All About Sour Or, Why Isn’t My Bread Sour? Far too many of the emails I get start out something like, “Why do you call it sourdough? After all, it isn’t sour!” Or perhaps, “What am I doing wrong? I want my bread to be SOUR!” To no small extent, the term “sourdough” might be […]
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Another look at converting regular to sourdough recipes In another page we talked about three ways to convert regular yeasted recipes to use sourdough. And it all seemed pretty straight-forward. But, the world, and recipes, sometimes refuse to be categorized. What if…. what if… your regular yeasted recipe doesn’t use water? What if it uses buttermilk? And that’s
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Eggs! Eggs do a lot for enriched doughs. They add moisture, they add fats, and they act as an emulsifier. Without eggs, many breads would not exist. Still, they are a bit of a bother. How do measure 1/2 egg? Easy answer – double your recipe and use a whole egg. But that’s always a
Sugar Sugar…. we’re addicted to it! Even though we know it’s not really all that good for us. But, really now, if we eliminated everything from our diet that someone says isn’t good for us, we’d have a very boring diet. I can’t think of much that someone hasn’t said is bad for us. I
Converting Yeasted Recipes To Sourdough Once we have a new tool, we look for all sorts of ways to use it. So, many new sourdough converts want to convert their old yeast based recipes to sourdough. I’ve seen two ways to do this. Both work quite well, but they are very different. The first technique
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“World Sourdoughs From Antiquity” by Dr. Ed Wood. A wonderful work on sourdoughs. Some people don’t like his recipes for breads, as they aren’t purist enough for them. Whether or not you like his recipes, he sets the standards on how to handle cultures. A new version is supposed to be out soon. Highly recommended.
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Sourdough Myths and Folklore I really enjoy doing things that are more on the artistic, uncertain, and not quite charted realm of things. In these areas, there are all sorts of interesting folklore and myths. I don’t know of ANY area with as many myths and legends as sourdough. Of course, I do also tend
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Sourdough Pizza Made With Discarded Starter People ask me what to do with excess sourdough starter, and here’s one of my answers. Make pizza, and pizza shells. If I’m not planning on using them at once, I’ll freeze them after the first baking, and they are ready to be topped and baked at the drop of a
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My Sourdough Starter Is Slow, What Should I Do? A recurring problem many sourdough fans face is that their starter slows down, or it loses it characteristic flavor. This is relatively uncommon in commercial bakeries because they use their starter on a daily basis, and because the starter is used so frequently that the acidity of the starter stays under control.
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Starting a Starter Sourdough Starter Primer This is part of our “Sourdough Starter Primer” on this page we talk about how sourdough starters work, and what you’re doing when you start a sourdough starter. If you’re in too much of hurry to read this and want to just make a starter, there are links to
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What Should Sourdough Starter Smell Like? A few times in the past few days I’ve been asked what sourdough starter should smell like. And I’ve blown the question off. “I cover that in the sourdough starter primer!” I say. Only…. I haven’t. Yeah, I mention smell in passing here and there. But never in any detail.
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What is Sourdough? A sourdough starter, or culture, is a mix of flour and water that maintains a mix of yeast and bacteria. The yeast provides lots of rise and some flavor, the bacteria provides lots of flavor and some lift. The bacteria makes the starter more acidic to protect it from other organisms taking
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