Smash Burgers on Homemade Sourdough

NDG

Made some sourdough on saturday.  Looks like too much bread in pics, but perfect match with some super smash griddle burgers.  Kept it simple with (2) Patty and (2) Cheese on each . . so so good.

NDG

trying to post a few different ways - see if there is easier what than going through photobucket . . it has been awhile for me.

HellrodKC

holy hell.... that sourdough looks amazing

bgebrent

Gorgeous bread dude!  Burger looks delicious!

YukonRon

Fab cook, beautiful presentation. The bread is over-the-top.

Thatgrimguy

Bravo, that bread is looking amazing. How was the crumb?

bhedges1987

Nice cook!  Now I'm making burgers tonight

fishepa

Great looking burgers!

20stone

Duuuuuddddeee!

I've got to start baking bread.  That looks awesome

NDG

Thanks for all the kind words.  @Thatgrimguy crumb was very nice, but I am now using 50% winter wheat (more nutrients) and 50% white bread flour.  This means it is a little more dense than 100% white bread flour . . but we like it very much.  

I am working through an amazing sourdough bread book called Josey Baker Bread and learning tons.  I always make two, and give one to a neighboor while still hot . . so satisfying!

bluebird66

Wow, that whole meal is awesome!

Pghegger

How do you make these smash burgers?  Seen tons of threads but haven't caught the recipe or technique yet

Dyal_SC

Killed it...  

F3DAWG

The sourdough looks amazing!  I bet those were some mighty fine  burgers!

F3DAWG

Pghegger said:

How do you make these smash burgers?  Seen tons of threads but haven't caught the recipe or technique yet

Try this link:

https://theshoeboxkitchen.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/hands-down-the-best-burger-youll-ever-eat/

20stone

NDG said:

I am working through an amazing sourdough bread book called Josey Baker Bread and learning tons.  I always make two, and give one to a neighboor while still hot . . so satisfying!

I am stuck at the Houston airport, and bought the bread book. Great stuff!  I'll be baking when I get back.  Thanks for pointing it out. 

feef706

Excellent looking cook, what did you use to smash the burgers, two at a time is slightly more efficient than my one at a time tonight, I used a spatela and it kept bending so I wasn't even considering trying two..

NDG

@20stone great to hear you got the book, feel free to message me with Q's.  I got a sourdough culture online, and activated it. Mine is from Italy and called Ischia. If you want to go this route and bake with a sourdough culture (aka starter), or you can get it at amazon here or from Ed Wood's site called www.sourdo.com.  Not 100% needed to make bread or follow his book (plenty of recipes use Instant Dry Yeast or Active Dry Yeast), but the sourdough culture adds lots of flavor that dry yeast does not have.  Joseys book breaks it down very nice.

@feef706 thanks!  I put on a welding glove, and smashed by placing my sturdy metal spatula on the top of the meat ball . . then used heavy tongs to push the spatula down . . harder than you think.  I got lots of tips by reading this article here 

NDG

Thick SourDough slice make some tasty pizza bread!  If you can find a brand of pep called "vermont smoke cure pepperoni"  get it . . so tasty.  I learned about it on the pizzamaking forum and will not buy anything else.

20stone

NDG said:

@20stone great to hear you got the book, feel free to message me with Q's.  I got a sourdough culture online, and activated it. Mine is from Italy and called Ischia. If you want to go this route and bake with a sourdough culture (aka starter), or you can get it at amazon here or from Ed Wood's site called www.sourdo.com.  Not 100% needed to make bread or follow his book (plenty of recipes use Instant Dry Yeast or Active Dry Yeast), but the sourdough culture adds lots of flavor that dry yeast does not have.  Joseys book breaks it down very nice.

@NDG -

I read the book on the plane last night and have three quick questions:

1. Kneading - My mom baked bread when I was a kid (white loaves with alarming amounts of butter, mostly), and I still do from time to time (mostly biscuits, yeast rolls, ciabatta and the like).  To me, kneading the bread is one of the most satisfying parts of the process, and I am reluctant to give it up for his "knead in the bowl" approach that reminds me of punching down my yeast roll dough.  Also, I was under the impression that you can strengthen the dough through kneading (glutens doing their thing).  So, are you down with his approach, or do you dump it and knead it, and what are the trade offs?
2. Sourdough starter source - I was contemplating making my own using "locally harvested yeast", but am in kind of a rush so that I can bake with my son next weekend.  When you bought it online, did you feel like a sellout, or is it more like cheese and coffee, where, sure you can grow your own coffee, but....?
3. Sourdough starter storage - He indicates that it should be loosely covered when you are growing it, but it was not clear how to store (when either on the counter or in the fridge).  How do you store your pet starter?

Thanks for the leads on starters.

PS - Reading Ed Wood's site reminds me of an old Pulp Fiction scene.  I could hear him offing up a "Pepsi challenge against any of that Amsterdam $hit", and me ordering 3g of the "Madman"

NDG

@20stone  . .  you dont mess around !!
1) I agree & hate the "in bowl" approach.  Truth is, this is more "stretch and fold" to add air & strength, rather than knead. Either way, I keep it on granite with stainless bowl over top in between.
2) not an expert on the wide range of sourdough cultures (wild vs store bought), but I got mine for pizza making a few years ago and knew this flavor profile was proven.  It shipped to me as dry powder, so activation takes a few days to a week anyway, somewhat tricky too.  My sister is a wine maker (went to UC Davis) and is nuts for yeast/fermentation.  She told me going wild yeast will range in flavors and can be unpredicatble.  Seems exciting, but I went the easy route.
3) That is the other nice part about ordering online.  Comes with schedule and tips for feeding.  I only use mine ~ twice a month, so it sleeps in fridge most of the time in a wide mouth glass ball jar.  About two days before I use it . . I take it out of the fridge, dump all out in sink but about 30grams . . then feed it an additional 30g filter H20 and 30g Flour (100% match).  Stir it up, and do the same the next day.  After about 2 days of food, NOW it is alive and kicking with full flavor & active . . ready to work its magic!  Then back in the fridge after I use.
* If you dont use it for 3+ weeks, I would pull it out, feed it . . let it eat / digest for half day or so . . then put it back in fridge.  
* checkout pizzamakingforum.com for some super in depth posts 

NDG

one more thing . . . if you have a great bakery near your house, I am sure you can ask them for a couple grams of their sourdough starter.  All you need is a little bit to get going . . would be super easy so maybe you can make your deadline w/ your so nxt weekend!

20stone

NDG said:

one more thing . . . if you have a great bakery near your house, I am sure you can ask them for a couple grams of their sourdough starter.  All you need is a little bit to get going . . would be super easy so maybe you can make your deadline w/ your so nxt weekend!

My favorite bakery gave me the Heisman, so I am now looking at Ed Wood and FedEx.  If I get the starter by Friday, I should be able to get the starter rocking and rolling by Sunday or early next week.

As for messing around (or, more accurately, f%$##ing around), that IS the ONE THING I won't do

Thatgrimguy

@20stone I'd be mroe than happy to overnight you some starter. I've had mine going for over a year and have shared it with a number of people both online and in person.

Within a few weeks it won't matter where your starter came from. The local yeast in the air will overtake the yeast in the starter and it will then be your local yeast. 


Starter is harder to kill than people think.  I feed mine a complete random. Sometimes I'll have to pull a half inch of hard crap off the top to get to some wet starter, Feed it and within a day it's back alive.

NPHuskerFL

Nice crumb on the sourdough! Good eats my friend. Cold slow ferment or room temp proof?  Looks real good!  Baked in egg or oven? Note: I didn't read ALL of the comments so, if you've already disclosed this forgive the repetitiveness. 

NDG

@thatgrimguy  . . I am not an expert, but I think the source of sourdough does continue to impact flavor . . . here is quote& link is here:  "There is a popular myth on the Net that declares if a culture is moved from one area to another it becomes contaminated by the organisms of the new area. This is absolute nonsense"

But afterall, this source is trying to sell me something!

Also, great idea about shipping . . I would be happy to do that as well.  Direct Message me if needed.

Thatgrimguy

NDG said:

@thatgrimguy  . . I am not an expert, but I think the source of sourdough does continue to impact flavor . . . here is quote& link is here:  "There is a popular myth on the Net that declares if a culture is moved from one area to another it becomes contaminated by the organisms of the new area. This is absolute nonsense"

But afterall, this source is trying to sell me something!

Also, great idea about shipping . . I would be happy to do that as well.  Direct Message me if needed.

I know a Guilded baker from spain and he swears by the fact that local yeast will always take over.  The way yeast proliferates, the one that is most available will become the dominant player.  I've never tried side by side, but that dude has been baking longer than I have been living and coming from spain to San Fran then running Bottle Tree Bakery in Oxford,MS he's definitely had the opportunity to move some cultures around.  On the Crafsty class I took they also reiterated that the local yeast will take over your culture.  I don't think it matters a whole lot though. As long as it's healthy.

Thatgrimguy

This is interesting if you want to read it. Looks like the answer (like most things) is "it depends"

This is one of those questions that comes up periodically, because it gets at a more fundamental question of where exactly the organisms come from in sourdough -- do they come from the air, the flour, the water, the baker's hands, the surfaces of other kitchen equipment that come in contact with the dough, etc.? There are literally hundreds of scientific articles in food science journals about sourdough microorganisms, and the precise answer is still not fully determined.

What we do know is that there are many factors which influence how a starter initially develops and how stable an existing starter is. Changing the flour, for example, may introduce new microorganisms that could come to dominate and/or change the nutrients available (which may starve old microorganisms while giving new foods to others). Changing the feeding schedule, temperature of fermentation, or other aspects of the feeding regime may stress various microorganisms while allowing others to flourish.

That said, starters in many artisan bakeries have shown to be remarkably stable over years or even decades. Of course, in most of these situations we can assume a more-or-less consistent procedure for propagating the starter, somewhat consistent ingredients, and a consistent environment surrounding the starter.

It's that last factor that gets to this question. A recent review article from 2014 summarized a few related experiments that may shed some light. One experiment took seven traditional sourdough cultures and propagated them for 80 days in a laboratory while they were also propagated in their home bakery environment. Some bacterial species thrived in both environments, while others died out gradually or quickly in the lab:

Permutation analysis based on bacterial diversity, assessed through culture-dependent and -independent methods, showed that in five out of seven cases, sourdoughs propagated at artisan bakery and those propagated in the laboratory diverged. This may be explained probably by incomplete control of relevant factors and by the influence of house microbiota, whose level of contamination is supposed to be much higher in the bakery than in the laboratory.

Another notable observation is the fact that baker's yeast often shows up in bakery starters (presumably because it is present in the bakery in various places, even if never deliberately added to the sourdough starter), but it will die out in lab conditions.

In another experiment discussed in the review article that studied bacteria, various species present in the starters were detected in the air of the storage and work rooms, on benches and the dough mixer, on the hands of the baker, and in the flour of the bakery. (Different bacterial species tended to show up in different places, suggesting different media contributed different species for transmission to the dough, whether the flour, the air, the baker's hands, or the equipment.)

In concluding this section of the review:

Despite the use of different flour batches and possible variations in flour characteristics during subsequent propagation of the sourdoughs analysed, those strains appeared to persist in the doughs over at least 3 years of sampling. This persistence may be the result of the continuous use of the same fermentation parameters and of significant contamination from the environment of propagation.

Overall, the results of this study suggest that bakery environment, because of its usually high level of microbial contamination, may be the source not only of yeasts, but also of LAB [lactic acid bacteria] that, by virtue of their intrinsic capacities, may or may not dominate traditional sourdough.

There seems to be conclusive scientific evidence in a number of studies that a specific baking environment can have a significant effect on the stability of a sourdough culture. But the amount of variation will vary significantly from case to case. Most home bakers, for example, may not bake often enough or use their equipment regularly enough to transmit bacteria and yeast on the scale that happens in a bakery. And certain strains of bacteria and yeast tend to remain dominant in cultures even when moved out of their "home environment," while others may die off, thus making some cultures inherently more stable than others. Given that the concentration of microorganisms on surfaces and in ingredients is significantly higher than in the air in general, it is often likely that your specific home environment will play a greater role in your sourdough culture than the general region you live in.

In summary, baking environment is a factor in culture stability, but its contribution in particular cases will vary.

20stone

Excellent info, @Thatgrimguy.

In looking at Ed Wood's side (purveyor of heritage strains of sourdough starter), his activation routine indicates higher water temp intended to propagate his starter, making the environment too acidic for the local weaklings (my interpretation).

http://www.sourdo.com/activation-instructions/activation-instructions-english/

I see some interesting experimentation in our future.

As for the offers of starters, I may take you up on that, but want to confer with Ed before I pull the trigger either way.

Also, sorry for the thread jacking, but I have a pent up desire to bang out bread that you uncaged with the OP

NDG

Thanks Grim, good read.  Yeast is crazy. 
20 Stone, no thread jacking worries - just let me know if I can help.

Carolina Q

Wow!! What great looking food! Not sure which part I like best, the boule or the burger. But I definitely want a banneton!

I would love to try sourdough, but have been reluctant to commit to a long term relationship with a jar of goo in my fridge. This thread may push me over the edge!!