Talk to me about sourdough - The Fermentation Club!

[Cosmopolitan]

1kg is fine, any shape is fine. It does need to have air getting to it. I use a fair big jam jar with a lid with a few holes poked in it.

[Edith Bacon]

Thank you, Cos. I think I probably should just dive in. I've convinced myself it will take a few goes to get it right so I'm braced to make a bollocks of it

[Cosmopolitan]

Honestly we've have lots of up and downs with the starter. We killed it the other day. It's only a bit of flour & water. I wouldn't worry too much!

[Mountain Goat]

I might actually get round to this, like I said right at the beginning of the thread ( ), but it is a pointless venture for me at this time of year when I can barely make a yeasted flatbread because the kitchen's so bloody cold.

[Cosmopolitan]

Yeah, it needs to have a reasonable temperature really. I keep mine in the fridge and feed it once a week and that keeps it in deactivated mode. You've got to get it established before you do that though.

[Mountain Goat]

Ah, that makes sense, that it's ok if it's already established. I will stick with utilising the cold weather to conquer bloody pastry and save sourdough (and most bread really) until the spring.

[Mountain Goat]

Bumping this as I've found myself in sort of sourdough territory and I'm getting a bit overexcited with it all. Is anyone else still in fermentation club?

My starter is not really a sourdough, it's a biga (yeasted starter/pre-ferment) that I made for making ciabatta at New Year. I didn't have any intention of keeping it going but I just had some leftover and I didn't want to throw it out. So I've started feeding it and treating it as though it's sourdough, as there's lots of information on sourdough starters and not much on bigas. I did read that if you have a biga that you're feeding and it's not covered, it's going to eventually be picking up wild yeast and at some point you basically have a sourdough, but I'm not sure on that.

Anyway, initially I had just left it in the fridge (with vague intentions of using it up rather than nurturing) but now I'm looking after it properly and feeding it every day (it's living on the counter until it's a fully fledged adult, then it can live in the fridge and come out once a week). It's nice and bubbly but not rising that much with each feed, which I have read means it's healthy but not mature (it's also bloody cold). Anyway with feeding it daily comes a lot of discard, and I'm being a bit zero waste 2020 and didn't want to throw it out. The first lot I made into a flatbread (with garlic butter) - just threw it as it was into a pan. That was fine. Yesterday I had a go at making a loaf with the discard - as it's immature and discard so flopped back down after its feed, I wasn't expecting much, but look! It's really delicious and while not as gloriously holey as you'd hope when it'll be when it's grown up, it's pretty fine.

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Currently I have some rosemary and olive oil crackers in the oven from today's discard.

My only other current fermentation is some spelt that I'm fermenting in whey leftover from making ricotta (yes, I can hear myself ) which is barely fermenting at all because it's too cold.

Anyone else? Any other experiments in using discard? I'm getting a bit overexcited.

[Cosmopolitan]

Hello. I'm still here. Still making sourdough regularly and Mr Cos has just bought the Noma Fermentation book so I am expecting more pots of stuff to start happening shortly. Bought the Vanessa Kimble sourdough book last year (not recommended, she obviously knows her stuff but it's editing SO BADLY).

[cluefree]

That bread looks AMAZING!

[Mountain Goat]

Thank you! I'm very pleasantly surprised. I had some for lunch with leek and potato soup and smoked haddock, I was delighted with myself.

Cos, I will be begging for your expertise for sure. I was looking at getting Tartine Bread, do you have that one? What's in the Noma book? I bet that's going to be very exciting. You'll have a kitchen like a lab.

[Mountain Goat]

Oh, I made a paste of fermented Seville oranges over the holidays (from a recipe, not just for fun). No. No. No. It was AWFUL. The sort of awful you can taste for hours. Just so bitter.

[Cosmopolitan]

I don't have Tartine Bread but I have read a few extracts from it and it sounds really good actually. I did pop in when we were in SF years ago and it looked amazingly beautiful. We have a brilliant sourdough bakery about 15 mins walk away so we have to get good at making it because it's so nice to buy from them. I add leftover starter to nearly everything baked now, it helps breakdown the gluten - pizza, cake, flatbread, stuff.

I have an entire cellar and it's going to be full of fermenty things. I'm still making kombucha (or was until Mr Cos thought he'd make it with lapsang souchong tea - this WAS DISGUSTING) and I think it's ruined the scoby tbh cos everything still tastes smokey and burnt. I have tried to make kefir a bunch of times now but just can't get on with it even though I love surpermarket kefir.

I'm mainly interested in fermented veggies, I'm not bothered by soy sauce or anything that takes 6 months to make.

[Mountain Goat]

A fermenting cellar! That's both exciting and quite crazy.

I still have miso fermenting in the garden. I've not looked at it for a while, I'm scared of it. By now it'll either be amazing or disgusting, and I'd lay money on the latter.

The leftover starter is winning me over at this very early stage I must say. My crackers are out the oven and cooled now and pretty good, though not noticeably better than normal ones - except for being very quick/easy and made entirely of waste products. I feel like everything I make with discard is worth experimenting with as it's no loss if it goes wrong.

[emma_p]

I love the idea of the rosemary crackers - Liv loves the from WF and making them from waste products is brilliant.

I met Chad from Tartine on the opening day of Tartine Manufactory which we happened to stumble on in SF - he really knows what he's doing with bread

I am going to start a starter as soon as we move

[Mountain Goat]

These were so easy - just whisk in some olive oil to the discard so it's nice and glossy and properly mixed, add some salt and rosemary, pour onto a parchment lined baking tray and smooth it down so it's fine and even, sprinkle some more rosemary and salt flakes on the top, and bang in a 160 C oven for 45 to 60 minutes. If you want you can take it out after about 30 minutes and score neat lines, but you can also just break it into pieces when it's cooled. (I scored lines but some didn't quite work and I prefer the look of the ones that are rougher to the perfect squares so I wouldn't bother another time, unless they were for putting canapes on or something). To me that's a why-wouldn't-you recipe: no cost, no effort.

When do you move?

[emma_p]

25 Feb - I can't wait. I've been living with minimal kitchen stuff since Feb 2018!! My knives, banetton, dough scraper

I want to know about miso in the garden!

[Mountain Goat]

God, I bet you can't wait. All the things you'll be able to do again!

The miso is a several-years ferment (why did I do this?) and you have to stir it from time to time. Last time I stirred it, it smelt awful, and although I've read that it's supposed to do that, I'm not convinced (I mean, there's awful and there's awful and this was AWFUL) and now I'm too scared to look at it. I'll need to check it again in spring and I don't want to.

[Cosmopolitan]

These were so easy - just whisk in some olive oil to the discard so it's nice and glossy and properly mixed, add some salt and rosemary, pour onto a parchment lined baking tray and smooth it down so it's fine and even, sprinkle some more rosemary and salt flakes on the top, and bang in a 160 C oven for 45 to 60 minutes. If you want you can take it out after about 30 minutes and score neat lines, but you can also just break it into pieces when it's cooled. (I scored lines but some didn't quite work and I prefer the look of the ones that are rougher to the perfect squares so I wouldn't bother another time, unless they were for putting canapes on or something). To me that's a why-wouldn't-you recipe: no cost, no effort.

Mr Cos made these this morning and they are lovely! Perfect cheese biscuits / hummus scoopers. Yum!

[Mountain Goat]

Oh excellent! I made a second batch on Thursday, they're so easy that it seemed rude not to. I had a go at crumpets with yesterday's though that really didn't work, but I just made it up as I went along which is probably why. I'll try again with a bit more rigour.

Today my starter has really perked up, vigorous rising and lots of big bubbles throughout, so I'll try a loaf tomorrow and then probably keep it in the fridge rather than feeding daily. It had looked a bit limp yesterday so I'm relieved.

[purple_dress]

I need to get back into it and it's one of my new year resolutions. The crackers sound great.

This is another good recipe for the discard: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/blueberry- ... gh-scones/