Sourdough.

A few weeks ago, I sent away to a little company in Washington state -- GEM Cultures.

Yesterday the postman rang and there was the little box on my porch, containing (hooray!) a couple of ice packs an instruction booklet, and a little vial of live, active rye-flour sourdough starter.  

I fed it carefully that evening, and again this morning, and then, after some fretting about how to proceed, I decided to bake the first loaf of bread by simply substituting some of the sourdough batter for some of the water and flour in my "normal" loaf.  In other words, I still put the same amount of jarred yeast and sugar into it.

Gorgeous!  

It didn't taste particularly sour, or particularly sweet.  It was just a wonderfully-textured sandwich bread, with none of the crumbliness that often characterizes my bread machine breads.   Here is my recipe.

• 1 cup fresh whole-wheat starter batter
• 1/2 cup water (boiled to remove chlorine)
• 2 and 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp molasses
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 2 Tbsp dry milk
• 2 scant tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp gluten
• 1 and 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

... baked using the 20-minute extended rise option.

The loaf seemed to rise pretty high; I think next time I might remove the jarred yeast and sugar, which I'm told will produce a denser, sourer loaf.  I'm curious about the difference.  I also need to experiment to determine whether it's necessary to boil Minneapolis tapwater first, as the instructions told me was necessary to keep some municipal tapwater from killing the culture.

After setting aside two portions to use next time, I had enough starter left to make a batch of waffle batter.  Will report on that tomorrow morning.

Comments

[Jamie]

Oh, I love yeast-raised waffles! Enjoy!

[Christy P]

So the boiling is to drive out chlorine which can kill cultures. I use filtered water when that is a concern (Brita) with good effect. For his beer, J just buys some spring water b/c it is a better value than home filtering 5+ gal.

[bearing]

Yeah, the chlorine removal is the reason. Actually, just letting it sit out for a few hours will do it too, but I was in a hurry.

For all I know Mpls water is fine, but I want to be especially careful with the mother culture so I don't kill it and have to send off for more (it's kind of pricey shipping), so for the time being I'm following the directions. When I get a chance I'll experiment with regular water.

[Cathie B]

What a beautiful loaf!