Sourdough bread

[Stravaig]

I've bought starters and also made my own from scratch. On our first evac from Kyiv, gawd knows how long ago now, I even took a 20+ year old starter in my suitcase. But with all these many house moves - because of the meanie and stupid employer, it eventually died and I didn't have the heart to start again.

But now we're in more stable accommodation I'll have another go. This time I'm trying a Richard Bertinet dried starter. Could be interesting.

A lot of people say how kneading dough is therapeutic. Frankly, I can't be @rsed. I just put mine in the stand mixer and let the machine take the strain. I mean why keep a dog and bark yourself? Woof!

https://www.thebertinetkitchen.com/2021 ... h-starter/

[Colin2016]

I found sourdough took much planning as opposed to using yeast.

[Stravaig]

Yeah, sourdough requires more planning although it's not necessarily more work. I dunno, I guess there's a certain amount of satisfaction in making good sourdough...

Of course the quickest and easiest bread is Irish soda bread.

[Primrose]

It,s worth making thiugh. Think yiu just have to be well organised to keep everything going.
Sadly there doesn't seem to be a starter kit easily available in a supermarket. Some years ago I think it might have been possible to get some from a supermarket baking bread on the premises but those days are long gone.

[Stravaig]

Just lost another posting. This is getting very tedious.

[Stravaig]

By hitting the 'back' button a hundred times I managed to find and copy my disappeared posting. This isn't good.

***

This 'baked on the premises' is just a darned lie - or at best a half truth. They make out like some baker has made the dough and baked it in store. Not true. The dough is made in industrial quantities at some central location, then transported to the mega supermarkets who then heat it up up an oven. So, it is 'baked on the premises' but if that has any relation to home-made bread, then I'm a blue and white striped pig.

[Primrose]

That's interesting and certainly explains why a certain supermarket bread department couldn't supply us with a sour dough starter kit despite selling the product as " baked on the premises".

[Westi]

I do love sourdough but it irritates me with how quickly it dries out. I used to be able to buy a small boule one which was just enough for us to have limited waste, but that store only does full size ones now. I made so many crumbs it got silly, so gone back to my 2nd fav which is the GI loaf, but only the one from 'L' ; the others just don't have the maltiness or the seeds are rock hard or/& too large you could loose a tooth!

[Stravaig]

There is no legal definition of 'sourdough'. So, supermarkets can pass off just about anything and call it sourdough. My guess is it isn't real sourdough 90+% of the time, but if they stick that label on it they can charge a premium.

There's a Real Bread Association who are very keen to right the wrongs... And there are some bakers who want to do their bit too. I'm much more of a chef than a baker but I sometimes like doing stuff like bread too.

[Myrkk]

I made a basic sourdough starter with some water, flour and a few organic grapes chucked in to provide the yeast. Made one heck of a culture, really active. Eventually gave it away as I couldn’t use it fast enough and I didn’t like throwing it away.
One night after I fed it it grew over the top of the jar and it made me feel it was going to come for me and kill me in my sleep.

[Stravaig]

LOL. Come and kill you in your sleep.

Paul Hollywood recommends using grapes to make the starter in one of his books. (I think I have four of them.) I've never done that. Just used the bog standard flour, water, salt.

With so much recent upheaval in our lives I just didn't feel like starting from scratch again right now but I'll get Richard Bertinet's dried startter on the go today and let you know how it goes.

Primrose, if RB's works out for me, it's easy enough to order a dried starter and after two or three days it just pops through the letterbox.

Yeah, there's a lot of discards with making sourdough but you can use the stuff for pancakes and also in some other bakery items.

[Primrose]

Myrkk - your comment made me laugh. When we were keen Amateur winemakers years ago we had gallon demijohns of elderberry wine like that. Once the fermentation starts there,s no stopping it. You,d go to bed with still demijohns and come down in the morning to find red liquid frothing all over the counters and floors. The kitchen looked like an abbatoire! The speed of fermentation is a lesson you only only need to be taught once !!

[Stravaig]

I said "Real Bread Association" earlier. It's actually the Real Bread Campaign. Sorry.There's everything you could want to know and more about sourdough on their page here.
https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/sourdough/

***
Update on my RB starter. Unusually for me I did actually follow the instructions. Even at the time it looked too dry to me. Well, it's more than 24 hours later and I'm not seeing much activity. Rather disappointing. I shall probably make my own starter again - I won't let this beat me! - and maybe add in a bit of the RB stuff in the hope of more oomph. At this stage I'm starting to think that buying a dehydrated starter was a waste of money.

I've had RB's book "Dough" for donkey's years but I recently bought his "Crust" one. The one in the middle, ie "Crumb" never appealed. I've not yet read Crust thoroughly, just dipped into it. But I did notice that there was a bit about dehydrating your own starter. Maybe better than other things to do with the discards? But their method used an oven and, of course, I have a dehydrator appliance. I bought that before we went to Ukraine because I'd heard such a lot about you can't get this or that and it's all very seasonal. Not true. The supermarkets, shops and restaurants were very good. If it wasn't for the Russians it would be a great place for a holiday - a bit of an unsung hero. And pleasantly hot in the summer.

[Geoff]

My wife makes all our bread from dried yeast by the sponge method with good flours from Shipton Mill. She's usually changed from adding seeds to using malted wheat flakes and/or light malthouse flour.

[Stravaig]

Yes, using dried yeast is the norm really. In ye olden days, you used to be able to ask for a bit of bakers' yeast from supermarkets' in-store bakeries, and they would usually give you a bit for free. But these days are long gone. I tend to think of sourdough as being a bit of a hobbyist thing, just like my Uncle Kenny (dec) used to rebuild and drive ancient cars, such as a 1905 Model T Ford.

Of course the folks at the Real Bread Campaign take sourdough very seriously and would probably disagree with me that it's a hobby-thing. They would argue that it's better for gut health, easier to digest, and all that. I'm not interested in that, I just make it because I can.