Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home

[Syzygies]

In KK Bread Making Tips and Tricks, @Pequod posted about his new Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home, a temperature controlled chamber for ideally maintaining a sourdough culture. That is a long and interesting thread, that devolves into speculation about my cannabis use and so forth. The Komodo Kamado forum has great advice from some very serious cooks, and sometimes that advice draws in visitors who decide to stay and buy a Komodo Kamado, and become valued compatriots. So I thought it would be worthwhile to start a new thread focused on the Sourdough Home.

I bought one immediately. The short-term payoff is being able to feed one's starter less frequently without inducing a refrigerator coma, then get it nice and warm for making bread. My first bread this way was a technical flop but the best tasting bread I've made in years. This makes it clear that the long-term payoff is learning to bake with better controls. Sure, people have made wine for centuries before electronics, but they had access to stable temperature caves, and they adapted their methods to reliable conditions. Modern wine is arguably better, in part because one can control conditions precisely. I'm convinced that one can learn to make astounding bread by learning how to use the Sourdough Home to control conditions.

The Sourdough Home is not silent, and even in sleep mode a brighter light source than all of my other LEDs combined. If you live in a studio apartment, you'll likely end up pitching it out the window.

An internet search reveals that a 3/4 liter "743 Weck Mold Jar" with a wooden lid is an ideal starter container (Amazon). Remove the silicone lid seal, so gases can escape. I like mine.

After briefly searching for a bread proofing chamber, I realized that dough for my single loaves should fit in the Sourdough Home itself, if I could find the right container. I got lucky, and found the Airscape Glass Coffee Canister (Medium 7-Inch) with a two quart capacity. It exactly fits the Sourdough Home, with a similar wooden lid and a silicone seal one removes. It looks like a matched pair with the Weck starter jar, as shown in the photos.

I've never had much luck with refrigerator dough rises, but the Sourdough Home allows for intermediate bulk proofing temperatures. My goal now is to adapt the idea of Desem bread (as detailed for example in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book; we already grind our own flour) to the possibilities of this equipment.

 

[David Chang]

what is your keep temp for once a week feedings and what is the warmup temp? 

[Syzygies]

1 hour ago, David Chang said:

 

what is your keep temp for once a week feedings and what is the warmup temp? 

Here are screen grabs from their instruction manual, and a link to their blog post with more information:

How to Use the Sourdough Home | Brod & Taylor

[David Chang]

@Syzygies thanks for the info. i think my dual zone wine fridge can replicate these temps adjustable from 5-18c.  it's handy to keep prefrements at different temps and bulk fermentation at higher than normal fridge temps, but i've always kept my starter in the normal fridge. 

[tekobo]

Always good to benefit from your research @Syzygies but I see what you have done here.  You have upped the ante.  @Pequod suggests one cool thing to buy and you find another two to add to the list.  Well done.  Let's see if anyone bites.  I think I have a sure fire way of swerving this purchase.  I have made a promise that I won't even consider getting a Sourdough Home until @C6Bill gets one. I think I'm safe.  

[Pequod]

That's an interesting idea with the Airscape container. I'd thought of doing something similar for pizza dough, which would benefit from long, slow ferments at above-fridge temperatures. I've also considered something like this with a bit more capacity: Amazon.com: Cooluli 20 Liter Mini Fridge with Temperature Control - Black: Home & Kitchen

I don't know anything about that particular model, but it's an example of a portable, adjustable fridge.

@tekobo - see what I did there? I saw @Syzygies container and raised him a fridge!

Edited April 25 by Pequod

[Syzygies]

I've logged 221 loaves of bread since 2011. After a long initial struggle trying to understand why freshly ground "green" flour didn't work, I settled on a sourdough recipe that was roughly half freshly ground hard red and rye flours, and half bread flour. I used some yeast to boost the sourdough, and worked through at room temperature on the bread's schedule, overruling mine.

Every time I tried to work out a new recipe with these basic assumptions, I ended up back with the same recipe.

This is true of so many things: Considering how hard I've worked at this, you'd think I'd be better.

One's first reaction to the Sourdough Home could be that it's a convenience for feeding starter less often, without inducing a fridge coma. A more nuanced read is that fermenting bread can be every bit as subtle as fermenting wine, and the Sourdough Home is a tool that increases one's options.

Mine provoked me to relearn bread with new ground rules:

• all freshly ground flour, nearly full extraction
• naturally leavened with no yeast
• cool phases to extend the fermentation time and allow more flexible scheduling

My original inspiration was Desem bread, but I've evolved into a new equilibrium recipe. Above is my eighth try, and I'm starting to get the hang of it. We love the taste. My loaves are far from Instagram-craggy, and far from anything we can buy in the SF Bay area.

My new several day protocol is this:

• prepare a levain from flour, water, starter
• hydrolyze the remaining flour with a few conditioners

I expose the second mixture to a minute in a chamber vacuum machine, which accelerates the hydrolyzing process exactly as others use vacuums to marinate meats. Let both mixtures rest till the levain is ready.

It's convenient preparing both mixtures at once, and the long hydrolyze gives the conditioners time to act.

• Combine these mixtures with a salt water solution
• Stretch and fold in a bowl, frequently for the first few hours
• Transfer to the Airscape glass canister, mark the level with a grease pencil, and place in 50 F Sourdough Home

Wait another interval, typically overnight

• Pull out the dough, let return to room temperature and rise 20% above grease pencil line, typically 3-4 hours
• Bench rest, shape, place loaf in proofing basket or box
• Wait 2 1/2 hours, frustrated that the usual signals for overproofing don't seem to apply. Move the loaf to the fridge.

Wait another interval, then get either the KK or an indoor range up to temperature. Bake cold from the fridge, typically in a Challenger Bread Pan.

Baking cold from the fridge is a convenience that supports more flexible fire management, and it stiffens the dough so it won't sploof out so much.

The additive I've settled upon are

• 2% vital wheat gluten
• 0.5% diastatic malt
• 60 ppm ascorbic acid

For me these make a dramatic difference. Everyone's results vary. If you buy flour, even freshly milled full extraction, different ballgame. This is not Desem, but it's healthy.

Edited June 3 by Syzygies

[Pequod]

Nice looking loaf. Bread is definitely a never-ending process of discovery and refinement. I’ve been doing desem for my 100% fresh milled loaves. To me, desem vs. Sourdough is kind of like cocochar vs. Coffeewood lump. Desem is flavor neutral so the flavor profile is only that of the grains.  For my 100% fresh milled loaves I’ve been sifting out the bran with a 40-mesh screen, then soaking it overnight and mixing back in. This seems to soften the bran, allowing longer gluten strands to form and giving me more loft. Haven’t messed around too much with dough conditioners other than diastatic malt on occasion. 

[Syzygies]

Wow. I had thought of pitching all the bran into the levain to digest, as a way to stay 100% extraction, but I hadn't tried it yet. Bran slices gluten, and you're moderating this.

Yes there are many factors influencing starter flavor. Temperature, hydration, timing, how much to carry over. Desem is a famous corner of this design space. I’ve been favoring lively starter at the expense of other characteristics, but I’ll get more confident.

By expanding the behaviors we can offer, the real purpose of the Sourdough Home is to engage us in a relationship with our starter. As one wonders after tasting bread how baking technique and the recipe might influence its flavor, one wonders after smelling starter how handling technique and the recipe might influence its aroma. These involvements are twin aspects of naturally leavened bread making, on an equal footing.

I sometimes think that these involvements are a scientific process for reaching an objective result.

I sometimes think that these involvements themselves are instead the whole point, and imprint on the result exactly like other art forms. Paintings can reify thought, transferring part of the painter's inner world to a degree that can shake one's soul. Science can't explain this transference. People talk of a "passionate" cook? When one travels, why is eating the food so important to understanding the culture? When food is magical, it achieves this same kind of transference.

Edited June 4 by Syzygies

[C6Bill]

On 4/25/2024 at 12:13 PM, tekobo said:

I have made a promise that I won't even consider getting a Sourdough Home until @C6Bill gets one. I think I'm safe.  

Who says i don't already have one, or even two of them !!! You should get three just to stay ahead of me LOL

Just kidding  I really like to keep things simple. I don't have time for complicated. I actually have two loafs in the oven proofing right now. Our baseball team has a long road trip today and i am staying behind to shoot the softball game. They are convinced they will win if they have a loaf of my bread in the dugout, hey it worked for them last year so i have to make them one. Last years semi final went 16 innings and they were starving by the 14th inning, I had given a loaf to the trainer before the game and when they started complaining they were starving she gave the loaf to them. They like it lol