Greetings from SFO!
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Andy - Those look yummy.
Steve, it’s really easy once you get the hang of it. I keep a large amount of starter in the fridge so I don’t have to worry about it keeling over. I never discard either - if you have a large jar and you don’t bake all the time - this works, there is plenty of room in the jar for extra starter, and there are all sorts of things you can make with extra starter besides bread (overnight sourdough waffle batter is the best I’ve ever had, and there are lots of cracker recipes that are great). I don’t weigh and I don’t feed on a regular schedule, I usually only feed it when I pull some out - so about once a week, but sometimes longer - I just add extra water and flour when the starter looks like it needs feeding. It can get really flat with lots of liquid on top and it still perk right up when it’s fed. (I usually pour the liquid off when that happens, just to keep the amount of starter down a little, but if you want your bread sour, you are supposed to keep that). I keep a container of water in a large mason jar in the fridge, with a canning ring over a coffee filter - that’s the water I use to make the bread and feed the starter - the coffee filter lets the chlorine get out of the water. Sourdough microbes don’t like chlorine (they also don’t like iodized salt). Also - if you are going to be away for awhile, you are supposed to over flour it - so it’s almost dry, keep it in the fridge, and then just rehydrate it when you get home. I did that once - it worked great.
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I think those yeast beasties must be pretty resilient. I use iodized salt and water straight out of the tap and my starter seems to do OK. But it's easy enough to buy non-iodized salt, so I'll get some on my next trip to the grocery store. Or I'll try some of the pink Himalayan salt I bought at Costco a while ago; I forgot about it lounging in the back of the spice cabinet. And I can try the jar of water in the frig to evap the chlorine. I'm always up for a lab experiment. We'll see if anything changes!
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When I first got into doing the starter thing I felt pretty overwhelmed by all the information and almost didn't dive in. Then I got the starter going (I actually ordered some dried starter from Etsy, which in retrospect was pretty silly). At first all that feeding seemed like it was crazy. Then I read that you can refrigerate the starter and not feed nearly as often. That was a game changer. That and the finding the recipe I posted above. Well, it was almost the same recipe but it was like four pages long. But I guess people are just trying to share their experience and provide a lot of detail. I cut it down to the bare minimum once I made a couple of loaves. It's wicked simple.
Everything I read said you have to preheat the baking vessel, which in my case was a Lodge combo cooker. Now I'm finding out I was using it upside down, putting the bread in the larger portion of the pot rather than the shallower lid. I'm still not sure how that works because I switched to an oblong clay baker.
Anyway, I hadn't bought Ove-Gloves yet and was worried that I would burn my hands during the transfer of the dough from the proofing basket to the heavy cast iron baker. When I found the recipe I use and it said you could just put the cold vessel with the dough in it into a preheated oven, I was overjoyed. I've been making it that way ever since and it's worked out well. I mostly do those two breads, waffles, and pancakes. I'm going to try the chocolate chip cookies at some point and I'm currently scouring around for sourdough challah recipes.
So @Steve-Miller , take heart. There's not much you can do to screw it up. I'm proof positive!
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Ove Gloves are the BEST. Cold start is the best! Yes, once you realize it’s pretty hard to screw up, it seems so simple! It took my homemade starter longer than I thought it would to really get going. I tried a loaf of bread before it was really ready. The biggest realization for me was that you could make sandwich bread and pizza dough same day with a spent starter. It will rise, it just takes a little longer, I put mine in the oven on the proof setting, with the light turned on. (Turning the light on heat the oven up really well. HOWEVER - I’m finding that the texture of the bread and the pizza dough are just a tad nicer - bigger more uneven holes - if you start with a starter that is a little more bubbly.
I also don’t weigh anything now - and I half-assed measure - for my sandwich bread dough and pizza dough, 3/4 cup water, as much salt as you like (1-2 t) about 3/4 cup starter, and about 2.5 - 3 cups flour (totally depends on how wet my starter is). Plus 2 T honey (sandwich loaf) or 2T olive oil (pizza dough). I toss all but about 1 cup of the flour into the stand mixer and turn it on, adding the ret of the flour slowly til I have a dough that doesn’t stick to the sides, total stand mixer 5 - 8 minutes. Then into the greased pan or a bowl to proof. Sandwich bread bakes at 350 for 35 minutes. Pizza at 435 on parchment paper on a preheated baking stone for about 15. I do the stretch and fold stuff if I’m going to overnight proof and bake a round loaf in the Dutch oven.
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Sandwich loaf gets an egg yolk/water wash before going into the oven. I still haven’t found the best proofing cover for it - I use another loaf pan upside down - but if I don’t catch it before it touches the top it sticks, and I loose the round top - and the loaf ends up a little flatter (doesn’t matter other than looks). I need something i can overturn over the entire loaf pan (that I set on a cookie sheet). Like a much bigger loaf pan.
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Sandwich loaf gets an egg yolk/water wash before going into the oven. I still haven’t found the best proofing cover for it - I use another loaf pan upside down - but if I don’t catch it before it touches the top it sticks, and I loose the round top - and the loaf ends up a little flatter (doesn’t matter other than looks). I need something i can overturn over the entire loaf pan (that I set on a cookie sheet). Like a much bigger loaf pan.
@Jodi said in Greetings from SFO!:
I still haven’t found the best proofing cover for it
Hey, look what I stumbled upon! It's for baking but would work as a proofing cover...though it's pretty pricey...
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/introducing-baking-sourdough-bread-with-the-baking-shell/
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History of bread - starting 12000 BC! It’s an hour long but I learned a lot!
Link to videoI want this guy’s job.
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Hey @Jodi - would something like this work as a proofing cover? They come in different sizes; not sure if this one is tall enough.
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I forgot you have a proofing feature on your oven.
Maybe you can find an old Weber Smoky Joe somewhere and use the lid. Not sure how to get the smoky smell out, though.
Or maybe this, if you're up for a long drive....
https://kalispell.craigslist.org/tag/d/kalispell-toy-weber-grill/7826117053.html
j/k...that looks like plastic, too....
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Yesterday I fed a bit of my starter some rye flour as an experiment. Holy cow! @Jodi was right...
The jar was half full and it spent the night in the frig. It's almost up to the top and I'll have to find a bigger jar!
Will let it develop for a while and try it in my next loaf of bread in a few days.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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The rye bread recipe that I use is 2 parts of regular flour to one part dark rye (I use Bob's Red Mill). Definitely a lot stickier than an all-bread flour loaf, but worth the extra work.
I've looked at Lithuanian rye bread recipes but haven't tackled any yet. Mostly rye and very dense.
https://theryebaker.com/black-rye-breadjuoda-rugine-duona-lithuania/
What I grew up on. Wonder Bread was a shock the first time I had it...
