KK Bread Making Tips and Tricks

[Syzygies]

On 4/14/2024 at 9:59 AM, tekobo said:

We have a good sourdough bakery nearby and I think I will go and ask for some of their starter when I decide to get back on the sourdough horse.

I'm a heretic here. There's a history saying, conquer China and you will become Chinese. Here, local conditions win. When I lose a starter, I just add a teaspoon of yeast to the first feeding, and pretend I have starter. If you've baked with yeast in your kitchen in the past decade, yeast will get in. Otherwise, the starter is largely determined by what's on the flour you use to feed it. It doesn't matter if you get starter from St. John Restaurant, or a winery gives me starter dating to the California Gold Rush; the starter will be the same in a few weeks, adapting to local conditions. In the meantime, you're baking with old dough, also a respected tradition.

[ I started a new thread, Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home ]

Edited Thursday at 02:35 AM by Syzygies

[tekobo]

1 hour ago, Syzygies said:

I'm a heretic here.

Not at all.  The genesis of my plan to go to my local bakery was seeing an ad for sourdough starter from California.  "Wow" I thought, Tartine starter, here in my kitchen.  And then I came back to the real world and realised it made much more sense to walk the five minutes to our bakery, get theirs and start using it asap with no yeast or other intermediate stage.  

Good to see that the KK shopping channel still lives.  Congrats on your purchase.  

[Syzygies]

The Sourdough Home is a clean design that works. My one objection so far is light pollution.

Up till now, the brightest object in our night environment has been our SimpliSafe home security Base Station. We keep it far from our sleeping quarters, and it's too bright even with the light ring wrapped in electrical tape.

The Sourdough Home ("Starter home?" "Starter marriage?") has a sleep mode, but even that generates more light than the other 50 LED sources in our night home.

I can imagine someone in a studio apartment frickin' despising this thing.

[ I started a new thread, Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home ]

Edited Thursday at 02:35 AM by Syzygies

[Syzygies]

Their chat recommended masking tape. I asked how to vent a box; they said leave the back open.

[ I started a new thread, Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home ]

Edited Thursday at 02:35 AM by Syzygies

[tekobo]

Shame to have to box up such a pretty thing.  Maybe they can offer an update that lets you turn the light off.  

[Pequod]

I agree about the bright display. I thought the dimmer didn't work on mine, but then I realized it was dimmed. It reminds me of the "chicken roaster" episode of Seinfeld.

[Pequod]

Sourdough English Muffins with 10% fresh milled spelt. No idea what these are called in England. Muffins? Crumpets? Little hunks o’ bread? I should look that up.

[tekobo]

Those are definitely English muffins @Pequod and they look delicious!  I now have a craving.  Will get you a pic of a crumpet when I next make it to the supermarket.  Crumpet is also slang for a good looking lady but I won't be posting a pic of her!

[C6Bill]

Great looking muffins you have there !!!!

[tekobo]

On 4/21/2024 at 7:27 PM, Pequod said:

Sourdough English Muffins with 10% fresh milled spelt. No idea what these are called in England. Muffins? Crumpets? Little hunks o’ bread? I should look that up.

Even these upmarket supermarket muffins don't look anywhere as tempting as yours @Pequod.

For reference, some crumpets.  Great when dripping with butter.  

[Pequod]

Those muffins look almost as sad as the ones my wife typically buys. I made these to show her a real muffin. Problem is…I think I just signed myself up to a new weakly (not misspelled) duty. 😳 

[C6Bill]

Yesterday loafs for friends. I’ve been eating a little less bread as I’m trying to keep my weight down due to BP issue 😵‍💫 But I typically feed my starter once a week and keep it in the fridge. These are just my standard loafs, nothing fancy.

Edited Wednesday at 05:04 PM by C6Bill

[tekobo]

8 hours ago, C6Bill said:

These are just my standard loafs, nothing fancy.

😍

[Pequod]

Sourdough Crumpets @tekobo: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sourdough-crumpets-recipe

Going to give these a go.

[tekobo]

16 hours ago, Pequod said:

Sourdough Crumpets @tekobo: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sourdough-crumpets-recipe

Going to give these a go.

My husband was just saying how nice sourdough crumpets must be when you came up with this @Pequod.  Please fail.  I don't want the man thinking you are perfect and I am not.  

[Syzygies]

I have a levain (leaven) question for our fellow sourdough bakers:

I'm trying some new recipes that begin by using some sourdough starter to make a levain, then later incorporating that levain into dough.

I like to streamline processes when simplifying steps hardly matters. I've always made sure that my starter wakes up properly in its final few feedings before making bread, and that I have enough starter to make bread, then my own recipes just use some starter to replace the levain step.

I've long understood that starter hydration affects the kind of acidity that forms. My new sources also see hydration as an adaptation to temperature, choosing a 75% to 80% hydration for starter kept at 50 F (10 C), but closer to 100% hydration for a levain kept at room temperature. On the other hand, various authors see starter as adaptable. Just as starter can adapt to a variation of feed cycles and temperatures, it can adapt to a variation of hydrations. Some people will even vary the feed, from mostly rye to mostly wheat, depending on what bread is up next.

My new interests involve taking longer to develop deeper flavors. It's not even clear to me that I want to change the hydration and temperature of my starter in preparation for baking, if a colder starter simply needs longer to work. "You say that like it's a bad thing!"

My favorite sources are adapting from commercial artisanal bakeries. When baking at scale, I can imagine that the levain step represents a significant scaling up from the starter, so it's natural to make this distinction. The authors perhaps didn't even consider whether a one loaf baker would be just as happy adapting the starter.

At the other extreme, I've long admired the idea of simply remembering to save some dough for the next loaf.

So for home baking, one loaf at a time, does anyone see an advantage to a separate levain step, rather than simply tweaking one's starter to match the next loaf's levain recipe, then reverting to usual starter on the next feed?

Edited Sunday at 06:10 PM by Syzygies

[Pequod]

1 hour ago, Syzygies said:

So for home baking, one loaf at a time, does anyone see an advantage to a separate levain step, rather than simply tweaking one's starter to match the next loaf's levain recipe, then reverting to usual starter on the next feed?

Don’t know if I’d say there’s an advantage to it vs. what you suggest, but making a separate levain from my starter is usually what I do. My starter is 100% hydration and fed a mix of 70/30 white/whole rye, and the levain branches from that to whatever the formula calls for. Maybe a *slight* advantage to this is that the levain timing is very predictable. For example, a 1:2:2 levain at 78 degrees will be ready in about 5 hours.

[wrandyr]

My assumption is that the purpose of the levain is to increase the amount of active yeast so that there will be enough activity to rise the final dough faster than the gases can leak out. So it would depend how much active starter you had on hand. Of course, many of my assumptions have turned out to be incorrect.

[Pequod]

Another advantage of using a levain might be keeping the starter consistent if you're accumulating and using the discard for other things, like crumpets!