Wild Yeast

Hoster05

Overnight blonde with everything topping blended in.  First loaf in our new gas range.  

milesvdustin

How the heck do you mix the flour and water by hand when baking and not end up with a giant sticky flour glove?

paqman

milesvdustin said:

How the heck do you mix the flour and water by hand when baking and not end up with a giant sticky flour glove?

@milesvdustin dough doesn’t stick to wet hands.  I mostly use my Kitchen Aid for mixing.  If you want to do it the manual way, a danish whisk works surprisingly well, mine is made in Poland and I got it from Lee Valley.  A dough scraper is a must have IMHO but I did not know that until I got this one (Matfer Bourgeat from Amazon):

paqman

This guy has a mood of its own.  I repeat the exact same steps, same ingredients, same temperature and one day it rises and then deflates almost down to the starting point, the next day it wants to jump out and of the jar 😳


It makes delicious bread though:

milesvdustin

I ran my hands under the tap then straight into the mixing bowl. Maybe I'll try the kitchen aid. 

paqman

milesvdustin said:

I ran my hands under the tap then straight into the mixing bowl. Maybe I'll try the kitchen aid. 

Flour WILL stick to your wet hands.  Once it is incorporated with the water then it won’t stick as long as your hands are wet from cold water.  You may have to dip your hands in water a few times.  At the end of the process, when the dough is ready, I dust the dough and work surface with flour, a good amount actually.  I handle the dough with the scraper and dry hands at this point.

Hoster05

2nd try at the sourdough bagels came with much better results.   Topped with everything bagel topping.  

caliking

Those look pretty good! How did they taste?

Hoster05

they turned out great.  nice and chewy

SciAggie

Attempting my first English muffins. Following the recipe in the Tartine Bread book - mostly. I didn’t have any active dry yeast so I used 20% active starter in the portion of the recipe calling for active dry yeast. 

I’m not clear on the difference between a poolish and a levaine - so if someone wants to relieve their boredom of social distancing and explain it that would be great. 

I’m thinking this will bulk proof most of the day. I’ll retard it in the fridge tonight and have fresh muffins off the griddle in the morning. 

Or I’ll have breakfast tacos in the morning...

We’ll see. 

paqman

SciAggie said:

Attempting my first English muffins. Following the recipe in the Tartine Bread book - mostly. I didn’t have any active dry yeast so I used 20% active starter in the portion of the recipe calling for active dry yeast. 

I’m not clear on the difference between a poolish and a levaine - so if someone wants to relieve their boredom of social distancing and explain it that would be great. 

I’m thinking this will bulk proof most of the day. I’ll retard it in the fridge tonight and have fresh muffins off the griddle in the morning. 

Or I’ll have breakfast tacos in the morning...

We’ll see. 

it will probably rise but the texture may be different.  I have see Tartine bread mentioned a few times, do you like the book?

SciAggie

The book is nice. It’s part recipe book, part coffee table “look at the pictures” book. 

caliking

Looking forward to your English muffins @SciAggie! 

I couldn’t wrap my feeble mind around the poolish vs. levain thing either, so it’s all levain to me. 

ColtsFan

Can't find yeast anywhere. I didn't realize Bloomington IN had so many bakers. 🤣

Day 1 sourdough starter 

caliking

@ColtsFan That's the spirit!

SciAggie

@ColtsFan Active dry yeast is just a passing fad...

paqman

SciAggie said:

@ColtsFan Active dry yeast is just a passing fad...

what do you mean? it has been sold for as long as I can remember.

SciAggie

paqman said:

SciAggie said:

@ColtsFan Active dry yeast is just a passing fad...

what do you mean? it has been sold for as long as I can remember.

That was a lame joke. Sorry. Been inside too long. 

ColtsFan

I didn't realize I was out of Saf-Instant. I was really craving BBQ pulled pork pizza out of the Ardore. Guess I'll give Forkish' SD crust a try in about 4 more days

SciAggie

Here’s today’s loaf. Baking bread makes me happy. 

caliking

SciAggie said:

Here’s today’s loaf. Baking bread makes me happy. 

Seems like one can't agree AND like a post, Gary.

caliking

Tried something different. Caliprince likes an Indian sweet called jalebi. It’s one of his favorite things to eat every morning when he goes to visit the grandparents in India. 

Fermented batter, fried, then dunked briefly in syrup flavoured with saffron and cardamom. I used a bit of SD starter to ferment the batter. Turned out to be an excellent move. 

The spirals are supposed to be tighter and thinner, but it was ok for a first try. Flavor was spot on. Most Indian folks have some childhood memory of eating fresh jalebis, and these sure did hit the spot. 

Caliprince  approved, so mission accomplished

SciAggie

“Dipped in syrup flavored with saffron and cardamon” - dang....
I have just recently learned to appreciate flavored syrups (homemade). When I made Mexican chicken and waffles I made a syrup from pincocillo sugar infused with cloces and cinnamon. It was good. I later added it to a mole and it really kicked that up a notch. 

I’ve never heard of jalebi - by I’ll take a #COVID-19 curbside pickup please...

ColtsFan

I'll take it for my first SD loaf

SciAggie

@ColtsFan That looks nice! You’re hooked now. 

The good news is it isn’t that hard to make really good bread. The bad news (not really) is that you spend years learning to make progressively better bread - and different kinds. I never stop learning for sure. 

@NPHuskerFL - His bread made recent leaps forward by orders of magnitude. (I hope you take that as a compliment- I mean it to be)

SciAggie

Bread flour has been almost impossible to get here. I broke down and bought a 25 lb. bag of AP flour just so I wouldn’t be without. 

Now I can cook as much as I want. 

ColtsFan

Blake certainly turns out some incredible loaves 

NPHuskerFL

@ColtsFan Excellent first timers sourdough loaf 👍

@SciAggie Thanks for the compliment 👊

NPHuskerFL

I haven't been on the Forum for awhile.  And when I came back the format was so different it was off-putting so I haven't posted since. I have been playing around on it today and it seems to be pretty decent it just takes a little bit of getting used to. At any rate here is a loaf that I baked last week.

Country Loaf

100g Levain

420g Cool Water

450g King Arthur Bread Flour
150g King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat

13g Unground Himalayan Salt

HeavyG

I read this thread a couple of days ago and thought some of you folks might be interested in a fellow that was able to revive some ancient Egyptian yeast from the time of the Pharoahs.

He had two separate threads. The first was focused on the attempts to revive the ancient yeast. The second was talking about the type of vessel used for baking the bread.

NOTE: To actually see the whole thread you need to cloick on each of the two pieces showing up in this post. The link will open up the whole thread on the Twitter site.

ALSO NOTE: Oh geeeezzz... Twitter has changed how they display threads. Once you click on each of the two big graphics below to take you to each page on the bottom left of the top image of the page you'll see something like in this small capture that says "show this thread" - click on that to actually open the damn thread:

The yeast...

https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1155602321918705664

Baking...

https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1244467956748189696