We got plenty of talented members and most cook something. So what do you bake and if you have any recipes post them.
Live Stoners AFN Baking (breads n things)
- Thread starter bushmasterar15
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Well hello buddy...
This should be exciting. I hope some killer things make it here. I'm gonna start it off with two absolutely slamming dishes. Both are simple, just follow the directions precisely and it'll work like a champ..unless you live on Pikes Peak or K2, then you're on your own.
This is an oatmeal cookie recipe that can win a contest. I have made it half a dozen times...you can substitute the mixins for whatever, like chocolate chips or any dried fruit. The best so far is the original with cherries and walnuts though in my opinion (and the other 4 people that had em) Try this recipe...it's perfect.
Oatmeal Cherry Walnut Cookies
I grabbed a screenshot from my notepad app. These cookies will blow your mind.
Recipe the second is another one that you gotta follow to the letter...but it's totally worth it. You can make this for less than a buck fifty. I almost always double it because they are so fucking good and they disappear.
AMAZING Butter Soft Pretzels
You will need an egg, a few tablespoons of baking soda, some good salt, flour, active yeast, and a dot of sugar, butter and oil
-Place in a small bowl:
-1 Envelope dry yeast
-1tsp Sugar
-1T Oil
-1C 112° Water
-Combine well, let sit for 10m
-Place this in a large bowl:
-3C Flour
-1tsp Salt
-Mix thoroughly
-Add yeast mixture
-Kneed/fold for 4mins
-Oil a clean med to large bowl and put in a warm area for 1.5h covered
-Punch down and wait 45m
-Collect and form log
-Divide into 8 and roll each section out to about quarter roll thickness
-Boil them in 6c water with 3T baking soda for 1 min.
-Place on wire rack and dab water off..let dry for 5-10m
-Place on parchment lined big cookie sheet
-Brush with egg wash
-Bake @ 440° for about 18-22m or so, until golden lovely.
Baste with melted butter and super coarse salt like pretzel salt or sea salt. Enjoy these with some friends and beer.
THEY'RE called KAAAAHBS Joe's dad's stuff
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My wife is the baker in the house but I have dabbled. The one thing that comes to mind is my chocolate chip cookie hack. Make the recipe for Toll House Cookies right off the package. Add 1/2 tsp. of Almond Extract. It just works. I have other hacks like substitute 50% of the flour with almond meal to lower the complex carbs a bit. I have tried a lot of sugar substitutes and stevia is ok sorta? I use real sugar most of the time. I also don't eat many or often.
I have done sourdough bread but since I was diagnosed diabetic 20 years ago I gave up making bread. It is just too much temptation to just slather up a thick piece with butter and scarf it down. Not the thing to do when watching carb intake. Same thing with home brewing gave that up too but I am here 20 years later!
I have done sourdough bread but since I was diagnosed diabetic 20 years ago I gave up making bread. It is just too much temptation to just slather up a thick piece with butter and scarf it down. Not the thing to do when watching carb intake. Same thing with home brewing gave that up too but I am here 20 years later!
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Have you tried agave nectar? I hear that's a pretty good premium sweetener. The stevia plant makes me think of the NutraSweet plant...lol Okay at absolute best.
THEY'RE called KAAAAHBS Joe's dad's stuff
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Hey Doc I have and Agave has the same effect on my blood sugar as regular sugar. I tried a tsp vs sugar several times. Same rise and duraton. Stevia is by far the best as there is zero effect on BS and for the most part tastes good in recipes; not perfect as I can taste the plant flavors in some delicate foods like shortbread.
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At least there is an alternative now. There is no way to cook right without some kind of sweetener to fight acidity. I don't think you can have it both ways, that is being a clean sweetener like sugar, honey, maple syrup, etc without affecting your blood sugar levels.
I just found out literally last week that my dear beloved grandmother, who died 11 years ago right as I was hooking up with the Nurse, had diabetes. She would cook huge dinners and make treats and eat treats. I was quite flabbergasted. She hid it very well, and lived to the ripe old age of 90. I couldn't deal with finger sticks...being a guitar player just doesn't work with sore fingers, I prefer the leather pad approach of long term calluses. I remember the commercial with BB King playing 'Lucille' his black Gibson ES-335s...where he was talking about not checking his blood as much as he should because of the sticks. I think the commercial was for some new kind of blood monitor that didn't use finger pokes. My buddies kid also has diabetes, and he is only 15. That shit is everywhere. He has a digital monitor installed inside him and gives real-time blood sugar info. Hopefully they will have a cure soon.
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Yay for this thread!
Here's my take on bread. If I make any edits to this in the future, I'll make sure to mention them. If you do try this, PLEASE tell me what you think!
I sent this to a few friends privately, and I think it's worthy of sharing here. I'll be adding many more posts on different types of bread, avoiding the use of commercial yeast wherever possible. I am not a professional baker, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I've done my best to edit it to the point where it's useful, but I am writing most of this free-form. Some things might not make sense until you've read further, and some things might not make sense at all. Please ask me to clarify anything you need.
If you find this useful, feel free to share this anywhere.
I pretty much make only naturally leavened bread. Fancy talk for no store-bought yeast. I also don't add any sugar or fat. There's enough carbs in the flour, and sugar or fat would ruin the taste of this bread, in my opinion. Added sugar could also cause the yeast to grow too quickly, and with natural fermenting, slow is always better.
Measuring ingredients by weight is a great way (read as: really the only way) to get consistent results when making bread. Or pretty much anything else, for that matter. It also means no measuring cups/spoons to clean. Win/win. I also measure everything directly into the bowl or jar. I hate making a mess because I really hate cleaning up a mess. The state of my bedroom speaks loudly to this.
Speaking of ingredients, there are but three: Wheat Flour, Water, and Salt. That's really it. You'll want some rice flour to keep the bread from sticking to the proofing basket, but it's not actually in the bread. Just on it.
Flour can be all-purpose or bread flour. Just make sure its unbleached. In theory, bread flour will make the resulting bread a bit more dense. I honestly can't really tell the difference, and I've made a LOT of bread. When I really want the extra gluten (i.e., pretzels or bagels) I'll add some actual gluten, not switch types of flour.
Water should be non-chlorinated. I like to say "if you won't water your plants with it, don't cook with it"
Salt should be a pure salt. Anything without iodine is fine. I use kosher salt. You could get fancy and buy some of that Himalayan pink salt, but you are equally as served to just take your money and set it on fire, if you ask me.
Now for the part where you might get discouraged (please don't, this is totally worth it)... It will take some time (a week, give or take a few days) to get your starter in good shape. After it's ready you'll need to feed it once at least every two days if you keep it out of the fridge. Once every few weeks if stored in the fridge. You'll want it out of the fridge for at least half a day before making bread, so keep that in mind. More detail later, but I figured in the interest of full disclosure you should know what you're getting into with the starter. You will probably not see any progress for days.
You'll need two clean quart-sized mason jars (anything with a lid you can fit loosely will do - sealing a container with fermentation going on can make for explosions of glass and goop, and a mess you do not want to deal with. Trust me, I know.)
Day 1: Add 50 grams each of flour and water to a jar, mix well, then scrape down the sides with a spatula. Cover loosely (do not seal) and put it somewhere out of the sun. A mason jar lid fitted loosely works great. The lid affords a decent seal to keep things out, while any accumulated pressure will lift the lid and vent from time to time. Worthy of note is that there are few things fruit flies like more than fermentation. I think even sex comes in second for those bastards. If you don't keep the starter covered, they will find it. Then I think they have sex in it. Not sure, but why take the chance.
Keep things simple. You might be tempted to add sugar, or perhaps store bought yeast, or even some other suggestions you find on the googles, but resist.
If you "cheat" on the starter, and wind up using that starter for years, you'll spend a lifetime wracked with guilt and self-loathing. Nobody wants that.
The unbleached flour is already crawling with the little beasties that we need, they just need to be cultivated.
Day 2: Same as Day 1, only without all the needless alliteration.
Day 3: Same as Day 2.
At this point, you should start to see some bubbling. If not, don't worry. This pretty much always works eventually. I've only failed once, and it was my first time. Familiar theme, that.
Now that we have 300 grams of starter, we can't feed it anymore without discarding most of it first. This sounds wasteful, and it is, but if you don't manage the amount in the jar, you'll inevitably have it outgrow the jar and make a mess. When this stuff dries, it is akin to plaster of Paris. Plus there are a bunch of recipes on youtube for things you can make with the extra. Waffles is among them. Waffles.
Day 4 (and every subsequent feeding): Discard all but a tablespoon or two and add 100 grams each of flour and water.
In all honesty, it really doesn't matter how much starter is left, but you want to keep it at about 100 grams in a quart jar. Not too critical, but you do want to avoid overflow. If you are ever worried it will overflow, leave it in the sink or put it in a container to, well, contain the spill. It won't hurt what's left in the jar. The only thing that really DOES matter is that you always add the same exact weight of flour and water. Even that amount is up to you.
For example, let's say you need more than 200 grams for a cooking session. Get a larger container (I have 2-quart jars for this) and double everything for that go around.
You'll know your starter is ready when it doubles (or more) inside the jar. It will collapse back down eventually, so check it every few hours so you don't miss the milestone. If the sides of the jar are clean, you'll probably see a "high water mark." Usually takes mine 5 hours or so to double, and by morning it's just starting to collapse. Once you've seen it happen, it's ready. By the time your starter is about two or three weeks old, 300 grams of starter will grow to almost fill a quart jar to the top before collapsing.
Here's my method for maintenance feeding:
If I am making bread, I'll measure out the 200 grams of starter for my bread, and feed whatever remains in the jar.
If I am just feeding the starter, I take a second jar and weigh into it about 100 grams of starter and feed as usual, discarding whats left in the original jar.
In either case, I add the water to the starter and mix that up a bit before adding the flour. This helps distribute the colony better in the new flour.
Soon you'll notice that the starter smells kinda boozy. This is to be expected, and it means the yeast is doing its job. You might also notice a bit of a tangy or sour smell, thank the lactobacillus bacteria for that. It also means everything is going well.
Once you get to this point, the starter is actually pretty difficult to kill, outside of starving it or overheating it. It is also much less susceptible to invasion from unwanted critters, since the existing colony is already so strong.
When you are in the first week or so with the starter, it is possible (but not likely) that something besides the desired life forms will take up residence and become the dominant species in your jar. If it smells really off, toss it and start again. Again, once it's established, this is not much of a concern. So long as the flour isn't bleached, there is already a pretty dominant colony of dormant yeast and bacteria to start with.
Ok, let's make some bread...
If your starter is in the fridge, you want to take it out of the fridge and let it warm up a few hours. Also, you might notice a layer of liquid on top of the starter. Just mix it back in when feeding or before using for bread. Don't even think about discarding it unless it smells really off, and if you do, go ahead and toss the starter as well. You'll know when it's bad, and if you have any doubt just send me a picture with your olfactory observations. The two smells you DO expect are booze and acid. Which amusingly enough describes my time spent in high school quite well. But I digress.
If you want to have a loaf of the finest bread you've ever had today, you'll have to have done most of the following yesterday.
You don't have to be dead on with the measurements. Plus or minus a gram here and there won't hurt. The closer you get to the stated amounts the more consistent your results will be.
Mix the starter well. I use a butter knife for this. Measure 200 grams of it into a large bowl.
Add 200 grams of water and 8 grams of salt. Mix to dissolve the salt and to get the starter and water incorporated.
Add 344 grams of flour. That's not a round number on purpose. I'll explain the "baker's ratio" thing after the recipe.
Mix well with a wooden spoon, making sure to incorporate all the flour. At the end you want it formed into a sticky, ugly blob.
The bad news is that the dough is so sticky that we cannot knead it.
The good news is that since the dough is so sticky, we don't have to knead it.
Cover and put somewhere out of the way for four hours.
While probably not mandatory, you'll want to "fold" the dough at least once, preferably once per hour for the first three hours. Get you fingers wet with cold water or the dough WILL stick. Grab a side of the dough, stretch it up a little, then fold it over the rest of the dough. Do this a couple times. This helps distribute the critters. Some say it helps with gluten development. I am pretty sure whatever contribution that does make is pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
After 4 hours, its time to put the dough into a proofing basket. I use a small banneton that I apparently paid too much for, looking at this link. I think I paid about twice that. And I got two. Sonofa.....
Dust it liberally with rice flour. Don't use wheat flour, the dough will quickly absorb it and will stick to the basket, which is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish.
Now this is the one of only two parts that can be tricky. Mainly because it's hard to explain.
What we want to accomplish is the top of the dough will have a really smooth surface when it comes out of the basket. Since the dough goes top-side down in the basket, we can let gravity do most of the work for us.
Take the dough out of the bowl and handle by the top part. As gravity pulls it down, start tucking the top part into itself, this will add tension to the surface and help smooth out the bottom of the doughball.
Then drop it gently into the basket, cover the dough with rice flour and (important) put it inside a loosely sealed bag. I use unscented small garbage bags. Then put the whole thing in the fridge and leave it at least 12 hours.
The next morning, take the basket out of the fridge, remove from the bag, and sit it out on the counter somewhere for about three hours. You'll know it's ready for the oven if after you give it a little poke with your finger (about a half inch deep) it should spring back about half way.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. What you wind up putting the bread on to cook is up to you. There is zero fat in the dough, so expect it to stick to surfaces that aren't greased or otherwise non-stick. I line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Works great. Pizza stones are not required, despite what anyone tells you.
Now this is the second of the two tricky parts. Getting the loaf from the basket to the pan without epic failure. Dust the dough a bit with rice flour if it looks like it might stick to your hand. While over the pan, place your hand over the top of the basket just touching the dough, and confidently, with no fear, turn the basket over and lower the dough onto the pan.
If you want, you can brush off some of the extra rice flour (gently), but I generally just leave it. It adds character, as they say.
Next, take a very sharp, thin knife and cut a half inch deep trench across the top of the dough. You'll know your knife isn't up to the task when instead of a nice clean trench, it just rips the top of the loaf to shreds. I use a razor blade attached to the end of a stick, also known as a "Lame." I'm serious, that's what they call it.
Optional, if you want a crispier loaf, spray the entire loaf with some water. Not too much, but you want it to be damp. Also, you should consider brushing off some rice flour first too.
Pop it in the oven for a half hour. 450 is really hot, but the high temperature is key to bringing all this nature and science together.
Cool on a rack until it is room temperature before carving into it. If you cut it open when it's too hot, it will lose a lot of moisture.
That said, I would completely understand if you rip the first few loaves to shreds as soon as it cools just enough so as to stop imparting second degree burns. I still do that, but not always.
So did this take a long time to make? Well it depends on how you look at it. Actual hands-in-bowl time is pretty small, when you think of it. The bread pretty much makes itself during the majority of the process.
Before you turn tail and run for the bread aisle in the stop and shop: You'll be hard pressed to find better bread anywhere besides a bakery that is really good at making sourdough.
This is literally my go-to bread these days. One loaf every two days or so. Not much point for me to refrigerate the starter.
It's delicious and considerably better for you than store-bought bread. Sourdough also tends to last a bit longer due to the slight acidity discouraging spoiling.
Now a bit of extra info..
I mentioned something called a "baker's ratio" earlier. Get this concept down and you can make any kind of bread you like really easily.
Different breads are only different because of the ratio of flour to water, with additives like fat and sugars. The starter we made is known as a 100% hydration starter, because the amount of water is 100% the amount of flour.
Different types of bread use different hydration ratios, and can always be expressed as the ratio of water to flour.
Some breads call for other ingredients, too. Like fat or sweetener. These are also expressed an overall ratio of the ingredients.
It's confusing, but it does impart some significant advantages. Pair this with using weight instead of volume for measuring ingredients, and you've already mastered the most important part of baking bread.
Why weight and not volume? When you measure flour with a cup, you are also measuring the air in between the bits of flour. When you measure by weight, the density of the flour no longer means anything. Same for salt. Consider coarse kosher salt and regular table salt. There is a lot more actual salt in a teaspoon of table salt than there is in a teaspoon of coarse kosher. Yet 1 gram of each is the exact same amount.
For reference, the hydration level of the dough we used for this bread can be calculated by adding up all the water and flour weights, and doing some simple math.
Since our starter is 100% (or 1:1) hydrated, 200 grams of starter is 100 grams each of flour and water. We then add 200 more grams of water and 344 grams of flour. so 300:344 is our ratio, or about 87% hydration.
Adjusting hydration has significant effects on the texture of the final bread.
Now some more sciency stuff..
The first four hours after you mix the ingredients is known as the pre-ferment. At room temperature, the critters are eating and reproducing at a nominal rate. Without a well established colony, we get no rise to the bread. This step makes sure we have a strong (and with folding, a well distributed) colony.
The next 12+ hours in the fridge is officially known as "retarding" the dough. To maintain some semblance of political correctness, this can also be referred to as the slow-ferment. At lower temperatures, the critters metabolism slows down, though more so for the yeast than the lactobacillus. This is where most of the flavor of the bread comes from. Also this is where the gluten strands start to form naturally. No need to knead.
The next 3 hours on the counter is where both critters wake up and become more active. You won't see much in the way of a rise, but trust me, it is getting bigger.
Once this giant happy family of yeast and bacteria get shoved into a 450 degree oven, the metabolism skyrockets. Until eventually killed off by the heat, the yeast will go absolutely ape-shit and start munching down sugars and farting CO2 at a highly accelerated rate until it can do so no longer. The bacteria will die off a bit sooner, but will add just a bit more lactic acid in the process. The acid is what gives the sourish flavor.
Want to take an extended break from sourdough, but don't want to have to start all over down the road? No problem. Spread some starter out onto a sheet of parchment paper in a thin layer. Allow to dry completely. Crumble and store in a jar with some food-grade desiccant packets. It will literally last for centuries (perhaps even millennia) this way. Case in point: I have a dried strain that is the same one used to make the first loaves of leavened bread in mankind's history, originating out of Giza.
When you are ready to make bread again, grind up about 50 grams of dried starter and mix with 250 grams of flour and 300 grams of water in a jar. Feed a few days and it should be off to the races again.
One last thing, then I better stop writing before this turns into a novel.
If you want to make two loaves, add 100 grams of starter to each batch, and an additional 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. This keeps the hydration ratio the same, and provides the same combined weight of ingredients. It might be slightly less sour, but hard to notice.
Anyway, feel free to pick my brains if interested. I've made quite a hobby out of this.
Here's my take on bread. If I make any edits to this in the future, I'll make sure to mention them. If you do try this, PLEASE tell me what you think!
I sent this to a few friends privately, and I think it's worthy of sharing here. I'll be adding many more posts on different types of bread, avoiding the use of commercial yeast wherever possible. I am not a professional baker, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I've done my best to edit it to the point where it's useful, but I am writing most of this free-form. Some things might not make sense until you've read further, and some things might not make sense at all. Please ask me to clarify anything you need.
If you find this useful, feel free to share this anywhere.
I pretty much make only naturally leavened bread. Fancy talk for no store-bought yeast. I also don't add any sugar or fat. There's enough carbs in the flour, and sugar or fat would ruin the taste of this bread, in my opinion. Added sugar could also cause the yeast to grow too quickly, and with natural fermenting, slow is always better.
Measuring ingredients by weight is a great way (read as: really the only way) to get consistent results when making bread. Or pretty much anything else, for that matter. It also means no measuring cups/spoons to clean. Win/win. I also measure everything directly into the bowl or jar. I hate making a mess because I really hate cleaning up a mess. The state of my bedroom speaks loudly to this.
Speaking of ingredients, there are but three: Wheat Flour, Water, and Salt. That's really it. You'll want some rice flour to keep the bread from sticking to the proofing basket, but it's not actually in the bread. Just on it.
Flour can be all-purpose or bread flour. Just make sure its unbleached. In theory, bread flour will make the resulting bread a bit more dense. I honestly can't really tell the difference, and I've made a LOT of bread. When I really want the extra gluten (i.e., pretzels or bagels) I'll add some actual gluten, not switch types of flour.
Water should be non-chlorinated. I like to say "if you won't water your plants with it, don't cook with it"
Salt should be a pure salt. Anything without iodine is fine. I use kosher salt. You could get fancy and buy some of that Himalayan pink salt, but you are equally as served to just take your money and set it on fire, if you ask me.
Now for the part where you might get discouraged (please don't, this is totally worth it)... It will take some time (a week, give or take a few days) to get your starter in good shape. After it's ready you'll need to feed it once at least every two days if you keep it out of the fridge. Once every few weeks if stored in the fridge. You'll want it out of the fridge for at least half a day before making bread, so keep that in mind. More detail later, but I figured in the interest of full disclosure you should know what you're getting into with the starter. You will probably not see any progress for days.
You'll need two clean quart-sized mason jars (anything with a lid you can fit loosely will do - sealing a container with fermentation going on can make for explosions of glass and goop, and a mess you do not want to deal with. Trust me, I know.)
Day 1: Add 50 grams each of flour and water to a jar, mix well, then scrape down the sides with a spatula. Cover loosely (do not seal) and put it somewhere out of the sun. A mason jar lid fitted loosely works great. The lid affords a decent seal to keep things out, while any accumulated pressure will lift the lid and vent from time to time. Worthy of note is that there are few things fruit flies like more than fermentation. I think even sex comes in second for those bastards. If you don't keep the starter covered, they will find it. Then I think they have sex in it. Not sure, but why take the chance.
Keep things simple. You might be tempted to add sugar, or perhaps store bought yeast, or even some other suggestions you find on the googles, but resist.
If you "cheat" on the starter, and wind up using that starter for years, you'll spend a lifetime wracked with guilt and self-loathing. Nobody wants that.
The unbleached flour is already crawling with the little beasties that we need, they just need to be cultivated.
Day 2: Same as Day 1, only without all the needless alliteration.
Day 3: Same as Day 2.
At this point, you should start to see some bubbling. If not, don't worry. This pretty much always works eventually. I've only failed once, and it was my first time. Familiar theme, that.
Now that we have 300 grams of starter, we can't feed it anymore without discarding most of it first. This sounds wasteful, and it is, but if you don't manage the amount in the jar, you'll inevitably have it outgrow the jar and make a mess. When this stuff dries, it is akin to plaster of Paris. Plus there are a bunch of recipes on youtube for things you can make with the extra. Waffles is among them. Waffles.
Day 4 (and every subsequent feeding): Discard all but a tablespoon or two and add 100 grams each of flour and water.
In all honesty, it really doesn't matter how much starter is left, but you want to keep it at about 100 grams in a quart jar. Not too critical, but you do want to avoid overflow. If you are ever worried it will overflow, leave it in the sink or put it in a container to, well, contain the spill. It won't hurt what's left in the jar. The only thing that really DOES matter is that you always add the same exact weight of flour and water. Even that amount is up to you.
For example, let's say you need more than 200 grams for a cooking session. Get a larger container (I have 2-quart jars for this) and double everything for that go around.
You'll know your starter is ready when it doubles (or more) inside the jar. It will collapse back down eventually, so check it every few hours so you don't miss the milestone. If the sides of the jar are clean, you'll probably see a "high water mark." Usually takes mine 5 hours or so to double, and by morning it's just starting to collapse. Once you've seen it happen, it's ready. By the time your starter is about two or three weeks old, 300 grams of starter will grow to almost fill a quart jar to the top before collapsing.
Here's my method for maintenance feeding:
If I am making bread, I'll measure out the 200 grams of starter for my bread, and feed whatever remains in the jar.
If I am just feeding the starter, I take a second jar and weigh into it about 100 grams of starter and feed as usual, discarding whats left in the original jar.
In either case, I add the water to the starter and mix that up a bit before adding the flour. This helps distribute the colony better in the new flour.
Soon you'll notice that the starter smells kinda boozy. This is to be expected, and it means the yeast is doing its job. You might also notice a bit of a tangy or sour smell, thank the lactobacillus bacteria for that. It also means everything is going well.
Once you get to this point, the starter is actually pretty difficult to kill, outside of starving it or overheating it. It is also much less susceptible to invasion from unwanted critters, since the existing colony is already so strong.
When you are in the first week or so with the starter, it is possible (but not likely) that something besides the desired life forms will take up residence and become the dominant species in your jar. If it smells really off, toss it and start again. Again, once it's established, this is not much of a concern. So long as the flour isn't bleached, there is already a pretty dominant colony of dormant yeast and bacteria to start with.
Ok, let's make some bread...
If your starter is in the fridge, you want to take it out of the fridge and let it warm up a few hours. Also, you might notice a layer of liquid on top of the starter. Just mix it back in when feeding or before using for bread. Don't even think about discarding it unless it smells really off, and if you do, go ahead and toss the starter as well. You'll know when it's bad, and if you have any doubt just send me a picture with your olfactory observations. The two smells you DO expect are booze and acid. Which amusingly enough describes my time spent in high school quite well. But I digress.
If you want to have a loaf of the finest bread you've ever had today, you'll have to have done most of the following yesterday.
You don't have to be dead on with the measurements. Plus or minus a gram here and there won't hurt. The closer you get to the stated amounts the more consistent your results will be.
Mix the starter well. I use a butter knife for this. Measure 200 grams of it into a large bowl.
Add 200 grams of water and 8 grams of salt. Mix to dissolve the salt and to get the starter and water incorporated.
Add 344 grams of flour. That's not a round number on purpose. I'll explain the "baker's ratio" thing after the recipe.
Mix well with a wooden spoon, making sure to incorporate all the flour. At the end you want it formed into a sticky, ugly blob.
The bad news is that the dough is so sticky that we cannot knead it.
The good news is that since the dough is so sticky, we don't have to knead it.
Cover and put somewhere out of the way for four hours.
While probably not mandatory, you'll want to "fold" the dough at least once, preferably once per hour for the first three hours. Get you fingers wet with cold water or the dough WILL stick. Grab a side of the dough, stretch it up a little, then fold it over the rest of the dough. Do this a couple times. This helps distribute the critters. Some say it helps with gluten development. I am pretty sure whatever contribution that does make is pretty small in the grand scheme of things.
After 4 hours, its time to put the dough into a proofing basket. I use a small banneton that I apparently paid too much for, looking at this link. I think I paid about twice that. And I got two. Sonofa.....
Dust it liberally with rice flour. Don't use wheat flour, the dough will quickly absorb it and will stick to the basket, which is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish.
Now this is the one of only two parts that can be tricky. Mainly because it's hard to explain.
What we want to accomplish is the top of the dough will have a really smooth surface when it comes out of the basket. Since the dough goes top-side down in the basket, we can let gravity do most of the work for us.
Take the dough out of the bowl and handle by the top part. As gravity pulls it down, start tucking the top part into itself, this will add tension to the surface and help smooth out the bottom of the doughball.
Then drop it gently into the basket, cover the dough with rice flour and (important) put it inside a loosely sealed bag. I use unscented small garbage bags. Then put the whole thing in the fridge and leave it at least 12 hours.
The next morning, take the basket out of the fridge, remove from the bag, and sit it out on the counter somewhere for about three hours. You'll know it's ready for the oven if after you give it a little poke with your finger (about a half inch deep) it should spring back about half way.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. What you wind up putting the bread on to cook is up to you. There is zero fat in the dough, so expect it to stick to surfaces that aren't greased or otherwise non-stick. I line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Works great. Pizza stones are not required, despite what anyone tells you.
Now this is the second of the two tricky parts. Getting the loaf from the basket to the pan without epic failure. Dust the dough a bit with rice flour if it looks like it might stick to your hand. While over the pan, place your hand over the top of the basket just touching the dough, and confidently, with no fear, turn the basket over and lower the dough onto the pan.
If you want, you can brush off some of the extra rice flour (gently), but I generally just leave it. It adds character, as they say.
Next, take a very sharp, thin knife and cut a half inch deep trench across the top of the dough. You'll know your knife isn't up to the task when instead of a nice clean trench, it just rips the top of the loaf to shreds. I use a razor blade attached to the end of a stick, also known as a "Lame." I'm serious, that's what they call it.
Optional, if you want a crispier loaf, spray the entire loaf with some water. Not too much, but you want it to be damp. Also, you should consider brushing off some rice flour first too.
Pop it in the oven for a half hour. 450 is really hot, but the high temperature is key to bringing all this nature and science together.
Cool on a rack until it is room temperature before carving into it. If you cut it open when it's too hot, it will lose a lot of moisture.
That said, I would completely understand if you rip the first few loaves to shreds as soon as it cools just enough so as to stop imparting second degree burns. I still do that, but not always.
So did this take a long time to make? Well it depends on how you look at it. Actual hands-in-bowl time is pretty small, when you think of it. The bread pretty much makes itself during the majority of the process.
Before you turn tail and run for the bread aisle in the stop and shop: You'll be hard pressed to find better bread anywhere besides a bakery that is really good at making sourdough.
This is literally my go-to bread these days. One loaf every two days or so. Not much point for me to refrigerate the starter.
It's delicious and considerably better for you than store-bought bread. Sourdough also tends to last a bit longer due to the slight acidity discouraging spoiling.
Now a bit of extra info..
I mentioned something called a "baker's ratio" earlier. Get this concept down and you can make any kind of bread you like really easily.
Different breads are only different because of the ratio of flour to water, with additives like fat and sugars. The starter we made is known as a 100% hydration starter, because the amount of water is 100% the amount of flour.
Different types of bread use different hydration ratios, and can always be expressed as the ratio of water to flour.
Some breads call for other ingredients, too. Like fat or sweetener. These are also expressed an overall ratio of the ingredients.
It's confusing, but it does impart some significant advantages. Pair this with using weight instead of volume for measuring ingredients, and you've already mastered the most important part of baking bread.
Why weight and not volume? When you measure flour with a cup, you are also measuring the air in between the bits of flour. When you measure by weight, the density of the flour no longer means anything. Same for salt. Consider coarse kosher salt and regular table salt. There is a lot more actual salt in a teaspoon of table salt than there is in a teaspoon of coarse kosher. Yet 1 gram of each is the exact same amount.
For reference, the hydration level of the dough we used for this bread can be calculated by adding up all the water and flour weights, and doing some simple math.
Since our starter is 100% (or 1:1) hydrated, 200 grams of starter is 100 grams each of flour and water. We then add 200 more grams of water and 344 grams of flour. so 300:344 is our ratio, or about 87% hydration.
Adjusting hydration has significant effects on the texture of the final bread.
Now some more sciency stuff..
The first four hours after you mix the ingredients is known as the pre-ferment. At room temperature, the critters are eating and reproducing at a nominal rate. Without a well established colony, we get no rise to the bread. This step makes sure we have a strong (and with folding, a well distributed) colony.
The next 12+ hours in the fridge is officially known as "retarding" the dough. To maintain some semblance of political correctness, this can also be referred to as the slow-ferment. At lower temperatures, the critters metabolism slows down, though more so for the yeast than the lactobacillus. This is where most of the flavor of the bread comes from. Also this is where the gluten strands start to form naturally. No need to knead.
The next 3 hours on the counter is where both critters wake up and become more active. You won't see much in the way of a rise, but trust me, it is getting bigger.
Once this giant happy family of yeast and bacteria get shoved into a 450 degree oven, the metabolism skyrockets. Until eventually killed off by the heat, the yeast will go absolutely ape-shit and start munching down sugars and farting CO2 at a highly accelerated rate until it can do so no longer. The bacteria will die off a bit sooner, but will add just a bit more lactic acid in the process. The acid is what gives the sourish flavor.
Want to take an extended break from sourdough, but don't want to have to start all over down the road? No problem. Spread some starter out onto a sheet of parchment paper in a thin layer. Allow to dry completely. Crumble and store in a jar with some food-grade desiccant packets. It will literally last for centuries (perhaps even millennia) this way. Case in point: I have a dried strain that is the same one used to make the first loaves of leavened bread in mankind's history, originating out of Giza.
When you are ready to make bread again, grind up about 50 grams of dried starter and mix with 250 grams of flour and 300 grams of water in a jar. Feed a few days and it should be off to the races again.
One last thing, then I better stop writing before this turns into a novel.
If you want to make two loaves, add 100 grams of starter to each batch, and an additional 50 grams of water and 50 grams of flour. This keeps the hydration ratio the same, and provides the same combined weight of ingredients. It might be slightly less sour, but hard to notice.
Anyway, feel free to pick my brains if interested. I've made quite a hobby out of this.
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Just noticed that I missed something important. This even after editing it yet again for posting here...
Most people will be keeping the starter in the fridge. That is because most people don't make bread every other day. Unlike me. I usually wind up tossing half of it out into the field for the critters to eat.
Anyway. For fridge stored starter, I feed with this procedure:
Remove from fridge and allow to warm for a couple hours on the counter. Stir well and feed as usual. This part is important: Let it sit on the counter until at least doubled in size before putting back into the fridge.
If it's been more than a couple weeks since you've fed it, do a daily room temperature feeding until its visibly healthy again before putting back into the fridge. After about 4 weeks, it will be close to starving to death.
If you are worried that might happen to you, dry some starter out as mentioned in my last post. That gives you a nice insurance sample to restore your colony in a hurry.
Hope this helps!
Most people will be keeping the starter in the fridge. That is because most people don't make bread every other day. Unlike me. I usually wind up tossing half of it out into the field for the critters to eat.
Anyway. For fridge stored starter, I feed with this procedure:
Remove from fridge and allow to warm for a couple hours on the counter. Stir well and feed as usual. This part is important: Let it sit on the counter until at least doubled in size before putting back into the fridge.
If it's been more than a couple weeks since you've fed it, do a daily room temperature feeding until its visibly healthy again before putting back into the fridge. After about 4 weeks, it will be close to starving to death.
If you are worried that might happen to you, dry some starter out as mentioned in my last post. That gives you a nice insurance sample to restore your colony in a hurry.
Hope this helps!
HashMaster
In Dog Beers I've Only Had One
Hey there @Mañ'O'Green
Is there any certain brands of Stevia you use that you have found does not effect BS ?
Most my family is diabetic so they've tried Stevia and other things. Right now they are using Monk Fruit as a sweetener it comes in drops or powder form.
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