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sourdough, two weeks later
Jun. 2nd, 2008 03:45 pm(First: those of you who missed my old, not-very-good Alton icon -- here, have a new, shiny version! Fear my powers of lame homemade animated GIF!)
After one week of daily feedings living and room temperature, and one week of feeding it once a week and stirring every two or three days, my sourdough starter seems to be both alive and stable. Hurrah! It has a strong, beery-sourdough odor, and is bubbly all through (in fact, when I stirred it and then absently licked the spoon before dropping it in the sink, the batter was so bubbly it felt carbonated on the tongue). I'm doing no bread baking until we're at the new place, but possibly I will break in the new kitchen by making a loaf of sourdough this Saturday or Sunday.
The part of it that is surprising and somewhat magical to me is that, just by leaving an equal mixture of flour and water on the counter and giving it food, I attracted exactly the right kinds of microorganisms to leaven bread, without getting a critical mass of nastier beasties or a layer of mold. Part of it, of course, is that the yeasts are symbiotic with lactobacilli, so they breed in the flour mixture too, and produce lactic acid -- and in addition to giving it the lovely distinct sourdough taste, the lactic acid makes the batter inhospitable to other kinds of critters, but still viable for more yeasts, which get along okay with lactobacilli. (Up to a point; eventually, enough acidic or alcoholic by-products will be produced to kill the yeast, I think, but it takes a while.) It's not unlikely that the yeast and lactobacilli get a head start on Random Free-Floating Microorganisms because flour shows up at your door with some degree of yeast on it already, just because yeast loves plant material. (Yeast especially loves fruit, I understand, which is why sometimes you can jump-start a slow starter by dropping in a couple of whole organic grapes, which will have yeast living on their skin. I didn't need to, though; there were enough appropriate yeasts in the air and the flour itself that it didn't need the help.)
Still: even knowing something of the science behind it, it seems kind of magical -- just mix equal parts water and flour, keep adding water and flour so the bugs have enough food, and wait, and it will all by itself breed a colony of exactly the stuff I need to make my dough rise.
The success of this makes me want to try other fermentations and live-culture food products: sourkraut, brined pickles, simple mead and cider, yogurt and cheese, kefir, kimchee...
After one week of daily feedings living and room temperature, and one week of feeding it once a week and stirring every two or three days, my sourdough starter seems to be both alive and stable. Hurrah! It has a strong, beery-sourdough odor, and is bubbly all through (in fact, when I stirred it and then absently licked the spoon before dropping it in the sink, the batter was so bubbly it felt carbonated on the tongue). I'm doing no bread baking until we're at the new place, but possibly I will break in the new kitchen by making a loaf of sourdough this Saturday or Sunday.
The part of it that is surprising and somewhat magical to me is that, just by leaving an equal mixture of flour and water on the counter and giving it food, I attracted exactly the right kinds of microorganisms to leaven bread, without getting a critical mass of nastier beasties or a layer of mold. Part of it, of course, is that the yeasts are symbiotic with lactobacilli, so they breed in the flour mixture too, and produce lactic acid -- and in addition to giving it the lovely distinct sourdough taste, the lactic acid makes the batter inhospitable to other kinds of critters, but still viable for more yeasts, which get along okay with lactobacilli. (Up to a point; eventually, enough acidic or alcoholic by-products will be produced to kill the yeast, I think, but it takes a while.) It's not unlikely that the yeast and lactobacilli get a head start on Random Free-Floating Microorganisms because flour shows up at your door with some degree of yeast on it already, just because yeast loves plant material. (Yeast especially loves fruit, I understand, which is why sometimes you can jump-start a slow starter by dropping in a couple of whole organic grapes, which will have yeast living on their skin. I didn't need to, though; there were enough appropriate yeasts in the air and the flour itself that it didn't need the help.)
Still: even knowing something of the science behind it, it seems kind of magical -- just mix equal parts water and flour, keep adding water and flour so the bugs have enough food, and wait, and it will all by itself breed a colony of exactly the stuff I need to make my dough rise.
The success of this makes me want to try other fermentations and live-culture food products: sourkraut, brined pickles, simple mead and cider, yogurt and cheese, kefir, kimchee...
