bluezebra's blog

Hi Bill,

 The results were not great! LOL, I forgot the salt. And my mind is having trouble focusing right now due to health. I flipped the amount of flour and water so had to try to fly by the seat of my pant and increase the flour. I knew I had more than enough of the preferment and more than enough starter was added. I made batards and they eat ok enough but I prefer your true pagnotta recipe.

Will write more later.

METHOD: The purpose of this test on the sourdough starter is to test how long he takes to rise in a 60% hydration, lean dough.

Time 3:00pm

75.7 degrees F

31.5 and rising barometric pressure

2 oz General Chaos Starter

4 oz AP Walmart Brand Flour

2.25oz Filtered Water (Pur)

3/8 tsp Iodized Salt

Mixed all ingredients together for about 2 minutes until dough formed that pulled away from sides of dough but still stuck to bottom.

Transferred to a large glass measuring cup and covered with plastic wrap and a saucer.

Well Bill and Katie, apparently all that General Chaos aka Sir Stinksalot needed was to be threatened with the arrival of a new kid on the block, "Flat Stanley" (from Katie's parchment experiments)! I used Bill's 1:4:4 for yesterday morning and yesterday night feeds. Each time the little guy doubled in a little under 8 hours!!!! Yippee!!!

So last night I really wanted to drill down on the proper amount of feeding for him every 12 hours (for now) and I tested 3 different formulations and the temp was 75.7 degrees yesterday and last night in the kitchen, with the following results:

COMMENTARY: I made Katie's English Muffins this morning after starting the dough last night and letting it sit out over night. I mixed up the rest of the ingredients this morning and cut them and let them rise then used my cast iron skillet (too lazy to get the cast iron griddle out). I made 3 at a time and it was pretty easy. Woulda been faster with the griddle since it straddles two burners.

COMMENTARY: Well I bit the bullet on Day 10 and decided that doubling or no, I would use the leftover starter from General Chaos' morning feeding or die trying! I also had been having a serious case of Sourdough Envy due mainly from Tattoed Tonkas conquest of the Apple Bacon Onion Sourdough Bread and also Katie's very successful sourdough accomplishments.

So I decided to start a baking blog for this BlueZebra to keep track of my baking progress. Hopefully, some of the pros will stop in and offer their helpful suggestions and I will then have it compiled onto my site.

I am also going to ask Bill if he minds if I copy/paste his starter information to my blog so that I will also have it at the ready.