quick dog
Starter
Some of you know that I make wine. Wine is produced from fruit juices (mostly grapes) by the action of yeasts and other micro-organisms. Making good wine is a little like raising children. Things change every day, problems arise, and you have to dink around with the wine to keep it from going bad.
I now have a new microbial pastime.
As most of you know, bread rises because of yeast activity on wheat flour. The stuff that gives Champagne and beer their bubbles also makes levened bread rise. I have made bread for years. I even traded wine with a farmer for raw wheat and mill my own wheat. Yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I have always wanted to make sourdough bread. It's a little different than regular wheat, rye, and white breads. Check this out.
I bought some sourdough "starter" at the local health-food store. Sourdough starter is apparently a mixture of yeast spores and bacteria, yes bacteria. The bacteria give sourdough breads their distinctive taste.
After buying the commercial starter, I read some articles on the Internet about making your won sourdough starter. I tried it, and eventually used my homemade starter and the commercial starter to make breads. Here is what happened.
To make a sourdough starter, all you have to do is mix up a little bowl of flour and water, similar to a fluid pancake batter. You then place the litle bowl of batter outdoors, or indoors if you like. I put my batter outside on the deck railing because I live in a relatively clean forest. I would be afraid to try this indoors or in a crowded urban environment, but apparently you can do the same thing there. All I could think about was organic debris and organisms from all the humans and dogs that have inhabited my house for years!
I partly covered my bowl with a bigger bowl because I didn't want bird poop, insects, or frogs to jump in my batter. I left it out on the deck for the better part of two days. I brought the bowl back in the house and set in on the stove with a cover for another day or two. Just as it was proported to do according to the Internet directions, the batter started bubbling by virtue of a muried of unknown micro-organisms. The bio-experiment apparently worked.
I made loaves of bread with the commercial ($2.75) starter and my Placerville forest starter. Both were good, but the homegrown starter may have been better.
I view this whole deal as almost a miracle. Wine, bread, and cheese, all from natural organisms. It boggles my mind to think how important micro-critters are in are. I suspect that most people don't even consider that they are covered with little critters at all times. These organisms are essential to our lives. Wierd.
Afterthoughts.
I spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to keep ubiquitous, oddball, micro-organisms out of my wines. Yet, these are apparently some of the same organisms that allowed me to make good sourdough bread.
According to biologists and bakers, and I firmly believe this to be true, sourdough bread takes on the smells and tastes of the environment in which it is produced. Each person, and each region, has it's own compliment of micro-organisms. Therefore, my Placerville bread should be slightly different from bread baked in San Francisco or Des Moines.
Over and out from geek-central.
I now have a new microbial pastime.
As most of you know, bread rises because of yeast activity on wheat flour. The stuff that gives Champagne and beer their bubbles also makes levened bread rise. I have made bread for years. I even traded wine with a farmer for raw wheat and mill my own wheat. Yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I have always wanted to make sourdough bread. It's a little different than regular wheat, rye, and white breads. Check this out.
I bought some sourdough "starter" at the local health-food store. Sourdough starter is apparently a mixture of yeast spores and bacteria, yes bacteria. The bacteria give sourdough breads their distinctive taste.
After buying the commercial starter, I read some articles on the Internet about making your won sourdough starter. I tried it, and eventually used my homemade starter and the commercial starter to make breads. Here is what happened.
To make a sourdough starter, all you have to do is mix up a little bowl of flour and water, similar to a fluid pancake batter. You then place the litle bowl of batter outdoors, or indoors if you like. I put my batter outside on the deck railing because I live in a relatively clean forest. I would be afraid to try this indoors or in a crowded urban environment, but apparently you can do the same thing there. All I could think about was organic debris and organisms from all the humans and dogs that have inhabited my house for years!
I partly covered my bowl with a bigger bowl because I didn't want bird poop, insects, or frogs to jump in my batter. I left it out on the deck for the better part of two days. I brought the bowl back in the house and set in on the stove with a cover for another day or two. Just as it was proported to do according to the Internet directions, the batter started bubbling by virtue of a muried of unknown micro-organisms. The bio-experiment apparently worked.
I made loaves of bread with the commercial ($2.75) starter and my Placerville forest starter. Both were good, but the homegrown starter may have been better.
I view this whole deal as almost a miracle. Wine, bread, and cheese, all from natural organisms. It boggles my mind to think how important micro-critters are in are. I suspect that most people don't even consider that they are covered with little critters at all times. These organisms are essential to our lives. Wierd.
Afterthoughts.
I spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to keep ubiquitous, oddball, micro-organisms out of my wines. Yet, these are apparently some of the same organisms that allowed me to make good sourdough bread.
According to biologists and bakers, and I firmly believe this to be true, sourdough bread takes on the smells and tastes of the environment in which it is produced. Each person, and each region, has it's own compliment of micro-organisms. Therefore, my Placerville bread should be slightly different from bread baked in San Francisco or Des Moines.
Over and out from geek-central.
