MikeJ

I wasn't sure if a shot of jagermeister was just the standard unit of unpleasantness around here.

Probably more like goldschlager... never seen it before, personally.

So you said. I wasn't arguing in favour of using an extremely sour starter, just explaining the rationale behind why I had been.

I'd like to experiment with hybrid loaves as well. Some may call it heresy, but people like that have stood in the way of progress for all of recorded history.

My concern wasn't about the bacteria being inactive. It was that even at optimal activity, their productivity might not match that of the yeast - that is, that they wouldn't have time to sour the dough before the yeast leavened it. That's why, thus far, I've tried to give the lactobacilli a head start by using an extremely sour starter - which for me is one that's been languishing in the fridge for a week. What you're saying makes sense, and I've made a loaf using a 5% inoculum, which I'll bake when I get home. I'm also going to try your method of feeding the starter to see if that helps.

I have a question: is it necessary to have a proof stage AND a shape stage if you're only making one loaf? I can see the logic if you're making multiple loaves from the same dough, but otherwise I'm not sure I understand the point. Is there a reason you'd want to let the dough rise as an amorphous blob, shape it, and then let it rise some more, rather than just shaping it from the beginning and then letting it rise fully? Today's crumb: Incidentally, I apologize for flooding this thread with my pics - I just don't know too many people in real life who are remotely interested in bread, aside from eating it.

I would also use some flash in the pics, or take them somewhere where there's either a little natural light or better artificial light.

You can use the "storage starter" to make a larger amount of any kind of starter you want. Let's say your recipe calls for two cups of starter. That's way more than you have in your "storage starter," right? No problem. Just mix together the amount of flour and water you would need to make two cups of starter (according to the proportions specified in the recipe you are using) and put in a tablespoon of your storage starter. This will inoculate the flour and water mixture with the microflora from your starter culture. Keep in mind that sourdough contains something like 10,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 microorganisms per gram of dough. So that tablespoon contains a lot of your starter macroorganisms. Wait for the flour/water mixture to become nice and bubbly (and you can speed this process up by putting it in the oven with the light turned on) and you now have two cups of active "starter." Now you may proceed as usual. My problem though is that the bacteria aren't productive enough to use that small of an inoculation - I can follow the steps you outlined and get an active starter, yeast-wise, but not one that's at all sour the way the starter culture in my fridge is.

Very different indeed - nematodes and tapeworms are actually different phyla (nematoda and platyhelminthes, respectively). There are plenty of tapeworms you can get from fish: Diphyllobothrium latum would be one nasty example.

Why not just add a little lye?

You can use the "storage starter" to make a larger amount of any kind of starter you want. Let's say your recipe calls for two cups of starter. That's way more than you have in your "storage starter," right? No problem. Just mix together the amount of flour and water you would need to make two cups of starter (according to the proportions specified in the recipe you are using) and put in a tablespoon of your storage starter. This will inoculate the flour and water mixture with the microflora from your starter culture. Keep in mind that sourdough contains something like 10,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 microorganisms per gram of dough. So that tablespoon contains a lot of your starter macroorganisms. Wait for the flour/water mixture to become nice and bubbly (and you can speed this process up by putting it in the oven with the light turned on) and you now have two cups of active "starter." Now you may proceed as usual. Personally, I don't often bother with this step. I just make the dough with a very small inoculum, and let it rise for a really long time. ← How long would that be? I keep hearing different things about rising time - Rose Levy Beranbaum says something like 9-10 hours in the Bread Bible, others say however long it takes to double, while jackal10 maintains that loaves are often overproofed by the time they've doubled.

My concern with using that small an amount of starter would be that the lactobacilli wouldn't be able to produce enough acid to make the final loaf sour. Do you find that that's the case?

The dough was definitely much slacker this time around. Tough to work with (for me, anyways), which is why the loaf came out sort of lumpy. The flour was about half 14% protein flour, and half 12%, plus a handful of wholegrain rye.

Results were somewhat encouraging, but the oven spring wasn't great and I'd still like a more open texture. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

So, if you only keep half a cup of starter, do you just use that amount to make a preferment and then build it into a loaf?

I tried the no-knead-only-fold method this evening and the boule is in the fridge for the night... I'll post the results tomorrow. I'm kind of hoping it won't work, because the kneading is actually one of my favourite parts.

Today's loaf: I used very strong (14%) flour, and the hydration was a little low, which resulted in a fairly uniform crumb. But at least it's soft and fluffy rather than dense. Also a good excuse to try out a new lens I bought the other day.

Jeffrey Steingarten writes glowingly of fries fried in horse fat. I'd be very interested to read about anyone's experiences with this method, although I don't suppose it's easy to procure that much horse fat if you live in North America or Britain.

Just curious - did they steam those, or bake them?

You could always do what my parents did and buy him a set of drums... of course, then you'd have to put up with hearing him bang on them for the next 15 years, whereas he'll probably grow out of the pots and pans thing well before then.

I had some level of success with the last loaf... high hydration (didn’t use scales, but it was too wet to knead), no kneading, no folding. 1/2 white flour, 1/3 rye, 1/6 whole wheat. Prefermented with 66% of the total flour for 12 hours, then mixed in the rest, poured into a circular baking tin, and let rise overnight. In the morning I had to clean it up a bit since it had overflowed, but it came out well despite making a horribly messy job of the whole thing: thin, crisp and savoury crust, delicate crumb and open-ish texture, nice balance between caraway flavour and the subtle sourness of the rye.

I've got a preferment on right now too. It's become an obsession! I almost feel like I want to perfect sourdough just so I never have to make it ever again. I'll try less kneading and more folding with this next loaf, though.

Here are a couple more pictures. This loaf was huge and satisfying, but no matter what I try I can't seem to get the sourness and open crumb that I'm after, even with high hydrations and long preferments.

I was making dinner today, and it occurred to me that one of the best sounds in the world is the hiss from a pile of sliced onions sliding into a hot frying pan foaming with butter. What are some of your favourite kitchen sounds?

Just wondering, what does sg stand for there?