Baking Bread & Cultivated Yeast - You can make better bread than anything at the store with just a starter of flour and water.

[Like A Rad Neighbor]

I make pizza crust often. It seems to be more forgiving if you fuck up. I proof the dough in a warmed oven and wait as long as I can stand. Dust it with corn meal.

If I do make bread loaves anytime soon, I would want to make something nutritious like horsebread or brown bread.

You still need a starter for those. Traditional brown rye is a sourdough. I make that much more often it's just adding different flours. There isn't a breadspiracy.

 

[Aiōn]

Another possible option to consider is making a fruit yeast water starter. The best part is that you can add things that would normally go in the garbage; apple cores, bruised fruit, the skin from certain fruits, dried fruit etc. and it also only needs a few days to be ready for use, less time than a typical sourdough starter.

From there you can make a poolish overnight and away you go, I made this loaf several times at the height of covid and it worked very well.

The same channel also has a playlist with 30 different recipes.

 

[navygreen]

Felt inspired to try and revive my several months unfed starter after reading through the thread to pretty good success-- personally found myself rather surprised how robust the starter was after at least 4 months of neglect.

I wonder though what everyone's preferences are re., flour ? I'd been feeding my starter white wheat flour for the first year or so but have only given it einkorn and spelt since and things seem to go much smoother, it's far more active. Also lends a nice flavour even when baking an entirely white loaf other than the starter!

Flours aside I am a huge fan of adding malted wheat to a loaf-- imparts so much nuttiness and makes handling higher hydration loaves a bit less fiddly. Before shelving the starter for months though my go-to was a potato & rosemary loaf, delightfully stodgy. Anybody got a favourite recipe when baking?

 

[Aiōn]

I wonder though what everyone's preferences are re., flour ? I'd been feeding my starter white wheat flour for the first year or so but have only given it einkorn and spelt since and things seem to go much smoother, it's far more active. Also lends a nice flavour even when baking an entirely white loaf other than the starter!

When I still had my starter I fed it with rye flour, I learned how to make sourdough from this guy:

He has also made many videos about starters, if you can stand his accent, here is a playlist.

 

[Undertow]

A friend of mine gave me her old countertop grain mill and I've just spent a happy hour grinding wheat berries I've had in my cupboard for years. Even after two grinds the flour is pretty coarse but I'm gonna try to use it for pizza dough. Do any of you guys have experience with or tips for grinding your own flour?

 

[navygreen]

A friend of mine gave me her old countertop grain mill and I've just spent a happy hour grinding wheat berries I've had in my cupboard for years. Even after two grinds the flour is pretty coarse but I'm gonna try to use it for pizza dough. Do any of you guys have experience with or tips for grinding your own flour?

What a lovely gift! Did you have any luck with your pizza dough?

Borrowed a mill from someone a few years back and it came with a 'milling table' advising what setting to use depending on the grain you are putting through the machine-- might be worth seeing if yours has something similar, maybe in a manual or something?

For the longevity of your mill (and not having to remove built up film from it constantly) make sure you're only grinding dry grain-- if you try to mill something too soon after harvesting it you'll gum up your machine. Press a grain against a countertop or plate under a spoon: if it's breaks and cracks it's dry, if it smooshes out like a rolled oat, give it more time to dry before milling.

I'm a sucker for adding things to bread to make it more interesting so I think it's good fun to add some other dried pulses or flowers in with your wheatberries! Just be careful not to put any seeds/nuts that are oily through your mill, it'll screw up your grinding stones. No flax, sesame, poppyseed, etc., I've had great luck with foraged and dried nettle, buckwheat, some peas... if things don't work out so tasty it can always be made into croutons! Happy baking!

 

[Vegetamite]

I was made to try some “sourdough” this evening and it was merely regular white bread with a crust. Very disappointing.

 

[navygreen]

I was made to try some “sourdough” this evening and it was merely regular white bread with a crust. Very disappointing.

That does sound disappointing -- was the "sourdough" bought, or baked? It's something of an issue where I live that if there's even the tiniest bit of fermented flour in a loaf, it can be marketed and sold as sourdough. Ingredients are listed in descending weight order, so seeing fermented flour after salt on a "sourdough" feels a little scummy. Many such cases, unfortunately. Very happy to share a basic 100% white sourdough recipe if you're looking for a less disappointing home bake?

 

[I mean I'm just saying]

Just pulled off my first successful sourdough after a month or so of starter maintenance and a couple sad, non-risen loaves.



I used this Brian Lagerstrom recipe for a simple, speedy sourdough:

After this success, I can safely say I'm a fan. The recipe captures the essence of sourdough while only occupying a total of about 6 hours from beginning to end with a lot of downtime in between, so the whole project can easily be slotted into a day and ready for dinner if you start before 11:00AM. If nothing else, it's fantastic for practice and the result is tasty in its own right. I used a KitchenAid mixer for the initial mix and a dutch oven for the baking. The real game changer compared to my prior unsuccessful loaves was using the trick you can see at 7:21 in the video, turning the oven on for a couple minutes to warm it to 95F, then turn it off and put the dough in to use it as a proofing box- I knew it was possible, but I didn't know how necessary the extra heat was compared to room temp. I used a probe thermometer to make sure I was in the right ballpark, but I can easily see myself memorizing the timing after a few batches.

For this loaf I replaced a portion of the flour with rye: I made the leaven with 100g of rye and swapped the 50g whole wheat in the recipe with rye, with the rest being 400g of bread flour. The dough becomes noticeably drier with the rye sub as rye absorbs more water, and the dough could probably benefit from a little extra water compared to the original recipe.

 

[Unshakeable Optimist]

I've been experimenting with feeding my starter more often, and thus have had a large quantity of unfed starter. So far, I've made garlic flatbread and cornbread muffins. Anyone have other quick recipes for using up leftover starter?

 

[I mean I'm just saying]

Anyone have other quick recipes for using up leftover starter?

Crackers have been easily the best discard recipe for me, both because it uses up the most starter and because the crackers are so good that they're almost better than the bread. I've been meaning to post a video, but I'll start with the text version.

Ingredients:

4 parts starter to 1 part oil by weight. Some recipes use less oil, which will probably work if you're into that but I haven't tried it yet. Also consider using some flavored oil like chili or sesame.

200g / 50g is good for a sheet tray, though I've been pushing it to 500/125 in my double batches with success.

Instructions:

1. Melt your oil if it's solid, then mix together starter and oil until homogeneous. Add in any seasonings which can burn easily (think herbs and flakes). Optionally mix in a bit of salt, but I find it's better sprinkled on top.
2. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.
3. Pour batter in parallel lines across the tray- it's easier than dolloping individual crackers while still keeping enough empty space which allows airflow to help the crackers crisp.
4. Smear the batter to be flat with something like a silicone spatula while maintaining that empty space. You can also widen or remake the empty space by dragging the spatula through, you don't need much.
5. Sprinkle salt and any other heat-resistant seasonings like salt and/or everything bagel (easily my favorite).
6. Bake at 350F for at least 25 minutes. If you're putting two trays one above the other, bake for 15 minutes then swap the trays and bake for 15 more. Convection isn't necessary but seems to help things along especially with double batches.
7. Pull out the crackers and try to bend at the thickest point. If it snaps they're done, if it bends they could stand a couple more minutes. Use this to calibrate how long you cook them initially, depending on your oven and how you spread your batter.
8. Cool on a rack if you have one, though even that isn't strictly necessary and they're even pretty good warm.

If I were to compare these crackers to a store-bought products, I would say they have the texture of Ritz toasted chips, a cracker with chip-like qualities, with a cheese-like flavor from the high amounts of sourdough yeast.

The original recipe uses melted butter as oil, but I've been using olive oil which removes the melting step and the resulting cracker doesn't taste too different because I tend to season them strongly.

I've built up a large backlog of discard, but double batching these is giving me a fighting chance at using it all up at about a pint of starter for each double batch. These are such winners that I've stopped searching for sourdough discard recipes since making them.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I started making this oat bread: https://mattsfitchef.com/oat-bread/ (archive)

It has a lot of protein, around 48 grams a loaf if made as directed (1+2/3 cups of oat flour, not oats, will confirm with a digital scale later). But I increased the ingredients by 50% for a wider bread pan (2.5 cups oat flour, 3 eggs, >0.75 cup yogurt). It's a complete protein from the eggs and yogurt.

It's like corn bread in texture and height. It doesn't rise very well. I tried adding some instant yeast but it didn't seem to help. I'll play around with it. But without wheat, it's gluten-free, if that's a concern.

Making the oat flour takes seconds in a food processor. Oats are about $1/lb, sometimes less. I made the yogurt from milk, so that was also cheap.

Why? I was eating lots of plain oatmeal, and figured this would be better. The nutritional profile is good and you can dump various things in to flavor it, like the suggested nuts, cheese, raisins, cinnamon, etc.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I've made the oat bread several times now with these in the latest:

2.5 cups oat flour
3 tsp baking powder
3 tsp baking soda
salt
powdered ginger
proofed yeast using 1/2 cup of water and some sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup yogurt
olive oil
apple cider vinegar

With optional additives such as:

Walnuts, dried cranberries, shredded coconut
or
Garlic, herbs, shredded cheese

350°F for 40 minutes in a buttered pan.

It's taller now, maybe because of the additives, but probably from becoming a soda bread. But the 1/2 cup of water alone is also helpful, because when I made the original recipe without water, it was too dry and dense at least once.

This bread is fast to make. I'm proofing the yeast water in the oven for only a few minutes, mixing in the other wet ingredients, and then mixing in the dry. Oat flour is quick to make as I said, and when I'm making some I can fill a quart jar with what I need for the next loaf.

The next step is to make one without any additives, then try removing yeast (but keep the water). Just to see how much those are contributing to the height. Then I might try adding even more baking soda.

 

[Unshakeable Optimist]

How do I break it to my parents and girlfriend that the sourdough-discard biscuits they love have almost 1 tbsp of butter per biscuit?

 

[Undertow]

How do I break it to my parents and girlfriend that the sourdough-discard biscuits they love have almost 1 tbsp of butter per biscuit?

No wonder they love it.

 

[mr_negativity]

When baking bread two ingredients must be done by weight instead of volume. Flour and water.

My basic bread machine recipe, I call it 33% whole wheat bread. I have not bought an actual store bought loaf of bread in years. My recipe is reliable and works between whatever bread machines I've owned. Need a bread machine? Go to a thrift store. You will find one.

240g bread flour.
Add whole wheat until the scale reads 352g. No whole wheat flour? Then use 360g bread flour.
1 1/2 table spoons of sugar.
1 tablespoon of dried milk
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons of margarine
252 grams of water.

Set your machine to produce 1 1/2 pound loaf.

The temperature and volume of your water really effects the quality of your bread. Experience will get you the right temperature by feel. Even then, the result might be hit or miss.

Water too warm or excess volume, the bread is wormy and has pocks in the texture. Too cold or not enough water the bread is stiff, dense and short. +/- 2 grams of water or the temperature can make the difference between a picture perfect loaf or one that is short, dense gnarled or airy, rose too high then collapsed, or wormy. A lacking loaf of bread isn't going to kill you.

I've found that the temperature/volume of water is the main variable, followed by salt, and finally by yeast volume.

This thread is about cultivating your own yeast.... In practicality this is not he biggest factor. Go to Sams club. You will get a ridiculous amount of yeast at a very low price. Yeast in your fridge will last an extremely long time once opened. The expiration dates don't mean anything. You can compensate for old yeast. If society collapsed and you are out of flour. You are dead. The dried yeast has lower storage density than the flour and can be stockpiled more readily than flour. You want to learn how bake bread before the crisis happens.

Dried yeast is incredibly robust. I've baked high hundreds to thousands of loafs to my lifetime. I've never attributed a bad loaf of bread to defective dried yeast.

Your source of flour.... Places like Gordon Food Service in the USA sell large sacks of high gluten flour. Place it in your chest freezer for a week to kill meal worms. Worm infestation of your pantry is a real risk.

Have my preps been tested? During the 2020 scamdemic, Yeast. Gone. Bread flour in the grocery store... Gone. The hoards didn't think to deplete to flour in GFS, but I made sure I kept 2 sacks in reserve and had two large packs of yeast from Sams Club. For some reason my inner voice told me I must buy this before 2020 came down. This lasted me for the duration. Margarine... Gone . There were weeks without margarine in the grocery store, but I foresaw the panic and kept an inventory of six packages in my chest freezer. Salt, not an issue. Sugar.... There were intermittent shortages. Dried milk, this was gone as well. This is shelf stable and usable beyond expiration dates. The impact of the recipe is that this is optional can can be substituted for milk heated 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

In case of nuclear holocaust, I know I'm going to die. If you can bake bread over a campfire or you got massive reserves of fuel to run a genny or fire an oven, my hat is off to you.

 

[Dawdler]

This is a broad question: Has anyone sourced "better tasting" types of yeast ? Store bought is fast and gives good results, but are there varieties that make things more tasty and less "flat" ?

 

[I mean I'm just saying]

This is a broad question: Has anyone sourced "better tasting" types of yeast ? Store bought is fast and gives good results, but are there varieties that make things more tasty and less "flat" ?

If you're looking for more flavor in the bread, sourdough is generally where you end up. There are also other preferment techniques which use normal commercial yeast and can offer superior flavor over simply using yeast directly in your dough.

 

[Dawdler]

If you're looking for more flavor in the bread, sourdough is generally where you end up. There are also other preferment techniques which use normal commercial yeast and can offer superior flavor over simply using yeast directly in your dough.

Thanks, that was term to search under. I am still wondering if anyone tried natural wine yeast compared to store bought.

Also anyone experimented with overfermented bread for better digestive qualities (lower blood sugar values etc.)

 

[McLean Deluxe]

I've been experimenting with feeding my starter more often, and thus have had a large quantity of unfed starter. So far, I've made garlic flatbread and cornbread muffins. Anyone have other quick recipes for using up leftover starter?

Take any chocolate chip cookie recipe and replace half the flour by weight with the discard (leftover starter). Example, if the cookie recipe calls for 3 cups of flour, instead use 1 1/2 cups of flour and about 180-200 grams of starter, maybe a little more. Everyone's starter discard is going to be slightly wetter or dryer, so you just need to play around until you get a feel for how much flour a certain amount of starter will substitute for. As long as the consistency of the cookie dough feels like you would expect from the regular recipe, you'll be fine. Honestly you can replace flour in a lot of recipes with discard, not just cookies. Its still mostly just wet flour, so try using it for lots of stuff.