They said I was mad - well who's mad now...?!?!?!

[Governor11201]

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here for the next two to six weeks!

Stick around, I expect I'll be posting tasting notes of my citrus soaps sometime around late April.

 

[DocPapi]

A shave soap and a good (old) boar brush will solve the worlds TP problems.

I think if it comes to that I'd rather use a nice soft badger!

 

[johnwick]

I think if it comes to that I'd rather use a nice soft badger!

Sissy!

 

[Scrape&Splash]

Time for some natural sourdough! I've tried to make a homemade sourdough twice and failed miserably both times.

Natural yeast is easy to cultivate. Most of the time that people fail it's because they're using iodized salt or their drinking water has chlorine or fluoride in it (or they washed their equipment with anti-microbal soap and didn't rinse thoroughly enough. iodine, chlorine & fluoride will all mess with yeast formation. Kosher salt has no iodine and it's easy enough to get rid of chlorine and fluoride. Chlorine evaporates and fluoride exits water when you boil it. So just boil the water and let it come to room temperature and then cover the pot with a kitchen towel for a few hours and use that water when making your starter - and use kosher salt when making your bread and you're in like Flynn. This guy knows a lot more about it than me... so try his method it looks reasonably similar to what I do - though I've never used pineapple juice. Any kind of natural / squeezed fruit juice will work - apple - pear - or just a little sugar (doesn't take much, you're just giving the yeast a little extra food)

If you're having trouble getting fermentation to happen, start with sauerkraut and you'll get a quick-win under your belt. It's dead simple to make. Cut up cabbage, put it in a big bowl, throw some kosher salt on it and a small amount of caraway seed, knead it with your hands till it starts to sweat and create its own brine. Put it in a container with a loose lid and poke it down till the kraut is under the brine. Loosely cover the container just so bugs don't get in but it can let off gas -and leave it. It does all the rest. People get very proprietary about the strength of the brine (how much salt) but it'll work with a wide range. Start toward the top of the range and back off until you find the strength of brine that works for you and tastes how you want it to taste, because about the only thing you can do to screw up sauerkraut is not use enough salt and ferment it in a place that is too warm or well lighted - well - or if you use iodized salt. Iodine is one of the best anti-fungals. Several surgical scrubs are based around iodine (Hibitane, Povidone, Betadyne, etc.) Iodine is necessary to have in one's diet, but it plays hell on yeast cultures ;-)

 

[Demolition]

I bake most of our bread. Last week for some bizarre reason there was a run on yeast. One place I called actually said “yeast is the new toilet paper”. Eh? What?

So... we're supposed to use slices of bread to wipe our butts now?

 

[Wgg2017]

Natural yeast is easy to cultivate. Most of the time that people fail it's because they're using iodized salt or their drinking water has chlorine or fluoride in it (or they washed their equipment with anti-microbal soap and didn't rinse thoroughly enough. iodine, chlorine & fluoride will all mess with yeast formation. Kosher salt has no iodine and it's easy enough to get rid of chlorine and fluoride. Chlorine evaporates and fluoride exits water when you boil it. So just boil the water and let it come to room temperature and then cover the pot with a kitchen towel for a few hours and use that water when making your starter - and use kosher salt when making your bread and you're in like Flynn. This guy knows a lot more about it than me... so try his method it looks reasonably similar to what I do - though I've never used pineapple juice. Any kind of natural / squeezed fruit juice will work - apple - pear - or just a little sugar (doesn't take much, you're just giving the yeast a little extra food)

If you're having trouble getting fermentation to happen, start with sauerkraut and you'll get a quick-win under your belt. It's dead simple to make. Cut up cabbage, put it in a big bowl, throw some kosher salt on it and a small amount of caraway seed, knead it with your hands till it starts to sweat and create its own brine. Put it in a container with a loose lid and poke it down till the kraut is under the brine. Loosely cover the container just so bugs don't get in but it can let off gas -and leave it. It does all the rest. People get very proprietary about the strength of the brine (how much salt) but it'll work with a wide range. Start toward the top of the range and back off until you find the strength of brine that works for you and tastes how you want it to taste, because about the only thing you can do to screw up sauerkraut is not use enough salt and ferment it in a place that is too warm or well lighted - well - or if you use iodized salt. Iodine is one of the best anti-fungals. Several surgical scrubs are based around iodine (Hibitane, Povidone, Betadyne, etc.) Iodine is necessary to have in one's diet, but it plays hell on yeast cultures ;-)

Thanks for the tips! I was at the grocery store this morning and your post motivated me to get more flour and try again. I suspect the issue might be my water so I'm going boil it first. I'd never heard to try that before.

 

[rockthrower]

I'm on day 4 of a 5 day starter. Bubbling away like mad. One thing that helps is using whole wheat or rye flour on day 1. They are more likely to have some useful wild yeast strains around them. Info came from Peter Reinhart.

 

[Scrape&Splash]

Thanks for the tips! I was at the grocery store this morning and your post motivated me to get more flour and try again. I suspect the issue might be my water so I'm going boil it first. I'd never heard to try that before.

I might have spoken too soon. Evidently water is no longer chlorinated, but rather "chloraminated" and the long and short of it is that it is more difficult to remove that sh*te from water. I boil water from my Brita pitcher for about however long I get distracted and forget that I have water boiling (about 5 to 20 minutes, haha) and it works for me, but it may simply be that my town's water is not yet chloraminated, or it could mean that the combination of Brita and boiling is good enough. But this talk about bread has made me hungry and I've decided to start another levain. I let mine die out several months back when I started getting into pizza making and experimenting with active vs instant dry yeast.

*edit - just checked with my city's municipal water district website - we don't chloraminate - only chlorine and ozone.

Removing Chloramines From Water - Chloramines Removal | MoreBeer

Trying to figure Does boiling remove chloramine from water? Interested in learning how to remove chloramine from tap water? This article is all about chloramines removal.

www.morebeer.com

 

[Wgg2017]

I've got no clue which type of chlorine is in my water but I've got a pot boiling right now. If that doesn't work I'll try distilled water. Luckily I already had some whole wheat bread flour. Excited for some homemade bread!

 

[Scrape&Splash]

Thanks for the tips! I was at the grocery store this morning and your post motivated me to get more flour and try again. I suspect the issue might be my water so I'm going boil it first. I'd never heard to try that before.

Well, I was as rusty as a gate hinge and clumsy as he** trying to tension the dough before putting it into the basket and then couldn't find my pastry brush, so it has way too much flour on top. I didn't put enough water in the steamer tray so the steam ran out about 5 minutes in and so the crust got a little too brown and the loaf is just a smidge tight, but it looks, smells & taps like a decent loaf - very far from the worst I've ever made and certainly not bad for the first use of a starter. I hadn't planned on baking yet, but yesterday the starter more than doubled, so it was time. I can absolutely recommend Bob's Redmill unbleached whole wheat for starter. Man that stuff is alive. It was expanding about 15% with a 50% volume reduction - and had been like that for four or five days, so I decided to try a 75% reduction, cutting it back to 50g of starter and adding 75g water & 75g flour to see if it would ramp up, and it came within a few inches of the lid of a 100ml Weck jar! Bob's Redmill... good stuff.

 

[Wgg2017]

Well, I was as rusty as a gate hinge and clumsy as he** trying to tension the dough before putting it into the basket and then couldn't find my pastry brush, so it has way too much flour on top. I didn't put enough water in the steamer tray so the steam ran out about 5 minutes in and so the crust got a little too brown and the loaf is just a smidge tight, but it looks, smells & taps like a decent loaf - very far from the worst I've ever made and certainly not bad for the first use of a starter. I hadn't planned on baking yet, but yesterday the starter more than doubled, so it was time. I can absolutely recommend Bob's Redmill unbleached whole wheat for starter. Man that stuff is alive. It was expanding about 15% with a 50% volume reduction - and had been like that for four or five days, so I decided to try a 75% reduction, cutting it back to 50g of starter and adding 75g water & 75g flour to see if it would ramp up, and it came within a few inches of the lid of a 100ml Weck jar! Bob's Redmill... good stuff.

That's some good looking bread! My first starter didn't have any activity going on after 5 days so I tossed it and started over last night and now I'm using distilled water. I have King Arthur whole wheat flour but will probably switch to all purpose once it takes off. I'll get there eventually lol.