water to the remainder.
This should give you about 2-3 cups of starter to store in the refrigerator. You may bake pancakes or other quick bread with the starter you pour off on days 4 and 5. It will not have its full sour flavor, but it will be delicious.
This will work perfectly and is a pretty standard method. On the other hand, I read another method that uses sugar to give a little ‘oomph!’ to kickstart your activation. This is the older method that I got with my culture. Most of it is not necessary, as I mentioned up above. I’ll mark off those parts with *** ______***
To REACTIVATE the starter from the powdered form:
1. Dissolve the contents of the packet with 3/4 cup warm (90 degree) water, add 3/4 cup white bread flour, and 1 teaspoon sugar in glass or plastic container (NOT METAL!).
2. Place bowl (covered with damp towel) in warm place (the oven with the light on is about 85 degrees-Test it first!) for up to 48 hours. It will get bubbly from the fermentation. IT’S ALIVE!!
3. Mix in 1 cup warm (95) water, add 1 cup flour, ***1 tablespoon dried potatoes or use potato water*** and let sit in the warm place till bubbly again. Don’t worry about the lumps as the fermentation will take care of them.
4. Now, you can store it in the frig till needed. It may develop a clear liquid on top, if so, stir it back in as this is alcohol - keep it happy! It will need feeding about every couple of weeks, just add 1 cup warm skim milk or water, ***1 T Sugar*** and 1 cup flour. ***Once in a while add 1 tablespoon of dried potatoes (or use potato water). If it looks sick, add 1 T CIDER vinegar to give it a kick in the behind!***
Give the excess to a friend or you can keep some of it in the freezer for several months between feedings.
When you want to bake something, bring the starter up to room temperature, mix in 1 cup flour, 1 c warm water or skim milk and let sit overnight to ferment. The next morning, remove one cup to keep in a covered jar as a starter for use next time, feed it, then do your baking.
Again, these are instruction I got, but have discovered since then that you never need to use commercial active yeast. The Sourdough culture provides plenty of leavening power. The whole point of keeping a sourdough culture is so that you don’t have to buy and use commercial yeast.
*A revised, more modern method works best, and takes the least time to work.*
Tips: Get a small container. Begin with one tablespoon of lukewarm water, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of your starter and let stand for a few minutes to soften the start granules. Then mix in one tablespoon of flour. Depending on the flour, you may need to add an additional teaspoon or two of water. You want the mixture to be like a thin pancake batter. When the mixture gets bubbly, put it in a little larger container. Then stir in 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of flour. When that mix rises up add 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of flour. When this bubbles up, you will have about one cup of very active starter that is ready for use or storage in your refrigerator. The time between refreshments will depend mainly on temperature. You can expect the first sign of starter activity to take from four to 12 hours.
I use the baby formula wrist test to judge the temperature of the water. A few drops on your wrist should feel neither warm nor cold.
A baby food jar and an 18-ounce peanut butter jar work well for the small and large containers.
Established starter will do fine in any room temperature that is comfortable for humans. Warmer room temperature is helpful when reviving start, but do not go over 85F if at all possible. Cooler temperatures just extend the time required. If room temperature is under 68F, I find a warmer spot such as the top of my refrigerator or a cold oven with the light on.
Vigorous stirring of the mixture from time to time will slightly shorten the time between growth stages, but is not necessary for success. I use this method to test starter before shipping, and just stir enough to mix the ingredients. Regarding the vinegar "kick", and the use of dry yeast in a few of the recipes you might find, we don’t do it, but heck, it might work for you.
Good luck with your sourdough!
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7
on: May 04, 2009, 11:08:25 AM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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Dear Nosey,
I made raisin bread last Sunday, and all the raisins were clumped up in the middle. Do you know of a way to distribute them more evenly?
Dear Karen,
As you are shaping your loaf, and I expect you are using the 'cakeroll' method, you have found that those slippery little devils, your raisins, or craisins or crushed nuts or whatever are all being rolled along ahead of your roll.
Try this. Use a rolling pin to get your dough as thin as possible. Use your handy-dandy spritzer bottle to spray a little water on the top surface of the dough. You can help things along by wetting your raisins in a small bowl. Now sprinkle or spread your raisins on the sheet of dough. Grab the rolling pin again, and smoosh them all down into the dough!
Roll up your dough as usual, tuck and seal your seams, and into the loaf pan it goes!
If you are an excessively lazy person, worried about cleaning extra implements and tools, and don't want to dirty your granny's old heirloom rolling pin, think about this.
*YOU DO NOT NEED TO WASH YOUR ROLLING PIN BETWEEN USES!*
Simply brush or wipe off any excess flour, or water, and stand it up to dry. Wooden rolling pins are very low maintenance tools, and do not require thorough scrubbing and sanitizing. Besides, you're going to use it again in another day or two anyway, aren't you? Why even stick it back in the drawer?
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8
on: May 04, 2009, 10:48:46 AM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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On these pages you will find Questions and Answers of general interest. If we were a professional sort of webpage, we'd label this FAQs, Frequently Asked Questions. However, because we are primarily a bunch of housewives trading tips and recipes, we can call this section whatever we feel like calling it. If you bear in mind that the answers to some of these questions are purely my own opinion, and might be at odds with other websites, I'd suggest that you check out some other sources. One very good one, that I consult a lot is the Fresh Loaf at www.thefreshloaf.com or All Recipes at http://allrecipes.comBesides all that, Google, www.google.com is your friend. |
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9
on: April 08, 2009, 05:00:39 PM
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Started by admin - Last post by admin
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A Whole New Look For the 'OLD' Nosey Parker’s News! -- We are now My Sourdough Place!Posted in April 6th, 2009 | Edit by editor in Bread and Rolls, Humour, Miscellaneous, Sourdough  [Bread, hard onion rolls and lunch, kippered herring sandwich with salad and dark beer] * * * Sourdough starters have been popular since the Sumerians and Egyptians and the Mayans discovered that grains mixed with water fermented. Every civilization that ever discovered bread, discovered beer and wine at the same time. The only practical way to continue to get the benefits of this magical living substance was to save a part of the leavening from today’s bread, or beer, and use it to start the next days batch. We call that ’sourdough starter’. I’m not sure that my sourdough starters will bake good beer, but I do know they make excellent bread, rolls, pancakes, waffles and biscuits.
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My Sourdough Place!
