To most visitors to this site (USA, Canada, northern Europe, Australia, Great Britain) water is something we take for granted. We turn on the tap and there it is. Water, clear, splashing, fresh, safe. We can turn the tap this way or that and change the temperature of the water. However, water, as I have […]
Flour is grain that has been ground, or milled, into a powder of a desired consistency. In the United States, flour is usually ground wheat, however, it may be almost any grain ground into a light powder. The most commonly used grains include wheat, rye, barley, rice, spelt (a primitive wheat), kamut (another primitive wheat),
Sourdough starter, like any living organism, needs food to live. As bakers, we add flour and water to our starter and call that “feeding the starter”. There are as many ways to feed a starter as there are sourdough bakers, maybe more. There are a number of signficant things that happen when we feed the
Refreshed is a term we use to indicate that a starter has been recently fed. When we say a starter is unrefreshed, we mean it has not recently been fed, that it has missed at least 1 feeding.
A levain is a chef that has been refreshed with flour and water. In plainer terms, it is French for sourdough, but it is worth noting the French handle their sourdough to make milder breads than Americans enjoy.
Chef is another confusing term. In this case, it’s dough-like starter that is either an unrefreshed levain or a piece of dough saved from the previous day’s bake.
Starter is a term that we use somewhat loosely. It usually means a sourdough starter that we feed and use on an ongoing basis. However, in general use it can mean any preferment.
Hydration is a measure, expressed as a baker’s percentage of how wet a dough is. The hydration includes all the flours in the dough, including any in preferments, and all the liquids and fats in the dough, including any in the preferments. While hydration gives you an idea of what a dough will look like,
Buttermilk was, at one time, the liquid left after butter had been made from milk. Unless you know someone at a dairy, this is no longer available. Today’s buttermilk is a cultured milk product, where a bacteria similar to the bacteria used to make sourdough processes the milk, making it richer, giving it a deeper
According to WikiPedia, “Yeasts are eukaryotic single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom.” Yeast is, today, the most commonly used way to raise bread. Sourdough starters have wild yeast in them. Reliable commercial bakers yeast became available in the mid to late 1800’s. Yeast is grown in large vats filled with a molasses
Preferment is a general term for something – usually fermenting – that is done before the final dough is mixed. The first preferment was sourdough. Later preferments include autolyse, bigas, old dough, sponges, and poolish. Baker folklore suggest that the preferments were developed after the introduiction of reliable bakers yeast in the mid to late
