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I bought two dried 100 year old cultures from a bakery in Italy.
The cultures come dried, you have to feed it with flour and water it to activate it.
One smells heavenly, it smells like an apple strudel fresh out of the oven. I can smell raisins and apples and wheat, and it's just lovely. The other smells like an apple strudel that someone ate and threw up with a hint of limburger cheese. But it's not rancid. I'm fascinated how just water and flour is producing this stuff. The more critters that get inside this stuff, the different smell and taste. It's really just amazing and the stuff that the best bread in the world is made of.
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Please post before and after photos.
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Well right now they're in the activating stage which is where you dump out 1⁄2 and feed the other half with flour and water. It takes about 8 hours from then where you start to see some bubbling foam action. They also take on a different smell depending on what kind of critters (organisms) have taken up shop. You can have anything from apples to dirty sweat socks. But you continue to feed every 12-24 hours and in the beginning it takes several hours to show any sign of life, but once it takes only an hour to show life after it's feeding it's fully activated and ready to go into your bread or pizza recipe with no added yeast. Your starter culture is what gives your pizza dough and bread dough character and flavor that you could never get from just a flour, water and yeast mix.
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I am surprised this isn't more popular.
It should be.
Sounds healthy and tasty.
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(06-18-2016, 07:52 PM)OnBendedKnee Wrote: I am surprised this isn't more popular.
It should be.
Sounds healthy and tasty.
It's absolutely fucking fascinating, OBK. And the way you can do your own starter is just mix half flour and half warm water in a quart canning jar and loosely cover it and sit it on your counter. .After 24 hours you dump half and feed it with equal parts water and flour until it looks like thick pancake batter. You continue to do this every 12-24 hours until it bubbles and has risen in the jar about two inches. At that point it's ready to go in your bread recipe in place of the yeast the recipe calls for. Then you feed it again and let it go dormant in the fridge until next time. In which case you take it out of the fridge, feed it and let it sit out for about 8 hours. After that it's ready for the next recipe.
The only thing about making your own culture at home and ordering one from a bakery that has been using it and feeding it for hundreds of years is that your home has lots of yeast in it, good and bad. Your culture might pick up a fine steak or it might pick up a dirty rat.
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(06-18-2016, 07:14 PM)sally Wrote: I bought two dried 100 year old cultures from a bakery in Italy.
The cultures come dried, you have to feed it with flour and water it to activate it.
One smells heavenly, it smells like an apple strudel fresh out of the oven. I can smell raisins and apples and wheat, and it's just lovely. The other smells like an apple strudel that someone ate and threw up with a hint of limburger cheese. But it's not rancid. I'm fascinated how just water and flour is producing this stuff. The more critters that get inside this stuff, the different smell and taste. It's really just amazing and the stuff that the best bread in the world is made of.
Um......did you run to Italy to get it or did you order it?
I wish this dried up ole' vulture would activate with just flour and water....
Is this stuff better than Rhodes dough.....I used this back when I cooked....I consider rolling out dough, cooking so don't use anymore unless I get dinner rolls and if I forget to let them rise, they come out a little funny looking........Carry on!
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No I did not go to fucking Italy to pick them up you goddamn crazy old whore. You order them from Sourdough International. It's a dormant starter from a bakery in Italy, that's the starter they've used for 100 years. Every good bread starts out with a starter, one that's been handed down for decades. I'm not talking the bread from the grocery store, I'm talking the bread you take a bite out of and thought you died and went to heaven.
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I hope she knows I was joking. I like her a lot and I would be happy to sit there and listen to all her crazy rants. She's been on this earth longer than me and I respect that even if she is a crazy old whore,
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There are bakeries in San Francisco that offer bread baked using the original starter yeast/culture (what have you) that is 80 years old.
I like the bread that is carved into a bowl and filled with clam chowder. I know it is a tacky touristy cliche, but dang- it is some good eat'in right there.
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(06-18-2016, 09:21 PM)OnBendedKnee Wrote: I like the bread that is carved into a bowl and filled with clam chowder. I know it is a tacky touristy cliche, but dang- it is some good eat'in right there.  .
Yeah well I'm not fucking around with this goddamn bread culture to make a fucking bowl to fill with chowder.
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Just not any chowder.
Clam chowder.
I'm not a heathen.
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Well I can tell you I'd love a fucking bowl of clam chowder in a sour dough loaf right about now. I'm fucking starving. But I look good. I do. My waist is all thin and my ass is all out th3re qnd I'm a 36/24/36. I had to do a lot to get there. But I'm there.4 weeks of not drinking, eating healthy and exercising. I got a body lie wonder women. I'll take a picture I'm not perfect but I thnk I'm in nice shape for a 40 year old woman with 3 kids,,
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(06-18-2016, 10:25 PM)sally Wrote: Well I can tell you I'd love a fucking bowl of clam chowder in a sour dough loaf right about now. I'm fucking starving. But I look good. I do. My waist is all thin and my ass is all out th3re qnd I'm a 36/24/36. I had to do a lot to get there. But I'm there.4 weeks of not drinking, eating healthy and exercising. I got a body lie wonder women. I'll take a picture I'm not perfect but I thnk I'm in nice shape for a 40 year old woman with 3 kids,,
Please post before and after photos.
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I thought that once you had a piece of that you could perpetuate it forever.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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(06-19-2016, 07:44 AM)Maggot Wrote: I thought that once you had a piece of that you could perpetuate it forever.
You can. I'd mail you a piece of it, but that would be really weird.
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That's OK I would probably just put it on a hook and try and fish with the thing anyways............I can't bake bread in fact I'm the only thing that's baked besides the frozen pizza on occasion.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother.
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