# isaac tries again



## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

ok, i tried again.. he he ...we will see if it works

the first sour dough i tried was 12 oz white rye flour and 8 oz water. i used to use equal parts rye and water but a bread baker said that it is to loose. made since. 

then the second i took 12 oz white rye, 8 oz water and 3 oz of seed. 

the third i took 8 oz of white flour (sir galahads... which is bread flour) and 8 oz of water. we wil lsee how that works

tomarrow, i might try 80 percent cooks flour, which is an organic white flour, 20 % whole wheat flour and 100 % water


i really hope this helps. i am a litlte upset that i couldnt reproduce what i made on my externship.


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## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

this has been a really good learning process for me. when the two starters didnt work and they had a very off smell to them... kinda like rotten bannanas, i started asking some of our bread chefs at school. they said that it could have been a host of reasons like maybe the contianer wasent cleaned out, maybe bad bacteria got in there, maybe it was the flour. 

my bread chef said that maybe my rye sour was to liquadie (sp?) which caused it to go rancid so i made another and tightned it up. we will see. hopefully it will work


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## risa (May 11, 2001)

My cooked potato starter isn't going anywhere at the moment. It doesn't even have the potatoes in there yet; just the milk, cornmeal, sugar and salt. The recipe said it would take 2-4 days to ferment, but I'm on the 3rd day now and I see nothing going on. I know... patience... patience. Or maybe my house is too clean! Yeah right. This whole starter/breadmaking experience is reminding me an awful lot of my mycology/fungi lab. I look at my starter and I see an illustration of the life cycle of yeast. I also can picture the cells dividing and reproducing. I wish they'd divide faster!!!!


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

I have been having the same thoughts about my new rye starter. In LaBrea, she says it will look more like a paste than a liquid. It has looked pretty fluid so far. This morning it got its last feeding (3 time a day for 3 days). I gave it half of the water called for. It is plenty active. I just wanted to try and firm it up a bit. The truth will be known this weekend! 

Patience is a virtue Risa  The Big Hat once counseled me "If you keep throwing it out and starting over, you ain't never going to have any bread."


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## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

well, i fed all three starters. one of them looks good, partley becasue i seaded it with another chefs starter . the other two are moving slowely. it is just the smell that catches me off guard. it is hard to know what to look for. its anoying. how do you know when it is ready to leaven bread? 

well all, i am going to go in on my day off and bake bread early in the morning. it should be great. i cant wait.

i am in bread class right now. the first day we just watched the bread chef do everything. it is very interesting. today, my partner and i made multi grain bread. we mixed it by hand which gave us more respect for the bread. it was wonderfull to do. i love bread a lot. mmmmmmmm!!!!!


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

isaac - i thought about what your instructor said about your starter being too "fermented". My rye starter had a very strong smell as well. It was also much more fluid than Silverton describes in LaBrea. when I fed it this evening i fed it only flour, no water. The texture looks much better and the smell, though very present, doesn't knock me down. It has more than doubled in the 3 hours since the feeding. I am going to use all the flour and half the water at the next feeding. I think at this point in our bread careers the only way we are going to :know when it is ready to leaven" is to try, fail and try again.


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## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

kyle,

hey man. i hope all is well over on your end. i would love to bake more but i have no ktichen. i would die just for a small kitchen. i am in love with baking. next time you make a loaf of bread kyle, make two, one for me too. 

kyle, its hard to explain. when i was making bread today in bread class (it is a 7 days class), i felt so good. holding the flour in my hands, kneading the dough, adding flour when needed. i love the feel of the dough sticking to your hands. i love the smell of the oven baking. i love shaping the dough in my hands. its wonderfull.

so please, next time you bake, bake a loaf for me.

thanks


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## katherine (Aug 12, 2000)

You could be growing a lot of different organisms in your starters. A variety of wild yeasts, bacteria, fungi, etc, can cause fermentation. Not all of them will have equally desirable characteristics. Probably the best thing to do is to continue to culture any that give you the results you are looking for, and pitch ones that don't seem to be working for you, and start again on them.

Most sourdough baked good recipes use yeast as leavening and sourdough starter as flavoring/dough conditioner. Many things which grow and make your starter flavorful have little leavening capacity. If you want to do a naturally leavened bread, you probably should breed your culture for that very purpose. I have a (literary) book with a chapter on the making of a naturally leavened bread, where the author started with an unleavened dough, making it up and leaving at room temperature repeatedly until it started to rise. Only then did he use it as a starter, saving a piece for his next batch. 

I will try to review this and summarize the details as soon as possible.

I know that the starters I have made gradually lose their leavening capability and start producing a less bread-like product (bread as we enjoy it, anyway) as they mature. But a smaller amount of starter added to a standard bread recipe can make a nice sourdough loaf.


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## kimmie (Mar 13, 2001)

N.S. did that during the first six months of her breadmaking career. Hang in there!

OH, and maybe you could lend your small easy-bake kitchen to Isaac??...uh, just for a few hours...


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## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

"Most sourdough baked good recipes use yeast as leavening and sourdough starter as flavoring/dough conditioner."

Katherine- there is so much information in your last post that doesn't compare to the reality of baking bread in my shop or kitchen that I don't know where to start. Commercial yeast has never come near my sourdough starter, now two years old and going strong, and I think that one would actually need a degree in microbiology, and a lab equipped to do it, to culture organisms other than those which are naturally predisposed to grow when flour and water are combined. One may get the occasional contaminated starter, but my experience with sourdough shows me that the saccoromyces exiguus and the lactic and acetic acid making bacteria usually do a pretty good job of making a home and keeping it. I would put a loaf of my sourdough up against anybody's....anybody's. 
The best way to get a culture started is to...follow...the...directions. Silverton, or Reinhart, either way. If KyleW can do it, so can anybody. No freelancing till you make something edible.


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## kimmie (Mar 13, 2001)

...mine is nearly seven years old and still going strong. No commercial yeast *ever* goes near my starter!


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

After seven years how much does it weight?


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## katherine (Aug 12, 2000)

thebighat and kimmie-Obviously you have recipes that work fine for you at home and in your shop without additional yeast. And lots of other bakers do, too. But during the seventies sourdough did one of its periodic resurgences and at that time I was surprised to find that most of the recipes used added leavening. Some even call for baking powder.

All sourdough starter is contaminated. That's where the organisms come from that start it. If you started a dozen different batches, some with potatoes, whole wheat flour, grapes, etc, you'd have a dozen different starters, each with its own characteristics. If you used each to make a loaf of bread, you'd find that one leavened best, and some might not at all. The flavors would be different, too. If you then use the one that made the best bread, you're selecting for desired characteristics just as any animal or plant breeder or biologist would do. Without a phd in biotechnology and a lab.

The ones that didn't have any leavening capacity might have some other desirable characteristics. But some might not be useful at all.


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## kimmie (Mar 13, 2001)

Iza,

I keep a maximum of three cups of live starter for home use and the equivalent of a cup, dried, just in case something goes wrong.


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

Thanks TBH, I think  BTW I am taking two classes with Peter Reinhart this week!

Katherine - I don't know about what goes on up in Maine, but here in Gotham City it is 
quite possible to cultivate a wild yeast starter. As The Big Hat said, I've done it. On the pages of my web site you can see it. All of the breads pictured were made without a hint of commercial yeast. With proper care, there is no reason for my starter to lose its leavening ability. I am not sure of all of the scientific terminology but bacteria doesn't have to be bad and I do not think of the starter as being _contaminated_. While there may be some variation in the wild yeast that is present in my apartment from day to day, I think it is probably pretty consistent. If you are interested in learning about wild yeast and naturally leavened bread there a a couple of threads here that discuss all kinds of books on the subject.


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

Back to the subject at hand. Isaac's bread looks awesome. He was very busy yesterday morning. He found an unused kitchen at CIA and went to town. He sent me a pic he has posted on his website. Maybe he will share the address


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## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

was that a hint kyle? 

yes, i was lucky enought to be able to help a chef make all the bread for the restaraunts on saturday morning and on the down time, i made my own bread. it was wonderfull.

kyle, there are bad bacteria around. when you first start building your starters, as explained by chef copedge, the bad bacteria and the good bacteria fight it out. its a wonderfull analogy i thought. that is why some sour dough starters go bad in the process of building them.

that is partially the reason why people add a pinch of fresh yeast to the starter. i highly disagree with this, supported by the defianition of a sour dough starter which means flour, water, and wild yeast. i think that if you add a pinch of fresh yeast, then you have a pre ferment. its way diffrent then a sour dough starter.

that is why i think bread baking is confusing. people are not set on standered defanitions and the more you read, the more you will learn and the more you will get confused.

oh, before i forget, my web site is http://pages.zdnet.com/ichefisaac/beyondbread

i only have the front page done along with the about me link. i will have more coming soon.

thanks to all.


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## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

I gotta tell you...He sent me that pic too, and I am just bumping and grinding about it. Nice looking stuff. Found a sourdough FAQ last night with a ton of info. If I can get back there, I'll post the link. and what I meant, KyleW, was that if you, or any other interested person, can pick up a book, follow the directions, and bake a loaf of bread, then anybody else can. I was very proud of you when I saw your pictures. You obviously learned something you didn't know the week before.
Katherine- You really ought to try and find The Bread Builders. He talks about what's going on in a refrigerated culture, and if I got this right, he finds that two or three organisms come to dominate it, even though there may be dozens in there, and that cultures develop some kind of immunity to contamination. It's pretty widely accepted that commercial yeast will get killed in a low ph culture in two or three generations. But I'll give you this--the sourdough faq I found did say that starters can fade over time. The writer said he found he still got the leavening, but lost the flaver. Then again, who's he?


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

I knew what you meant TBH but I couldn't resist 

I have violated the Go Deep Before Long rule. I couldn't help myself. I love rye bread. My results were mixed. Rye certainly is a different animal.


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## kimmie (Mar 13, 2001)

I am so moved at the sight of those wonderful looking loaves produced respectively by Isaac and KyleW.

Kyle, your first efforts were quite nice, but I see such improvement here. It's quite amazing. The LaBrea loaves look right out of a bakery.

Isaac, you wanted it so badly that you made it happen...

Congratulations to both of you!


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## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

Some of that rye is great looking. I've made the naturally leavened rye and had the chutzpah to bring a loaf to Providence when I audited Reinhart's class. I didn't use rye meal because I didn't have it. Mine came out a bit better looking than yours. Really like the looks of the Normandy rye. May have to go back to the library for Mzzzzzz. Silverton. This is the address to the sourdough faq. http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-di...dough/faq.html


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

What fun!!!!

I just visited Issac web page.
Passion...So very cool.

I grew up in my grandfathers bakerys and although I never followed in his foot steps I have never lost the passion for the making of bread.Once it's in your bllod it never leaves.
Issac, I really hope and wish the best for you. Remember to follow your dreams
cc


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## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

i watched a vidoe that the cia made about bread baking and a guy said "a day without bread is a day without sun"

i really do love bread. its a new love really. 

i used to not think so much of bread when i was younger. my grandma baked bread and it was wonderful. mom tried but failed. i failed too when i worked at danielss. i knew nothing about bread,

it wasent until i went on externship that i was interduced to bread while i had the chance to work with the artisan bread baker. it was love (of shall i say loaf) at first sight. i am not sure what attracted me to bread. i think it was everything. like scaling the ingrdents and mixing. to see just four ingrdents that make wonderfull bread. to se the bread proof and to see it before and after it goes into the oven. its wonderfull. i just love how artisan bread looks. no more wonderbread for me 

i want to thank everyone that has helped me out. even though ya all confused me at times, its the digestion of education thing. i want to thank the big hat for keeping my head on straight and not letting me buy into what books would jsut confuse me on. i would like to thank kimmie for all her help when i was confused and i would like to thank kyle who inspired me more and made me feel jelous that he was baking and i wasent. i love looking at his progress. 

thank you all for all your help.


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

Just had roast turkey on the Normandy rye. Very nice, if I do say so myself. When I finished the Reinhert dough it was almost liquid. He sais it should be neutral to the touch. I assumed he meant neither sticky or satiny. I added more flour. I will just have to try again. The Silverton breads were definately better. The crusts are really thick and chewy. But they both seem a little on the dense side. I think I need to be less afraid of over kneading the dough. I have read in a couple of places where it is easy to ruin what little dough exists in rye flour. Oh well, back to the lab.

I agree with Cape Chef. This bread stuff kinda gets under your skin


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

I just checked out kyleW site.

Man those loaves look great.

I have been making sourdough for a number of years and I love silvertons breads...

I did not read this thread until today and it is so wondeful to watch the growth amd passion. Like I said before I am not a baker or pastry chef,but I can say that Thebighat is a wealth of imformation and technique.

cc


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

Wow guys those are great looking loaves! It all look so good. Can I have a slice or two?  

Kimmie from reading about starter feeding, you should add a cup or so of flour every few days. How then do you managed to keep your starter’s weight under control? I have images of being invaded by starter.

I made cinnamon swirl bread from The Best Recipe this weekend. I wasn’t sure the bread would be good because after making the dough I fell asleep again and two hours later the dough had more than triple in volume. Furthermore I used yeast that I kept in the fridge, it was all I had and the store were not open at that time. 

It was, in all modesty, a great loaf. No yeast odour, a great golden crust, a moist and tight crumb. The aroma of cinnamon was to die for. I did change the recipe a little, only used one egg, less sugar and more cinnamon.


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

It is hard to accept at first, but the easiest way to keep your starter from taking over your living space is to throw some out. After each full feeding cycle I reduce mine down to 1LB 2OZ if I am going to use it hte next day and 9OZ if I'm going to store it. You can also freeze it or dry it. I have made that cinnamon bread before. Tasty ain't it


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## kimmie (Mar 13, 2001)

Dear Isaac,

I just love watching your progress!



and Iza: Kyle said it all! Thanks Kyle.

[ August 13, 2001: Message edited by: Kimmie ]


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

The FAQ that TBH found is packed with all kinds of info! Here is a little more User Friendly version.


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## isaac (Jun 9, 2001)

when i got into class today, i pulled all three of my starters out of the refer. i let tem warm up a little and then checked them. one is doing great. it has a nice smell to it and a okeasent sour taste. the other one is coming along slowely. the one i made with organtic white flour is not smelling bad per say but has an off smell to it. it was pretty runny so i tightened it up today. i asked my chef why i am having trouble with my liquad starter and he says that the more liquidy it is, the faster it will sour and potentially go rancid so i decided to tighten it up

any more ideas?


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