On November 09, 2006, Jeff Miller wrote:

> I'm curious as to how people think this technique might work for
> sourdough.
> Obviously, it's a very different ballgame, because too long of a
> fermentation will turn the dough to rags. But might it be possible to use
> a
> very small amount of starter -- say 5 to 10 percent of the total flour --
> and make it work?

Hey Jeff:

If you print out a copy of this email and take it to McDonalds with $5 I am
pretty sure you can get a cup of coffee in most places. That is fact; the
rest below is conjecture.

The issue for me is environmental. I believe my issue is related to your
question. Most of the time I am dealing with a 78F to 80F kitchen. Things
happen pretty fast. So I began experimenting with inoculation percentages
first.

1) If I understand correctly, and I hope Dick or others will correct me if I
am wrong, it is not unusual in some kitchen proofing environments to have
sourdough yeast and LB's doubling roughly every hour or so. So the
difference between a 20% inoculation and a 10% inoculation is roughly one
generation time. A doubling. That doubling can be as short as one hour in
the right temperature environment. (See:
http://www.egullet.com/imgs/egci/sourdough/table.html ).

2) The FAQ's and Ed Wood's culture rejuvenation methods both use a roughly
5% inoculation of old starter to re-grow the culture. Based upon that
alone, I would personally not go below 5%. Others with more experience may
set me straight on the bottom limit.

3) Many people retard dough in the refrigerator. Bakeries have temperature
controlled proofing environments that are adjustable. Some posters have
basements/ garages or other locations with lower temperatures. I have
experimented with putting a couple of re-usable chemical ice blocks (blue
re-freezable things) in the oven to help keep the temp down overnight. The
purpose I believe in all cases is to slow down the growth rate and extend
the proofing time.

4) Most recently, I have been watching my dough temperatures.
See: http://www.bakers-exchange.com/articles/2000/dec.html . This has been
the most help so far for me. In order to avoid using ice and a different
formula, I may need to refrigerate my flour, too.

5) Finally, I have begun to add 20% whole grain flour to my long
fermentation processed white flour experiments assuming that it would raise
the ash content and increase the dough's ability to ferment for a longer
period.

So, what I have deduced so far, which may be completely in error, is that to
stretch out the fermentation time one can use a combination of inoculation
level (to a certain end point) combined with a lower dough temperature and
proofing temperature (to a certain end point).

Whether chemical development of the dough correlates with the yeast / Lb's
growth curve in any random sample dough, I do not know. However, as Hans
stated in
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.f...392ad12ba0e52:
"Try mixing a small amount of flour and water into a dough (no start, yeast,
etc.) and let it sit for a couple of hours and observe
the development." Gluten development will occur sans a leavening agent.

You can see the contrast between
http://www.pbs.org/juliachild/meet/forestier.html where the dough is whacked
on the counter 800 times and subsequently stretched and folded versus
http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main...56.60606510937
(= http://tinyurl.com/y74dqt ) which is the subject of this thread and was
sans all kneading and had only one rudimentary flatten/ stretch and fold.
However, in both cases the gluten developed.

I am not sure if any of this address your question concerning converting the
recipe in the video to one made with sourdough. I believe it is quite
possible, and perhaps very straightforward if you have a "normal kitchen
environment."

I have been using Mike Avery's recipe
http://www.sourdoughhome.com/sfsd1.html sans kneading, proofing 12 hours +/-
, stretch and fold, final rise and bake. Twelve hours was too long for my
kitchen environment with an initial dough temperature of 70F. So next time
I will shorten to 8 or 9. My guess is that I will get it to work after a
try or two more.

I hope that this helps. Regardless, take what makes sense, ignore the rest.
I cannot claim satisfactory success with anything I have tried to date in
these experiments.

Regards,

Ray