I still have no idea what sour dough actually is.
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Replying to @generativist
wild yeast, basically. with some lactobacillus mixed in (as others have said). you feed it with your bread.
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Replying to @kleinschmidt @generativist
wild yeast is everywhere: in your flour, skins of fruit, on ur skin, etc. Feed it with some flour and water in a warm place, and the kinds that like to eat flour multiply. they make alcohol and CO2 when they eat the starches
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Replying to @kleinschmidt @generativist
because they make alcohol, it keeps most other things from growing. the exception is lactobacillus and some other kinds of bacteria which for whatever reason can tolerate slightly alcoholic environments
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Replying to @kleinschmidt @generativist
luckily the yeasts can usually also tolerate the acidity that these bacteria create when THEY eat, which most other things cannot. so you get a nice, stable, symbiotic culture that stays pretty pure just with regular feeding
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Replying to @kleinschmidt @generativist
...you can use this to leaven bread, just like commercial bakers yeast. only difference is that your sourdough culture yeasts have not been aggressively bred over many many years to ferment starches in flour as quickly as possible, so it takes longer to rise/proof
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Replying to @kleinschmidt @generativist
...but the wild yeasts and bacteria produce all kinds of other interesting flavors, AND the longer fermentation that's necessary to build the strength and structure of the dough yields a more complex flavor, too
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Replying to @kleinschmidt @generativist
(you can get a reasonable approximation of this even with bakers yeast, just by inoculating your dough with a very small quantity and rising in the fridge overnight, or using a poolish/biga method)
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Ok now I do want to make some
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Replying to @kleinschmidt
Thanks! Also good to see you back? Weren’t you gone for a while or was that just algorithmic drift
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