Bread .......any kind

Now im hungry....

 

Here is the starter the other day:

 

Have you tried making it more sour?

 

Yes, well NOW I am, I just need patience...........there is kefir and vinegar mother from Bragg's ACD in there. Getting more ripe everyday.

 

What do you mean by " all wild starters" ? Just getting started on making sour dough and find there is some terminology I've not familiar with.

 

You can make starter with commercial yeast or make your own starter that just gets yeasts from the air.

 

I meant I did not add any packaged yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). I just stole from my "wild" starter and increased the size of my biga (Italian word for starter DOUGH) over a few days, until it was large and lively enough for a couple big loaves.

As @wilcam47 states, AND/OR a combination of wild and packaged yeast, and OTHER microbes. My starter was wild yeast, lactic acid bacteria (from kefir culture) and lots of other life:

"
Probiotic bacteria found in kefir products include: Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Lactobacillus helveticus, Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens, Lactococcus lactis, and Leuconostoc species.[14][23][27] Lactobacilli in kefir may exist in concentrations varying from approximately 1 million to 1 billion colony-forming units per milliliter, and are the bacteria responsible for the synthesis of the polysaccharide kefiran.[4]

In addition to bacteria, kefir often contains strains of yeast that can metabolize lactose, such as Kluyveromyces marxianus, Kluyveromyces lactis, and Saccharomyces fragilis, as well as strains of yeast that do not metabolize lactose, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Torulaspora delbrueckii, and Kazachstania unispora.[14] The nutritional significance of these strains is unknown."

"As it contains Lactobacillus bacteria, kefir can be used to make a sourdough bread."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir

Also I added the grungy stuff from the bottom of the bottle of organic apple cider vinegar (ACD), vinegar mother - acetic acid bacteria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_vinegar

SO my goal after a few weeks is to my own "wild" starter, which in reality is not that wild at all other than the wild yeasts and other life that are naturally in flour and the few that fell in.........

So one last very important thing IMHO. I pretty much use organic flour, but I know it's expensive and not always available. For the initial starter I ALWAYS use organic whole wheat.

 

Thanks.

 

Trust me, no need for the complexity in my post. Just start with good recipes and packaged yeast.

 

Advice needed, On my second try making sour dough, I followed all the instructions, - yet it failed to rise, It had good texture and air pockets, but barely rose The first attempt rose, but no air pockets and dense. I guess it's just trial and error it you get it right.

 

How much starter did you use?

 

What kind of flour are you using and what ratio water?

How vigorous was your starter, and yes how much?

 

My wife’s grand pop was a navy cook & baker. It’s awesome to go grocery shopping with him. We always find the best bread, I honestly don’t know how the guy does it. He’s a bread sleuth that’s for sure!

 

50% all purpose flour and 50% purified water and 1 cup of starter. Is it possible I over kneaded it? I think where I went wrong was not having a scale that that weighted in grams, since that was what was what the recipe was calling for and I ended up just estimating. I hope it isn't the starter ,I have faith in it.

 

Wow that seems like a pretty wet dough. Try a different recipe. Even a 65% flour will be pretty wet........make sure you feed your starter like the day before and it's going good.

 

I really appreciate the help, will try again, thanks.

 

I really recommend a book by Carol Fields: The Italian Baker It's how I learned how to bake good bread, basically.

 

Thanks for the recommendation on the book. Today, I thought I'd give Pizza dough a try, I let it rise and now it's in the frig. for 24hrs. Anybody else try this?

 

Never did sourdough pizza! I have have done overnight cold rises with bread multiple times. Sounds awesome. Take pictures if you can.

 

The pizza dough isn't sour dough, Just a bread dough using dry yeast I'll give Sour Dough another try next week. Tomorrow my Girlfriends is making white bread using bread pans and Banana walnut muffins.