sourdough death

About a month ago my sourdough starter started taking went from rising almost as quickly as baker's yeast to taking a dozen hours or even a couple days to rise enough.

Because I'd come to depend upon Fancy Cashews and Coma for pizza crusts, bagels and homemade bread, to say nothing of the occasional batch of sourdough pancakes or strombolis, this was, to put it mildly, frustrating. I was feeding the starter, keeping it in my fridge, and using it in the same amounts I had been doing all along. The sudden loss of yeast activity was devastating. Twice we had pizza with crust that didn't seem to have risen at all, and several times Evangeline refused to eat breakfast because she she wouldn't eat anything besides a bagel.

I had no idea how it had happened, but it looked as though our sourdough pets had died. I think the truth is probably a little more tragic: We ate them.

Over the course of the last few months, familiarity and custom have made me a little too casual with the starter. When you're plannig to make something new with sourdough, one of the things you're supposed to do is to mix in as much flour and water as the recipe calls for starter, and let it set overnight. The time gives the yeast to work its way through the batter, making a fresh dough, so that you can measure out the starter you need and put the rest back into your jar, to keep for later. Instead, I'd been pouring the starter straight from the jar into the mixing bowl, and adding fresh flour and water into the jar. I'd still wash the jar once a week or so, but that essentially is what I was doing.

As a result of this lazier approach, there probably came a time when I poured out the active part of the starter into the mixing bowl, and what was left behind had no living sourdough culture to keep the process going. Instead of getting a layer of alcohol atop the flour, all I was getting was floury water as the flour settled to the bottom of the jar.

This is all hindsight, naturally. Last week, sick of the problems I was having, I bought a yeast packet at the supermarket and mixed it in with the bread dough. It lacked the sourdough flavor that I've come to cherish, but the bread rose in record time and served our purposes admirably. I deduced what had gone wrong, and I've been careful this past week to prepare fresh starter the night before whenever I need to make a bread product, stirring everything thoroughly before I measure the starter for the recipe du jour. So far, it's been working well.

Except for one thing: We're still not getting that sourdough taste. I used my sourdough recipe for pizza crust for dinner last night, and it tasted all right and everything, but the crust was just light and fluffy. It lacked the tang that sold me on the recipe the first time I tried it.

We have a loaf of bread right now, and I don't expect to need to make anything else from it for a while, so theoretically the yeast culture will have a few days to ferment and start producing the ethanol that gives sourdough its distinctive taste. The time also should give any wild yeasts in the flour or the air to start growing too; from what I've read, all yeast cultures in the same house become indistinguishable from one another for this reason after about eight days, so I'm hopeful.

I just have to remember not to get lazy again.


Copyright © 2007 by David Learn. Used with permission.

sourdough bagels

So I found a recipe to try for sourdough bagels that I think I shall try tomorrow, since we have just one bagel left and they are Evangeline's premiere choice for breakfast. The recipe, which I've already modified to reflect some of our eating preferences, including Evangeline's preference for miniature bagels, goes like this:

1 cup fresh sourdough starter
¼ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup warm water
2 teaspoons salt
1¼ cups all-purpose flour

1¼ cups whole wheat flour

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and knead until smooth. Let the mixture rise until it has doubled. (I'm guessing this will take about an hour.) Divide into 16 portions, and roll each portion into a smooth ball.  Punch a hole in the center of each and stretch evenly until about 2 inches across.  Place on a lightly floured surface and bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil the bagels for three minutes on each side. Drain and place on a greased baking sheet.  Bake about 15 minutes at 450 degrees.

Will they be any good? I don't know. I found other bagel recipes that use metric measurements, which puts them beyond my use, since I lack a metric scale, and other recipes that claim to be sourdough but require a yeast packet. There's a ton more recipes, including sourdough pancakes, on a page owned by Richard Packham

And the girls assigned a sex to the sourdough pet, and gave her a name. She's Eternal.

sourdough

Trying something new today -- sourdough bread.

I came across a fairly straightforward how-to guide on the Internet a while ago, and so a few days ago, the girls and I put a cup of flour into a clear plastic container, mixed it with a cup of warm water, and let it sit out on the kitchen table as a makeshift science project. A day later or so, a brown liquid, called hooch, had started to pool on top of the project. We poured it off, tossed half the mixture, and added another half-cup each of flour and water, and repeated the process for another two days.

Yesterday we used half the science project -- or "our pet," as we're calling it -- to make a pizza dough. And added more water, and more flour. I left the stuff sit out again overnight last night, and this morning took half of it, added some more flour and started making bread out of it. The rest, as you can guess, we put back into its plastic container, which we had washed out, and gave it more water and flour.

It took about twice as long to rise as bread I've made with packets of yeast I bought at the supermarket, but the sourdough is growing pretty well. I'm planning to bake it this evening, and have it for dinner with whatever else we eat. It's bread, the way people made it for thousands of years, with a slight beer taste.