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From the Publisher
An excerpt from SOURDOUGH BY SCIENCE
Create Your Own Starter from Scratch
Although I strongly recommend embarking on sourdough bread baking with an established starter, once you know the ropes, you will no doubt be curious to try making your own starter. It’s fun! When grains are harvested from the fields, they are covered by millions of wild yeast and bacteria cells from the environment. They include the kinds of bacteria and yeasts that like to eat flour, and these are the ones you want in your starter. When flour is milled, these microorganisms wind up in the flour. Microorganisms are more plentiful in whole grain flour because the bran, which is on the outside of the kernel, is included. When the flour is mixed with water, the microorganisms begin to grow. What follows is a succession of different species dominating the culture, culminating in a set of yeast species that are suitable for raising dough. A collection of lactic acid bacteria will come along, too, benefiting from and helping the yeasts. Once this population of yeast and bacterial species is established, it is very stable. You will have created your very own microbial ecosystem!
What to Expect: While you are looking at your jar of flour paste and hoping it turns into a starter, you may be curious about what’s going on in there day by day. Here’s how the succession of species in the jar generally unfolds. During the first 1 or 2 days, the conditions in the culture are not actually great for wild yeast, which prefer an acidic environment, so they will just quietly hang out. Instead, bacterial species that like low-acid environments begin to grow and end up producing acid as a waste product.
After a couple of days you may see some bubbling as evidence that these pioneer bacterial species are growing. Eventually, they produce so much acid that they cannot grow anymore. But the acid-loving species needed for bread making are now provided with an environment in which they can grow.
You may see the starter do nothing for a day or two at this juncture. The species that like an acidic environment are slowly beginning to grow and further acidifying the ecosystem. This includes the kind of yeast that raise bread as well as lactic acid bacteria.
After being quiet for a few days, all of a sudden your starter may become active again with lots of bubbles and may rise dramatically. At this point you have successfully grown baking yeasts! During the next few refreshments, the baking yeasts will become dominant in the starter ecosystem, along with their lactic acid bacteria friends. Usually this entire process takes between 5 and 14 days.
Shape a Baguette
1. Flour the top of the dough and flip it onto a lightly floured counter.
2. Lift the top side of the dough and fold it to the center and press it there a second until it adheres.
Repeat with the bottom side. The area where you press will become the hinge in the next step.
3. Now fold it in half, bringing the top side onto the bottom. It may be necessary to press some gas out along the centerline so it can fold.
4. Pinch all along the seam and the ends to close it tightly.
5. Roll the loaf seam side down and rest a few minutes to seal the seam and to relax the dough a bit.
6. Stretch the baguette gently and evenly until it is 14 inches (36 centimeters) long.
Publisher : Countryman Press (January 25, 2022)
Language : English
Hardcover : 304 pages
ISBN-10 : 1682687007
ISBN-13 : 978-1682687000
Item Weight : 2.75 pounds
Dimensions : 8.3 x 1 x 10.4 inches
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