On 4/2/04 1:38 PM, "Dick Adams" > wrote:

>
> "williamwaller" > wrote in message
> news:mailman.8.1080920073.229.rec.food.sourdough@m ail.otherwhen.com...
>
>> I think the beauty of working with "sourdough" starters is there really is
>> no single answer to this question.
>
> But some answers are better than others.
>
>> 1) The easiest... Go to Ed Wood's web site and buy his most sour culture.
>> 2) Migrate your starter's refreshments from white or wheat flours to rye.
>> 3) Choose to build from retained, mature dough rather than sponge.
>> 4) Use your sense of smell to evaluate the fermentation process. Knowing
>> when a dough is ripe is essential practice.
>
> "ww" may still be having some trouble with his sourdough. (He seems to have
> been sucked in by the 'sour starter --> sour bread' myth.)
>
>> 5) Work on a very basic bread (a la Laurel Robertson's Desem example) until
>> you have nailed down the idiosyncrasies of your grain supply, water,
>> micro-climate (proofing box, refrigerator, basement, etc...), oven, and
>> starter behavior.
>
> Won't hurt, but can be omitted.
>
> 6) Stay away from bananas, figs, apricots and other wonderful
> what-have-you's unless you've got Betty Crocker's private phone number. My
> personal feeling is these amendments are better on top of bread rather than
> in it.
>
> Good!
>
> 7) Be sure your "benchmark" bread isn't a highly engineered, atypical
> example of the naturally leavened world.
>
> What is a "highly engineered, atypical example of the naturally leavened
> world?

P.S. What's your bread look like, ww?


Well here goes...


SUCKED IN...
I confess to knowing the difference between a starter and a fermenting
dough. I was referring to ripening DOUGH in my comments (number 4 above) on
smell. Generally my doughs do not have a sour smell. I would be worried
about contamination if they did. Depending on the wheat I mill, the doughs
occasionally smell "cidery". My belief, however, is that whenever a starter
smells sour, it means it's old and needs a refreshment cycle.


BANANAS...
I'm glad we agree on bananas... I have been reading the "fruit wars" posts
lately and trying to understand why one would want to put these amendments
into bread. It seems to me that using fruit on top of the bread is more
logical. You can make better bread and achieve more fruit focus by combining
the two at the table, not the oven. I was tempted to pose that solution
earlier. But then the posts went off into la-la land as everyone approached
the topic literally.

ENGINEERED BREAD...
It only takes a visit to the TMB site to get the engineered bread gestalt.
Imagine what you might do with a lineup of 80 gallon auto-fermenters each
with it's own special lactobacilli brewing away. Combine that with those
marvelous dual purpose retarder/proofers attached to your handy server. You
can get emailed when the dough is ripe!!! In short, most of us cannot dial
in degrees of sourness with computer controlled equipment and most of us do
not make, or aspire to, really "sour" breads either. But the highly
engineered bread is out there. La Brea bakery is serving it up nation-wide.

P.S WHAT'S MY BREAD LOOK LIKE...

It looks like Samartha's. Speaking of which... I use his calculator all of
the time. Works great.

Will