On Jun 9, 7:32 pm, "Paul Gilbert" > wrote:

> Question 1) All of my books give measurements is cups. I can convert water
> cups to grams, but the density of flours varies all over the map. I have
> made my own approximations for the wt. of a cup of rye, bread flour, and
> all-purpose flour. Is there a consensus for this conversion?

Not that I know of. I use 140 to 160 grams per cup. Most bread writers
(Hammelman, Reinhart, Lepard, Beranbaum, to name a few) provide
formulas in grams these days.

>
> Question 2) A local supermarket produces quite acceptable sour dough bread.
> I smiled real big and got a loaf of unbaked sour dough bread for the price
> of a finished loaf. I brought it home, chopped it up into 8 pieces, put
> them in baggies and threw them into the freezer. I have subsequently
> unthawed one of them, restarted it with 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 cup of
> flour. Subsequent interactions on this theme have given me a very fast
> rising starter, but the bread has no sour taste. Reading all of the
> literature it seems that I am not letting the dough rise long enough. (2 hrs
> first rise and something less than that for the second). The dough almost
> triples in bulk during this time at room temp. Should I cool the dough or
> has freezing it killed the bacteria component of the starter?

I would investigate that supermarket's sourdough claim. A really
active starter... one that has been refreshed (not expanded) several
times will prove dough in 2 or 3 hours, but something from the
freezer, with only one refreshment should be a bit slower. This
suggests the common sourdough starter + active yeast "booster" game is
in play here. A lot of bakeries do this. It's not bad... but it's not
naturally leavened bread.

What you could do is take one of your frozen pieces and run it through
a series of refreshments, say, twice a day for 4 or 5 days at room
temperature. The result from that serial refreshment cycle should re-
balance your levain to it's renewable populations.