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#YeastMasters

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I'm on the third year of having a side batch of my sourdough starter unfed in the fridge. There is a "spore mode" the yeast goes into and becomes reactivated from. Years one and two the starter reactivated and I was able to make bread by the 3rd day. That's impossible if it was just basically a starter from scratch that happened to have remnants of the dead starter. Today is the third day, the day I'd be baking the loaf, and while the starter is more vigorous than it would be from scratch it is not ready for baking a loaf. I'll let it go on for one more day but the premise of infinite storage in spore mode in the fridge I think is out the window. It is still impressive that a mature starter can go two years between feedings and come back to full strength in 48 hours. I have enough starter to make it go for another 4-5 years but I think the point of the experiment is done now. #sourdough #bread #baking #YeastMasters

@jbenjamint

They love it, particularly when fresh and still warm. My baguette bread recipe today included 1/4 dark rye flour, 2/4 whole spelt, 1/4 white pizza flour. 1 tsp of dry yeast, 1 tsp of salt, 2 tbsp of olive oil, and up to 2 cups of water. Mixed it last night and let it grow overnight.

albert.rierol.net/recipes.html
#YeastMasters #baking

albert.rierol.netAlbert Cardona - Food RecipesAlbert Cardona's science, programming and graphics web page.
Replied in thread

@TomaszSusul @tf

Lots of us bake. For me, it’s a daily ritual: arrive home from the afternoon schoolrun, mix flour, yeast, water, salt and olive oil swiftly, let it sit warm for 2 or 3 hours, roll the baguettes and bake them for breakfast the next day. Costs me less time than getting to the bakery and back, and I always get the bread I want, varied in its flours, texture and taste. All it takes is planning and patience.

There’s also the tag #YeastMasters – imported from other corners of the internet.

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@PaulWermer @RolfAE @straphanger

Not only market forces, also changes in habits and behaviours.

As an amateur baker, the bread I make is order of magnitude cheaper than when bought at the bakery, but for my time; the flour is barely a factor in the cost so splurging in fancy flours is possible: a 1 kg of fancy flour only costs 2 to 3 times as much as 1 kg of plain flour. And despite that a fancy flour baguette comes at ~35 cents of raw material. No market force here.

But what fraction of families bake at home, or cook at all for that matter, in the Western world? So the demand for good raw foods is low. Restaurants spice up and sell low quality stuff at high prices.

But that cost of time is not a cost at all, it's not time wasted, it's family time, social time, being together time, lovely time that makes for good memories of companionship, warmth, cooperative behaviours, constructive life-long busyness, a reference lifestyle, immersed in good smells and flavors to anchor taste and preferences for decades to come.

I’m very stoked at how well my sourdough experiment went. I have a batch of starter I haven’t fed since 10 August 2021, over two years ago. I took a little out, fed it, let it sit for 2 days, fed it one more time, and ten hours later used it to make the overnight leaven for this morning’s bread. Crumb is a little tighter than normal but still a solid loaf. It’s as good or better than last year’s at ~1 year mark. I’ll give it a try again next year too. #bread #baking #sourdough #food #YeastMasters
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@MarcusStensmyr

What a fun and interesting project. Reminds me of the time (2019) that Seamus Blackley and Serena Love extracted yeast from Egyptian pottery, procured old-fashioned wheat of the right variety, and baked conical bread on a fire pit, following the ancient style.
smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/

See the "Ancient yeast project" as told by Serena Love: e-a-a.org/EAA/Publications/Tea

There's a paper on this by a different author, Adeline Bats (2020):
sciencedirect.com/science/arti

Smithsonian Magazine · This Bread Was Made Using 4,500-Year-Old Egyptian YeastBy Jason Daley
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@keithalexander

Fairly standard bread recipe:

2 cups of plain white flour (~10% protein, ~3% fibre)
2 cups of strong whole wheat flower (~13% protein, ~11% fibre)
Up to 2 cups of water
1 tsp of dry yeast
1 tsp of salt
1 tbsp of olive oil (to soften the crust)
1 tbsp of honey

Mix it all, let it grow in a warm place (30 to 40C) for about 2 hours (or at room temperature for ~5 hours), then dump onto a flowered surface, knead to remove the bubbles, split into three, roll each into a baguette, let them raise in a warm place for 15 minutes, cook for 25 minutes at 230C, let them cool on a rack for at least 30 min.

Using a baguette mould helps a lot; otherwise make them out of parchment paper like here: albert.rierol.net/recipes.html

albert.rierol.netAlbert Cardona - Food RecipesAlbert Cardona's science, programming and graphics web page.
@Dr_Bombay My copy of "The Rye Baker" by Stanley Ginsberg arrived last night. I started perusing the introduction section and browsing the deliciously fascinating recipes. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! I've been an amateur #sourdough bread maker for a while now and have two starters going, one "regular" gifted to me by a neighbor over a decade ago and a "COVID Memorial" one I started during COVID to help friends who kept asking me for sourdough advice get started on one since I never made one from scratch. Looks like I'll have to get started on a third for rye now :). I had no idea that rye baking isn't just a low gluten bread production process but a very different chemical network structure than what we do with gluten-based breads. So many of these look promising. I can't wait to have time and room in my calorie budget to start experimenting with this later this year. #bread #baking #RyeBread #ArtisanBaking #YeastMasters
The Rye Baker: Classic Breads from Europe and America a book by Stanley Ginsberg
Because of schedules et al and an excess of sourdough "discard" I've decided to try to make a batch of bread to use up the "discard" in the way I see the cooks and bakers at Pasta Grannies etc. work: by feel. I did measurements for the sponge but otherwise it was together the sponge, discard, a bit of water, and gradually add flour and salt until it looked and tasted correct. I'm going to be doing rolls with it so it is a lot more forgiving than if I was doing a full sized loaf anyway. Now on to the no-knead stretch and fold and let the gluten develop itself :). #sourdough #bread #YeastMasters #BreadPost #baking

And the kitchen is closed. I cook my bread on pizza night to have a super hot oven.

Baked in a soaked clay pot. It’s a round loaf but cut so it accordions lengthwise in my oblong pot. “Bigger” loaf. Slightly smaller slices, but more of them. Winning.

35% wheat bread. My secret for getting big sexy oven kick at the score? Spray into the cut with water. Keeps it wet longer and you get more rise.