I bit the bullet and did it. My starter is now a paste of 4 oz whole wheat flour and 4 oz tepid water. It's in a glass bowl on top of the fridge, with a dish towel on top. Fingers crossed! I'll feed it tomorrow evening and hope to see some activity.

Keeping it fed and attended to seems like a marvellous New Year's project. Best of luck, happy spawning!

Good day.

It would be interesting to take some pics mapping it's progress.

Remember to always take and stock up on those shower hats from the hotel bathrooms .....;)

Good luck!

Here she is after about 12 hours - looks pretty much the same as when made. There might be the faintest whiff of a sour smell, but I could be imagining it.

http://i.imgur.com/Kal41DAl.jpg

Thanks Dave,

If you have a kilner jar you might want to grow it in that, and then you can take piccies from the side. Does look pretty brown! :D

Is this because you love sourdough or is it sadly like me - just the challenge of producing the first loaf?

I find I much prefer the taste of poolish/biga based breads and they are so much less demanding .... but this as everything is all personal taste! I like the idea of thinking a day or two ahead and seeing something and tasting less intense than sour but more flavour than one- day bread.

Looking forward to seeing your first loaves.

:)

I am not sure what a killner jar is - perhaps a Mason jar? In any event, I don't have one.

I'm doing it for the novelty, mainly - just because I haven't done it before and want to try. I don't cook/bake nearly as much as I'd like. It's tough in New York - and virtually the same price to just order delivery. The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is spend time cooking, though I enjoy cooking.

I love sourdough bread. What's the difference between poolish/biga and sourdough? I thought they were different names for the same thing, or at least referred to differing amounts of sourdough starter used in the bread.

Sourdough
 

I must say I get good results from just keeping the mixed batter in a plastic bowl (with number 5 on the coding purchased from any good supermarket) covered with cling film in a draught-free place and forgetting it for a day or so. Then when it starts to bubble, feed again and cover with cling film. i found it important to beat the lumps out and mix the dough thoroughly each time. The mix should be a creamy consistency, not too watery. Repeat the third feeding when it starts bubbling. By this time it should smell beery. The timescale depends on the temperature of your room.After the third time, it's ready to divide, use half and feed the other as you require. When the reserved dough starts bubbling, after a few days or a week, its ready to use again. Divide, use one half and feed the other whenever needed.

I've had my failures due to my own fault, too much water or not so good flour but I persevered until I got it right. After all, flour and water ferment don't they - usually.....

Unfortunately it tends to take you over and in no time, you've more batter than you need and a freezer full of loaves.

I have even frozen the starter when I've gone on vacation. Taken it out after a month and after thawing, fed it with flour and water and hey presto! A new batch.

I don't use yeast with my sourdough bread and it comes up fine but it's time consuming. If you like sourdough, it's well worth the trouble. Good luck - I'm sure you'll crack it.

I've heard that some let some starter dry out, ie you know just like the the stuff that dries in the kitchen naturally. I've seen this done by leaving starter on kitchen foil until dry and then they crumble it and store it in an airtight jar. Then add it to flour with water to restart. That saves freezer or fridge space and will I guess last indefinitely. And you can send it to someone in the post!

Using hydrolysis (I think under appreciated) and then under-yeasting and letting a slower starting poolish is something I've really enjoyed.

Poolish and biga are the same thing. One French the other italian for the same thing. It is - for simplicity of description - a way of accelerating what you are doing naturally with your starter but - if you like - cheating by adding a few grammes of yeast instead of relying on natural yeasts.

So I generally make a mix of equal plain hard Canadian white flour and water and a couple of grammes of yeast and leave it over night in my mixer bowl to save avoidable things to wash. Just a quick mix with a fork and cover it with a shower cap. Then recalculate the water and the flour I add the following day to achieve the hydration percentage I want and add the salt then. Mustn't add salt the previous day as it will kill the yeast.

This is the basis of French country bread and baguettes and Neapolitan pizza and other Italian breads. It adds character and flavour but not sourness. I much prefer this to sourdough.

Most people do not understand how easy it is to make genuine baguettes at home and sometimes I make it twice a day. Anyone can do it using this method and you sort of get into an easy rhythm. It needs to be eaten as soon as it is cool, and that's why sometimes making it twice a day (only baked ie one mix a day) is a lovely bit of self-indulgence. Jam in the morning, ham or cheese (or both) at night.

The other real advantage of this approach is that you are not a prisoner to your starter - you "restart" from each new loaf, just start it the day or night before, instead of doing it all within the same day. As I said, it is easy to be sucked into the generalisation that "more work" always means "better results" but I (in a minority) prefer the taste of bread started with poolish/biga than sourdough.

Not heard that one. Never tried that method.

I agree you need to be patient with the dough starter. The longer you leave it, the better tho' too long and it turns rancid. The time between feeds varies immensely. Whilst it saves on yeast (I prefer fresh for conventional bread), it takes a longer.

But I'm not an expert, just bake for the family. Unfortunately they won't eat shop bought bread now!

I do have a gas oven, which helps as it gives a more moist heat. Tho' I use a water bath in the bottom for a crusty loaf. On the other hand it does tend to burn on 450 deg.F.

BTW, I don't think I use Canadian flour, just a mix of white and wheatmeal bread flour.

Canadian is extra hard. You can make standard bread flour harder by adding vital wheat gluten. I much prefer the higher gluten flours.

I am terribly proud of my invention with respect to making a steam oven. It is so simple.

The problem is that ideally you don't want moist heat all the way through the bake. Just the first five minutes or so, then you want to release the moisture and want dry heat for the remainder of the bake. Otherwise there is a tendency to make a sort of dumpling (exaggeration I know) if it remains moist too long during the bake. The moisture injects the initial propensity for crustyness and crispness into crust, and then the dryness crisps it up. So how to do! I spent years struggling! I finally worked it out.

i have a pizza stone for the bread. I have put a cast iron ridged steak griddle under the stone at the bottom of the oven I use for bread. That's it. I heat the oven up, put the bread in, throw a half cup of water over the griddle and slam the door shut quick. A very quick explosion of very hot steam. After five minutes or so I open the door and release the steam. A lovely shiny crispy crusty loaf.

I use my pizza oven for rolls and bagels and a narrow oven for higher bread and loafs and baguettes.

EDITED: Picture added to illustrate ...

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...7373F5540B.jpg

Almost two full days, and no signs of life. :( I wonder if the little yeasties can't make it up here to the 22nd floor.

Be patient. The yeast is everywhere, even up there! There's no salt in your mix?

:)

Not unless the cat put it in...

I suspect part of the problem is that I realized this morning that I'd turned off the heat in that room - 'twas a tad chilly!

Update: I think it's working! The mix has a faint but distinctly sour smell. Also I think there may be one bubble in the top.

That's great. The slower it develops the better the character.

I'm looking forward to your first few loaves almost as much as you!

:D

Well, it's been almost a week and the starter doesn't seem to be doing much. I feed it once a day with white flour. I have started putting it on a heating pad set to low in case it's too cold here. In the mornings, there is sometimes a single bubble on the surface but the sour smell I thought I smelled a few days ago is gone.

Perhaps the yeast can't make it to the 22nd floor after all. I might add a few grains of commercial yeast to make a polish, and wait on the wild yeast to when I move to Maine.

If you are going to give up on the starter, I wouldn't add yeast to it as I think this will be the worst of all worlds.

Just start a really slow poolish from scratch. Even if some consider this in some way lessor than sourdough, it's just an opinion I disagree with. You'll get some lovely bread that is completely hassle free and better than pretty much anything you're likely to have tasted before.

:)

I'm going to give the sourdough a bit more chance. I've noticed it gets a skin of dried flour on top after several hours. This morning, I removed the skin and there were several bubbles just underneath. So something is happening.

Question: what consistency should the starter be? I think mine was a little too dry before. I now have it much wetter - almost like pancake batter.

The Joy of Cooking says to toss the starter and start over if no real activity within three days. It's been about six for me. Should I start over? If I do, I'm just going to make a poolish.

Do both.

Give up on your current starter and bin it. Start a new one. I think most start with a 50/50 mix .. but make it with ordinary hard flour or perhaps rye. Keep in mind you'll need more water if you use other than white as they all absorb more water. Have a look at some youtube stuff for consistency. If you look at the first post i think that is about right.

At the same time make poolish in your normal mixing bowl. Quick standard white bread flour and quick mix with a fork and put a shower cap over it. Do the poolish tonight for a loaf tommorow.

I had just fed it an hour or so ago, making it thicker in the process by adding less water than usual, and when I came back to it just now to toss it, there was a distinct sour tinge. I tasted a little of it, and it was definitely sour. Still not much activity, but I'm going to let it go for another day and see if anything comes of it. In the meantime, I'm going to make a poolish either this afternoon or tonight, I think.

Looks like your starter was liquidy like pancake batter in the first post.

Yes it was ... a bit thicker. I think it can be easy not to forget this isn't breadmaking dough but the starter and there miight be a natural urge to make it thicker than it should be, Using wholemeal makes it dryer. I've made a fair amount of sourdough using borrowed starters this was just my first attempt at my own.

Have you got some french bread perforated tins? If you are a crust rather than dough person then getting into the bagguette habit is really worthwhile. I always thought that French bread would not really be attainable at home but it sure isn't. My favourite bread is certainly bagels followed by crunchy baguette but I also love blending and experimenting. I really love flatbreads ... it's alink acrosss all of us I guess who cannot afford or practically produce long baked breads.

I've asked the mod to edit the thread title to accomodate all things home made bread ...including flatbreads .. perhaps even bread machine et al.

I tossed the starter and used my poolish.

I think I might have ruined it a bit, because I made a whole wheat loaf...and after adding flour and kneading I remembered that this makes for a very dense loaf that will have issues rising. We shall see. The dough ball is in a bowl in the oven with a towel over it to rise for a few hours now.

I forgot to take photos. :(

Why don't you master plain flour loaves first then go onto variety flours?

:D

Because I saw the bag of whole wheat flour and thought, "Oooh! Whole wheat loaf!"

This was pre-coffee. :)

I have a friend who has had sourdough in his family for decades. I didn't even know it worked like that.

Well, the finished product was just barely bread. It was the sort of ultra-dense loaf my grandma used to make (though she usually put nuts and raisins in hers). But, it still tasted pretty good hot from the oven with some butter. :)

I'm going to make another batch this weekend. This time, I'm going to stick to a basic recipe. uk1, what's your standard poolish recipe?

edit: I think I might slice this loaf into very thin slices and bake them into crackers. It'll be sort of like those Wasa/crispbread crackers.

It is really easy. 100ml (gms) of water 100gms of plain white hard bread flour say 3 gms of instant dried yeast, mix with a fork in the bowl you'll use for mixing with a shower cap on it. Leave overnight.

This is for loaves not baguettes and is for 600gms (200 gms of poolish + second day ) 250gms of flour + 150 gms of water of finished dough ie two very small loaves with lots of crust.

The following day you will want it to end up with say 70% hydration.
So to the above mix add 250gms or so of flour (my favourite is a blend 180gms of white and 35 gms each of wholemeal and rye. Add 140 ml of water perhaps another gm or two of yeast o one side and say 6 gms of salt on the other. Mix it for say 5 minutes, let it rise, once risen envelope folds.

If you make a steam oven as I mentioned earlier and pictured again below - you'll have a couple of small crusty loaves with a real sheen. And when you buy a baguette tin I teach you to make baguettes better than 99% 0f those you've ever eaten.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...2F8FA1EB_1.jpg

If you add some onion/nigella seed it will look like this and look at the open sour-dough looking texture on the second loaf. This is a poolish started loaf and not sourdough.


http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...53271AA4A7.jpg

A proper cheats steam oven.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...7373F5540B.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...L._SL1500_.jpg

Thanks! It'll be my project for this Saturday/Sunday.

It's basically the same recipe you posted a long time ago, right? I just found it:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/20518320-post7.html

Yes, but i didn't have the heart to tell you to use the search and dishearten you.

:D

I feel that people making bread, the best thing they can do is forget about all the recipes you read and learn about the underlying principles. Once you get a feel for those everything falls into place. Like simple hydration rates. How the more water the better the bread. The less yeast and longer development the better the flavour. The effect of some initial steam. The Love of Bagels! The principles are better than prescriptions ie recipes.

Once you get the principles keep a running spreadsheet with the basic loaves you make. Every time you make an adjustment that was better update the spreadsheet. Also if like me every loaf starts with a poolish, then the spreadsheet calculates the amount of flour you add on the 2nd day to achieve the finished hydration rate you seek.

There's no law against keeping some poolish in the fridge so that on any day you've got a bowl of flavour to start it with. The longer it's in the fridge the better the loaf of the day will be. i
I can't wait to see your first loaf.

:)

I decided I didn't much like my attempt yesterday, so I made it into crackers. Sliced thin, brushed with olive oil, and baked at 400F (what's that, like 195C?) for about 35 minutes until browned and crispy. They're great!

You've given up - haven't you! You've gone all "disheartened" :eek:

Listen here ... just because you had all that anticipation and then disappointment with the sourdough starter doesn't give you a viable excuse to shrug and walk away. You are in exactly the same point as I have been.

Think of the poolish/biga as being the cheats sourdough. But as it happens ... I really prefer it. You can develop flavour and character and it always works. And you don't need baby sitters when you go away. Ignore the extremists and listen to your dough buddy.

No excuses. I want to see a loaf of bread made and posted in the next 5 days or you're in detention every night for the coming week and they'll also be no television or Gameboy or tweeting of facebook. And I'll take your mobile phone away.

Come on ... no excuses. Man up! Don't be a Pillsbury. Once you get your first good loaf and realise how easy it all is you'll not be going back.

:)

Oh, I haven't given up! I was going to make a poolish on Saturday and bread on Sunday. But I think I will wait to make my next sourdough starter until I move to Maine in the next few months. I figure there will be more and better yeast floating around at sea level by the pristine Maine coast than there will be 22 floors up in Queens. :)

On the other hand, maybe I'll just try again in a week or two...and the crackers are really good.

Update: I have a poolish doing its thing, per your instructions, uk1. It's been about 6 hours and it has a pleasantly yeasty aroma. I'm going to use it in bread tomorrow. Do I need to feed it any? I'm leaning to no, since you haven't mentioned it, but I don't want the yeast to starve/eat all the gluten. Maybe I'll give it a small feeding for overnight.

Great.

You don't do a thing with it. You don't need to touch it, feed it, water it, or even mix it at all once made. It's only job is to contribute to the rise and add some maturity of flavour. :D

Just add that and a few more grammes of yeast to the main dough batch. The further ahead of when you need the bread and the longer you can wait the better, although not an awful lot of difference. Just be a bit more frugal with the yeast and / or let it do it's first prove in a cooler room. If you want it fairly soon then no problem at all just reverse it a gramme or two more of yeast and a warmer spot.

Flour is so cheap I go through phases where I just get into a ritual of doing a mix of poolish during an evening visit to the kitchen and then mix it the following morning into a dough into the same bowl I used for the poolish in my Kenwood.

If you can take it to a high hydration great. Mix it longer in prep for first rise, which makes it easier to handle, you'll see a more glistening and glutinous surface - then use envelope folds for the final proved shape. If you are making a long bread like a baguette, repeat the envelope folds a few times between 10 to 20 minute rests three or four times or so and don't be scared of trying to stretch the envelope folds in the same direction in the last couple of folds in a way that makes the bubbles more likely to be length way bubbles rather than lateral bubbles. Put the finished shaped bread to rise on a tin and put the whole thing either under a tea towel or in a bin liner. Don't over fold. Rustic is misshapen bread with uneven bubbles. Over mixed and handled will be more cakey. The flavour is in the bubbles oddly ... as much as the dough. Remember the obvious. If you like the crust more than the dough make smaller longer loaves rather than one big one. Just forget all the sense of angst you had with the sourdough and relax. Nothing is likely to go wrong but you'll soon get to learn the principles of the relationships between the five simple ingredients, ie flour, water, yeast, time, and heat and getting a feel for how those five simple elements interact and play is more important then than recipes.

Looking forward to seeing the first loaf.

:)

Doh! I fed it by saving about 1/4 cup and adding another cup each of flour and water, and a tiny bit of yeast. I'm going to bake in about 6 hours...we'll see what it's like!

The poolish from yesterday had been sitting out for about 17 hours and had developed a skin on the top. What do you do with that?

Why?

Bleedin simple instructions .....

You can't follow bleedin' simple instructions can you. What did you not understand about me saying this is simple. :eek:

Equal water with flour a few grams of yeast stir it a couple of times put a shower cap over it to keep the cat out and leave it until the following morning. That is it. Nothing more. No feed. No moisturiser. No piles creams.

If it has skin on it either live with it or if you are overwhelmed with the desire to interfere and do something then stir the bleedin' thing. But I promise you no one ever died of a little skin on their poolish. :rolleyes:

:D:p

ps you may of been confused because of us sort of seeing it as digression from sourdough starter. :)

Yes, yes, sorry, O Wise One. I have failed. But we may still save the day. I will follow Bleedin Simple Instructions next time. I just had all the warnings from The Internet cycling through my head about not overfeeding the yeast, which will eat all the gluten and make the bread not good.

But I will still take photos of what today's efforts yield!

OK, so let me re-summarize the whole thing here:

1. Make poolish of 100ml water, 100 g flour, and a pinch (3g or so) yeast.
2. Let poolish bubble overnight
3. When ready to bake, mix the poolish with 250 g flour, 150g water, 6-8g salt, and perhaps a tiny pinch more yeast.
4. Let rise, then envelope folds
5. Let rise again
6. Spray the dough with water and put the dough onto a surface (foil on top of a preheated pizza stone perhaps? Or just a normal cookie sheet?) in a hot oven (220C = 425 F) with steam
7. After 5 mins, remove dough and let the oven dry out
8. Increase temp to 240 C (450 F or so) and bake for 20 mins or so.

Am I getting it all?

Dave,

Out of interest, are you a techie by any chance? :p A bloke who likes a clear manual with nothing left to chance. :eek:

Seriously, all my bread making fell into place once I discovered it was nothing to do with recipes but more to do with feeling underlying principles. I struggled for years, gave up loads of times and my success rates were a lottery. Just like you in fact. But once you think of it with as dealing with living breathing feeling stuff and try to understand how it feels about time, heat, water, handling etc it becomes natural and then it is really easy. It is about having an affinity. It is a bit like driving by either a flow chart set of procedures and instructions or doing it instinctively or naturally and making it second nature. If you do it by instructions and procedures you will always need them. If you instead concentrate on what everything does and why then you really are in control as you experiment and play and learn.

This approach gives much more joy because then you can make anything. pizza, flatbreads, wholemeals, French, brioche etc. .... and it is a genuine learning and creative process rather than following manuals. I just have a suite of basic spreadsheets to just record what I did and then learned and then can adjust for next time.

I'm going on a bit. I'm sorry.

:)

Hah, yes, I'm an engineer by training. Ordinarily when I cook I do it all by feel and taste, but it's been drummed into my head by my mother the baker that baking is a chemistry experiment where nothing can be left to chance, and all must be exact.

You've mentioned the feel of how the flour, water, and yeast interact several times. What are the general principles I should know in starting out? I understand from what you've said that more water in the dough results in a crisper crust. What else?

BTW - the bread tonight will go with the boeuf bourgignon that will shortly start simmering on the stove. :D

Thanks!