Soupcon

I prefer to eat basmati rice. But it is really difficult to eat basmati rice with chopsticks so when I cook Chinese/Japanese type dishes, the rice I do cook is a shorter grain with more surface starch so the grains when cooked are not mushy or gluey but do stick together.

The cuisine you are cooking/eating will also determine what kind of rice you need. See the following: http://www.readersdigest.com.au/recipes/types-of-rice.asp

Here is my second attempt at baking sourdough from my starter. I increased the hydration to over 70%. Not as good surface tension but much better crumb (I think) and certainly better flavour this time.

Actually I love left overs, so I always cook too many red skinned or yellow fleshed (boiling) potatoes and even baking potatoes. I use them in pot pies, potato salads, many composed salads where potatoes are just one of the ingredients, for home fries where they are fried in chicken, duck or bacon fat as a component of a meal (breakfast, lunch or dinner). I also use the flesh from leftover baking potatoes as thickener is soups. I am just scratching the surface of how I use them.

I actually cook more Italian style sausages than I need for a meal and then later cut up the remainder into coins, and add them to a basic homemade tomato sauce for pasta as the meat component. I also have been known to cut any type of leftover sausages lengthwise, fry them gently to heat them and put them between 2 pieces of toast with ketchup to eat as a sandwich (childhood comfort food).

It worked!!! Happy days. Here is my first ever bake with a sourdough starter I made from scratch. I also have never used a banneton before nor shaped freestanding loaves of bread. So many firsts today.

To set the cat among the pidgeons.... I understand that the yeasts found in the sourdough levain can be and are found anywhere in the world. The difference in the bread itself is in the flour and the baker. French flour is not the same as Canadian flour which are both not the same as US flour. Anyone in the world can bake sourdough bread. The sourdough yeasts found in the San Fransisco area can be found in Toronto, London England, Bejing, and Canbera. I think maintaining the levain itself for that long is to be admired.

I forgot to post about my conversation with the baker/teacher at the bakery where I purchase my loved ww sourdough loaf. I asked the baker behind the counter about the levain they use for their breads in particular the ww bread I love so much and he went into the bakery and brought back with him the baker/instructor. The lavain they use in the bakery is from a 200 year old levain from France. They have divided it and mixed into it different flours depending on the type of bread they wish to bake... each kind of bread has a separate levain maintained just for it. The ww loaf levain is about 30% AP flour as they had difficulty with a totally ww levain. He did not elaborate as to what difficulty they had. I have been invited back to the bakery to speak more with the teacher and to see their main production area (quite small) and hopefully the levain they use.

Thanks Anna. I was not aware of this but I had already pitched the flour anyway. The ww flour I had been using at the beginning to make the starter is from Five Roses. When I have figured out how to make starters and bake with them I am going to switch over to ww Red Fife organic flour. But that may not beeeee for quite a while yet.

I finally took a look at what "Robin Hood" might have doctored the flour with and found L-Cysteine HCL. Some kind of amino acid. This is the only additive that might have had this effect as it is supposed to promote gluten formation. Well I had gluten alright. The starter was almost solid. It got pitched. I have started again after finding the ww flour that I had started with originally. As for the AP sourdough starter... it had seem to go into hold for a while and I could not seem to get it to ferment any faster than over a 24 hour period and then it barely doubled. So I changed the ratios from 1:1:1 to 1:2:2 and waited and yes I refreshed daily. Finally this morning it had not only doubled in bulk it had trippled and had just started to receed so I refreshed early this morning and the action has already started. Not holding my breath yet. This starter has passed the float test for the past week but because it took sooooo long to ferment I have not yet made bread with it.

No raisins in my butter tarts either and the filling must be runny. None of this set filling stuff. Runny enough that when you take a bite you need a plate underneath (or your hand to lick afterwards) to catch the drips.

Update and need help I think. Here is a picture of my ww sourdough starter which is the one I last talked about and has been in production for not quite 2 weeks (I think). Anyway it looks great as the photo shows but sinks like a stone in the float test. Me no understand. I have had to switch ww flours in the last 2 days and will return to the original brand when it is restocked (never dreamed they would run out of the original... who knew). The starter is now very very concentrated and almost dough like but still in a 1:1:1 ratio of starter/flour/water. So what is the problem... hydration? Too much bran?

I know this topic is about sous vide garlic but have you tried garlic a la modernist cuisine at home. It is nice and mild and caramelised and quite yummy. Give it a whirl.

Thankyou @DianaM for the post on you favourite sourdough author, Sarah Owens. I am having such a wonderful time reading her book and getting lots of ideas. My sourdough ww starter that I switched over to ap flour is still fermenting away but not quite at the same rate as before. So I am nursing it along. I did start at the same time one other ww starter which took a long time to ferment and now is going gangbusters. I have kept this one as ww. I do not smell acetone in either starter thankfully (hoping I don't jinx myself). When either starter passes the floatation test I will bake. I have been trying (I know you live in Ontario somewhere as do I) to locate organic unbleached bread flour and am having not much luck. Is sifted ww flour a reasonable substitute for unbleached bread flour do you think?

Ahhh. Too late. I refreshed it last night with 1 part AP:2 parts ww: 3 parts H2O;3 parts starter and this morning it had doubled in bulk again so I refreshed with 2 ap:1 ww:3 H2O:3 starter and will see what happens... No smell of acetone again but just sour starter. Yipppppeeeee. So we will see.

Well, I started a new starter with whole wheat on Sat. It sat dormant for 2 days before it began to grow. I fed it with whole wheat to see what would happen. Nothing happened again until the 2nd day when it doubled in bulk. I refreshed it again this afternoon with whole wheat and it had doubled in bulk in 8 hours which is now as I write. As I have done more reading on the site suggested by @paulraphael and now know that whole wheat starters at the beginning are not such a good idea until they are stable so I am going to see if I can switch it over to an AP unbleached flour sourdough starter by mixing in 30% AP in tonight's feed and see what has happened with it when I wake up tomorrow. BTW I have not found any smell of acetone in this starter so I hope the first go at this process was a one off and is also why I am switching over to unbleached AP to decrease the tendency for the development of lots of acid. It does at the moment smell sour however.

Thank you. Great reference. I am well aware of Clostridium as I was an RN in a former life but not it's tendency to produce acetone in sourdough starters if given the opportunity and wrt the acid forming bacteria had also last summer been trying to make vinegar from a cider vinegar containing a mother; so acid forming bacteria might just be floating around in my kitchen still. Granted the smell of acetone was not that strong but nonetheless I knew it was there and should not have been. So perhaps the refrigerated starter is not the write off I was afraid it might be and perhaps should be taken out of its cold sleep and revived to see what I can do with it. Thanks again.

Thank you for reminding me that I don't need a large amount of starter to make a loaf of bread. Bingo. You are right. I will keep the starter in the fridge going and see what happens with that starter AND start a new one with whole wheat and then feed it with unbleached white when it (assumption here) becomes active.

I am not sure the same bacteria might not also be in the refrigerated starter as well as they both came from the same base. I know the hazard of whole wheat sourdough is that they have a tendency to become tooo sour but I don't think it is that. OTOH it may just be that. I am not sure what an all whole wheat starter should smell like. Any ideas. I know that a starter made with unbleached bread flour should not smell like nail polish remover but I am not sure what a whole wheat starter should smell like. Perhaps I have bitten off more than I can chew and should back up and start life again in the sourdough world at least with an unbleached white bread flour base. Just navel gazing at the minute.

Updates? Sure. I am glad you asked. The one on the counter smelled of nail polish remover. I can't for the life of me figure out what would cause so it must be some strange bacteria from somewhere.... either in the flour or picked up in the house. I have just pitched it as I can's seem to get the smell to go away even after a few refreshments. The one in the fridge is still in hibernation. I am not sure what to do with that one. Any suggestions?

Thankyou DianaM and cakewalk so much. I divided the starter into two batches last night and fed them and put one in the fridge and left one out on the counter. The one in the fridge is in hibernation as I expected. The one on the counter was doubled in bulk by this morning so it looks like I have made a good starter. Now I will feed it every 8 to 12 hours for a few days and then bake with it. I will keep the one in the fridge in hibernation for a while and then revive it, stablise it and then bake with it. BTY the starter is whole wheat. My goal is actually to learn how to and make my own starters, learn how to bake with them and then purchase Red Fife in bulk for baking bread as I love sourdough whole wheat bread. Thanks again for your advice and support.

Thank you for your post Smithy. From what I have read I am not sure whether or not it is ready at this stage to use for baking or to wait a little longer. The starter which is not appearing to grow past the doubled state which it reached 3 hours ago is still bubbling but not growing and smells slightly sour. So I guess that all is well but am still not sure whether or not to go feed it again tonight or wait until tomorrow until the 24 hour period is up and then feed again.

I should have known that there was a topic on sourdough starters and posted my yesterday's post in the bread topic here. I need help please!!! I have never made nor worked with sourdough, high hydration doughs or made a starter before but am willing to learn. I made all my own bread and buns for a long period of time but stopped for a number of reasons. I have just found out that you can make sourdough whole wheat bread as I am presently buying exactly this from a small excellent bakery not far from where I live. However, I would like to make my own. I am on my 4th attempt at making a starter with success this time and today am 5 days into the process. Yesterday's starter for the first time (of any of my starter attempts) actually rose to double in bulk in about 12 hours and then overnight fell back to about half way of the rise by this morning. This morning it smelled a little alcoholic so I assume I should have fed it last night? or not?. Also the starter this morning for the first time was very "frothy" on top even though it had lost some of it's rise and appeared to be well dispersed with tiny gas bubbles. Do I wait for another 24 hours to feed again or feed more frequently now is my question?

Thanks Anna. I do have freezer space and know that I will have to freeze the flour as it will take me quite a while to use all of it. It is much cheaper for me to buy Red Fife in bulk than in small quantity so the benefits in the long run outweigh the loss of freezer space.

Day 4 of my 4th attempt to make a whole wheat sourdough starter. This is just 5 hours after a feed. Finally, I have succeeded. My first four attempts were dismal failures. The goal, once I figure out how to make a starter and bake with it, is to buy 20 Kg. red fife stone ground organic whole wheat flour. I love sourdough whole wheat bread.