As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Being a sourdoughmeister is a comforting thing, and I am providing some more of the million dollar knowledge as I believe I now am worthy of speaking of this artform, as it does take some different mechanisms to get this bread to behave.
The following is most important as some of you have reserves of flour, but have no idea that in time, ground grain has oils in it which turn rancid and just like I informed you how to deal with rancid nuts in soaking them in hot water and then making them viable, that will not work with flour as flour is too small grain as it is flour.
This is where sourdough comes in, as it sours the grain and that sour covers up that rancid oil taste, which is what I had with a 5 pound bag of whole grain about 2 years old. I do not waste food ever and decided to try it in the sourdough, and it honestly makes it something which one can eat and not cringe over.
Sourdough is as Dudley stated. You have to follow what the old trappers and prospectors meant or were getting at to make it work. With mine, I have a gallon glass jar that sits on a pilot light to keep it working. I never have it get explosive in becoming too volatile, but I feed it whole grain and two tablespoons of sugar each time I use it and it does swell and behave with the natural yeast I have in this batter.
I like unbleached flour too for the additional flour to add to the whole grain. It just seems to work better than bleached in my assessment.
I do not use lard as Dudley said and it seems to work out pretty good this way, but I do add a half cup of sugar to help feed it.
This sourdough does not really raise a great deal, but there is a Dudley principle involved in this as he said women worry the dough too much and you just have to knock it together to a bread dough and stop fussing with it.
What I do is start with my 3 cups of batter, add the sugar and salt, and then the 2 cups of white flour. The secret in this seems in the last cup to mix in the baking soda to sweeten it, and to add as a levening agent, otherwise the gas boils up and you get no raising in baking.
As a sidenote, you get a mousse type batter with soda in pancakes, but NEVER add baking powder to it, as it becomes crumbling and is hell to try and fry them. The only way to handle that is to beat the batter down to get the froth out. It is just easier to not make the mistake of baking powder as you do not need it in any form, as the soda and acid of the alcohol in the sourdough are the raising agents.
For baking, I do artisan loaves and I use a tin pie dish. The trappers used gold pans, and the thing is, if you line these tins with parchment paper, you do not have to clean up anything, and they do not stick. Sourdough is a big acid and reacts with metals. I had a tough time starting out with a non stick pan in the dough reacting to it, as this is a damp dough.
Remember that damp doughs raise faster, but fall faster too. A dry dough takes longer, but will not raise as much. There is a happy medium in bread.
I never double knead this, nor allow the gluten to activate. I just knock it together as fast as I can to get a dough, thump it up to a ball, and put it into the pan to raise for a few hours. It does perk up a bit, and then I bake it, and get a nice artisan round loaf, which is quite fine grained and has the correct crumble to it.
It tastes great with butter when warmed in a microwave and I like cherry jelly on it.
All of these things are something which has to be known and practiced, as nothing is worse than eating baking powder biscuit on end, as they are horrid things after a week. Sourdough is a good thing to divert and like silage for cows, breaking down the structure of the grain makes it better for you to digest and to absorb the necessary nutrients in the grains.
I have a starter from my Gram's cookbook she kept in her writing of Aunt Hazel's who I never met as she was dead and ancient by the time I showed up, but I intend to play with that some day hopefully too, to see how that works.
The best time to learn these things is in the comfort of your home, as it is frustrating as hell to have bread not behave in any form when you want it too, and being depressed as nuclear bombs are going off is enough of a problem without having the sourdough misbehave. Sourdough though never misbehaves....it simply is you not knowing how to handle the reins in driving it around the pantry.
Oh and do not panic if your sourdough you leave sit, starts to look like leprosy in having this bread thin film on the surface of the booze.....just mix her up with a wooden spoon. It has not poisoned or killed us, so it is safe.
Using yeast is cheating and it does not give you the true yeast which is natural, compared to the production lines.
I leave it at that in sourdough PHD.
agtG
