mikedilger's blog

I decided a few days ago to bake dmsnyder's SF Sourdough loaf take 4, which was marked "the best version" on his list of recipes.

I followed his recipe exactly.  Except that I had to make a few changes.  And I made a few more changes because they just made sense to me.

Firstly, I mixed by hand.  I don't have a machine.

Second, instead of whole wheat flour, I substituted whole rye flour.  This, I think, at least doubled the sourness factor.

In order to learn how to write WebAssembly (wasm) code in the rust language (eyes glaze over... yeah, it wasn't an important detail) I've built a simple sourdough calculator:

https://mikedilger.com/bread.html

There is plenty of scope for improvement.

I tried Mike Giraudo's recipe, posted by dmsnyder.  It was as follows

• 250g starter (60% hydration)
• 600g water
• 1000g flour
• 20g salt

Makes two 875g loafs

 Mix all ingredients 2 minutes on low speed until mixed, then mix 9 more minutes on next level speed. Then a quick stretch and fold, rest dough 30 mins, then stretch and fold one more time. 

 Then cover and let dough rest for about 8 hours at room temp. 

It has just become clear to me that extraction rates of flour are not always comparable.

When someone says that straight flour (white flour, AP flour, whatever) is about 72% extraction, that means 72% of the whole grain was kept as flour.  28% was tossed out as animal feed, including the bran, germ, and some wasted endosperm.

I made this seeded multigrain a few days back.  I consider it a success but I would make changes next time.   It was light and soft (short from the oil) but not at all sour, and I'm not sure the tiny hard seeds are even digestible. Next time I might sprout and/or grind the seeds first, and use less oil (it was too shortened).

Preferment:

Bread these days is much maligned.  The Paleo diet people think grains were a mistake.  The low-carb people think carbohydrates are the root of all evil.  And the gluten scare mongers imagine they all have celiac disease.  Even mainstream dietitians warn of the high glycemic index of bread.  What is a baker to do?

Many of these folks can't be convinced otherwise. They've accepted their beliefs about grains, carbs, or gluten in a kind of religious shared-delusional way that is impossible to argue against because it's not logical.

The French typically use 10-17% rye flour and T80 flour for the rest.

Here in New Zealand I have limited choices.  But I have a flour mill.  So I've been making a flour close to T110 as follows:

There is a graph going around which compares the growth of yeast to LAB across the temperature range.  The yeast being compared is C. milleri.  What disturbs me about this graph is that people interpret it as being the only yeast relevant to their sourdough.  It's not.

I was six when the Larraburu Brothers Bakery shut down. I don't recall what the bread tasted like, and I'm not even sure I ever had any. But I'm fascinated by the history and how widespread and adored this bread was. The number of loaves, the loaves shipping around the world, even to France, indicates that it wasn't just a small group of aficionados that were keen on this bread.

I grew up on Colombo rolls and sliced bread, Oroweat rye, and 'artificial' sourdough baguettes from Safeway.  And I always had a Boudin bread bowl with clam chowder whenever I visited San Francisco.