And I too bought nutritional yeast (Bob’s Red Mill)…not certain why? But I’ll add it in to see what happens…
I’m reading another (!) book that sings the praises of a rye flour starter and I’m thinking I may give it a whirl…fortunately if we go at this conservatively…it’s a fairly inexpensive hobby (??)
@Raydee8 regarding the nutritional yeast, I’ve never used more than 0.5% so it didn’t affect the flavour that I could detect. Other bakers have reported at higher percentages like 2.5-5% that they didn’t like the flavour it imparted so just be careful of how much you add.
For the rye starter, take a small amount of your current starter and started feeding it with the rye 1:2:2 and after 5 feedings it will be almost 100% rye, not need to reinvent the wheel and make a new starter from scratch. Sorry if you knew this already.
I agree it is a great hobby and really isn’t that costly and usually it tastes good.
Perfect!!
Question about the rye Benny…
Can I grind rye berries and use that? Or too coarse?
Light, medium, or dark rye?
I like whole rye so that is what I’ve used to give my starter a boost, so that would be dark rye.
I unfortunately don’t have any experience with home grinding, however, I don’t see why you couldn’t use that if you can bake with it you can certainly use it in a starter.
I hope it works for you, do report back!
I’ll give it a try!
Thanks again…
(Out of curiosity…what’s your line of work Benny?)
@Raydee8 I’m actually an HIV Primary Care Physician, that is my specialty and I’ve been at it since 1993 at the beginning of that epidemic where we didn’t have effective treatments and I had to provide a lot of palliative care to many wonderful people. I have found that baking is a great hobby and it’s great that we get to eat the fruits of our labour.
What do you do?
Benny!! May I say I had a suspicion??
I’m an orthopedic radiographer in an outpatient setting…we have multiple locations (Northwestern Medicine)
My good friend - a spine surgeon who moved to Alaska a couple years ago to escape corporate medicine - and I cooked and baked competitively for over 10 years.
I recently dried and mailed him my sourdough starter (it’s 10 years old) - he since has shared it with a couple people who are sensitive to gluten…and they love it!
What a wonderful professional life you lead!
Yes…I love this hobby…your scientific mind now makes perfect sense to me!
Raydee, that is funny, I’m surprised that you would have suspected. I don’t recall saying anything that might give away what I do in my day job!
It is nice to meet another person working in medicine, I’m sure there are others here, but they haven’t outed themselves. I hope where you are the pandemic isn’t too crazy as I know it is bad in so many places in the US right now. Hopefully you and your colleagues have enough PPE to keep yourselves and your families safe.
That is wonderful that you were able to share your old starter with your friend. You have been baking bread much longer than I have then, I created my starter spring of 2019 and gradually started baking with it since then. I went through all the newbie hardships of underproofed bread and gradually improved to the point where I’m generally happy with my baking.
I hope you post your breads you make with your soon to be new rye starter soon.
Ha ha!! You didn’t say a peep…but I had an inkling?!
I’m in the Chicago suburbs…the city itself hit hard…PPE is quite adequate - fortunately!
My older son who is a business owner stopped his 3D printers in order to produce face shields for area hospitals (his wife is an ICU nurse), dentists and municipalities…as there was a critical shortage.
Yes - I’ve been baking for years - but never fully grasped sourdough…mainly dabbling in less than stellar breads…but know I’m quite interested in figuring out more and more!
I certainly will post a picture!
Baguettes au levain set 12. AP flour 10% protein (PC brand)
No nutritional yeast used, 1% diastatic malt, IDY and levain all dissolved in water. Then mixed the flour. 67% hydration approximately. Rubaud and bowl kneading done x 5 mins. Two sets of coil folds done at 50 mins intervals good windowpane after second set.
Aliquot jar rise to 35-40% then into fridge for cold retard overnight.
This flour without the NY is quite extensible. Next time pre-shape as a loose boule instead of loose roll.
After shaping left 20 mins room temperature rest in the couche.
My final shaping is much more successful when I pre-shape as a boule. With this low protein flour I think I can get away with it and still get the baguettes long enough without needing to pre-shape as a roll.
I’m very pleased with the crumb, a bit less so with the shaping and ears.
Those look beautiful!! Your shaping is so even as well…
Maybe you can help me?
My starter is active (I feed it and wait 3-5 hours)…everything looks great up to the rising in the banneton…as when I transfer to the baking vessel (either a cloche or Dutch oven)…the loaves NEVER stay perky and upright…they’re not “flat” per se…but they certainly do not have height…,
Then when I bake?? Lackluster oven spring…crumb is very nice - taste is good as well.
But the visual?? Nothing to be proud of…
Here’s today’s! It’s from a great woman on Instagram who has a book coming out this month…followed everything to a tee…but look at the final result!
Ohhh!! My hands look scary!
Can you give more details, formula, temperature and times? Photos of the crumb might help as well.
I sure can…tomorrow - as I’ll be back there - to cut into it!
Thanks for answering!!
Here’s the formula…
Mix 50g of starter with 350g of water, cold, cool or room temperature is fine, and loosely stir them together.
Next add 500g of strong white bread flour and 1 teaspoon/4g of salt.
And after autolysing for 1 hour…folds (25) were done - then for the next 2 hours…4 sets of folds…
Overnight bulk ferment
Next morning (this morning) - fold gently 10 times - place in banneton and refrigerate for 3-24 hours…
I did 7 hours
Place cold dough in baking vessel and place in COLD oven (covered) for 55 minutes at 425 degrees…
I uncovered and baked an additional 5 minutes…
I just cut it open…it’s actually gummy looking??
Hi Raydee, my first thoughts were that it was a bit overproofed, the flattish look of the profile and crust being a bit pale and some of the tunnels under the top crust are typical features of overproofed dough. As I said, I am far from an expert. What I understand about overproofing is that the proteases get to work as the acidity in the dough builds and starts to break down the gluten network. When this happens too much the gluten network which holds the gases in weakens. In the crumb you can see smaller air bubbles failing and joining other air bubbles so you get coalescing bubbles leading to large bubbles under the crust. What can differentiate this from under proofing when you can also get big tunnels under the crust is the crumb in between the alveoli. Usually with underproofing you have a very very dense crumb that is super gummy and typically the bread isn’t good to eat. With overproofing the crumb between the alveoli is not dense and has good alveoli. You mention that the crumb is gummy, but you didn’t slice the bread when it was warm, so I’m not certain, but I would lean towards overproofing.
Ahhhh!! I read your response a couple times to digest the explanation…
So am I to assume it’s at the bulk fermentation that the overproofing is taking place Benny?
I really appreciate your taking time to “diagnose”!
It is WARM here - I’m wondering how I should shave time…with an overnight rise - and by how much??
Oh - one more question?
Bulk fermentation time starts from the first autolyse?
Or does timing start after a couple hours of folds?
As that could be my error…I let it go 8-12 hours AFTER the couple sets of folds…
So in theory I’m tacking on an additional 3 hours…
One hour of autolyse
Two hours of folding sessions
Thanks again!
Sorry I’ve been out all day @Raydee8. Bulk fermentation starts as soon as you add yeast or levain in this case. I believe if I understand correctly that after shaping it went into the refrigerator. As long as your fridge is 3ºC or less it shouldn’t over proofed there as the yeast are pretty inactive at those temperatures. It is likely that it over proofed before refrigeration.
