Bill44

HungryC, take a small amount of your malt, mix in a little water, add a very small amount of yeast. If it brews it is diastatic malt, if not then it will only act as a sweetener.

Starters are strange things, and having a whole family of them I can vouch for the fact that they have their individual likes and dislikes. I went into this subject in some depth on another forum, but for the sake of brevity I'll just say that some of my starters prefer to be kept at 100% hydration, some at 166%, some are quite happy with feeding at 24 hour intervals, and one that gets positively sulky if it is not fed every 12 hours. May I suggest that, if you have the time, you experiment to find the most favourable condititions and feeding regimen for your starter. You may find the time spent to be very rewarding.

After 26 years of baking sourdough and experimenting along the way with all forms of making starters, I have found that for me just flour and water is the most reliable method. Whether you start with unbleached white flour or rye flour is up to you, be prepared to have a failure or two along the way, and be patient with feeding your new starter until it is truly strong, I usually advise not to bake with a new starter until it is at least 3 weeks old. You will find that there is sufficient wild yeast in the flour, captured as the grain is growing, to innoculate your starter, and if you leave it in an open bowl near an open window it should capture enough of the local lactobacillus variety to quickly innoculate your starter and provide protection.

I would do as Cajungirl suggested for the recovery of your starter. I would suggest that you use about 80g of starter to 200g of flour for your sponge, this represents 40% starter in bakers terms but as for the overall sponge percentage it will reduce to about 25%, and this is within the recommended range.

When I do a raisin loaf I don't soak the raisins and I don't add any butter to the filling. I have found that raisins have enough moisture in them already. What I do to the raisins is put them in a plastic bag with some flour, shake them until they are coated, and then put them in a sieve to shake off the excess flour. I find they bind into the dough without any of the air pockets around them in the baked loaf.

11.7% protein flour is quite a good protein level to work with (I use 11.9%). The need for Hot Shot is to improve his baking skills, not his flour protein level. Too high a protein level can quite often lead to bread with a leathery crumb. Quite a lot of commercial bread is made with flour around 11% and French breads are quite often made with 8-9% protein level.

is this just so that the proofing takes longer? often, that is the temperature of the dough off the mixer. with the yeasties going at it, i would think that the dough will get warmer during proofing? ← A good point raised here, dough will generate some of it's own heat during proofing. The bigger the lump of dough the more heat in the core. This can be overcome to some extent by using cool or cold water in the dough mix.

I use both, the steam in the early stages of baking help produce a crusty loaf. Commercial ovens quite often have a steam injection system that is used for the early stages of the baking.

I'm starting to worry about the fragile state of the US residents. I've seen this type of statement from quite a few people in the US. Abra, you live 40deg 24min North, I live at 33deg 15min South and I bake all year round. We have a good Aussie climate, it was only 44C (111.2F) on new years day this year, just nice baking weather.

As it says in the recipe, use plenty of flour when working with the dough, it's very soft.

Pastrymama, the recipe came from here in the special recipes section, there are 32 recipes in there.:- Northwest Sourdough I made a half batch and used half milk half water instead of just all water.

I don't use commercial yeast, I'm a dedicated sourdough baker myself. Basic White Loaves. Kaiser Rolls

English Muffins (sourdough)

This is one of my Focaccias.

Is this what you were trying for?