sourdough versus cool rise leaven

[EarthyMamaofDaisy]

Okay, so I'm eating local meat and eggs and raw dairy products. My next step is to start making homemade TF bread. I've tried making things that have been soaked and sprouted first, but they come out disastrous. So I though it would be eaiser to make sourdough bread. I don't keep my house overly warm, and the one time I tried to make the sourdough starter recipe in Wild Fermentation, I couldn't keep it going. So I noticed GEM cultures has a cool rise leaven that's stored in the fridge. But I wasn't sure if it had the same phytic acid eliminating power that sourdough starter contains. Any thoughts?

[kl5]

I am wondering the same thing lately, especially in light of this article from this month's Mother Earth News: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-...tes-A-Day.aspx. Basically, the idea is you mix up enough dough for four or eight one pound loaves (one or two weeks of bread) and put it in the fridge. When you are ready to bake, cut off one pound of dough, gently form it into a loaf, let it rest at room temperature for half an hour to an hour, then bake at a high temperature. No kneading at any point in the process. The loaves in the pictures look amazing.

The dough is started with yeast, not a starter. But the article claims you can leave some of the old dough in to mix with the new batch, and it will develop sour flavor.

So, how does this work out nutritionally? Similar to sourdough with a shorter soak?

[Brookesmom]

I have a real sourdough starter that I got from King Arthur flour a few weeks ago. It's stored in the fridge and the bread tastes awesome - no commercial yeast involved. The refrigerator just slow things down so it doesn't have to be fed every day.

[Magelet]

I'm pretty sure that by a day or two in, the "bake it for the week" method would be nutritionally similar to sourdough, because I always thought that part of the reason sourdough was good was because the flour is in a moist, bacteria and yeasty environment for a while, so they break down the phytic acid that way. So I suppose, minus the intentional cultivation of good bacteria, the "bake it for the week" method is similar.

I imagine the GEM culture is just a type of sourdough starter with yeasts that do particularly well in cold, and just work slowly instead of going somewhat dormant, however, there is controversy about whether the strains of yeast will remain the ones that were there when you bought the starter, or gradually be replaced with the ones in your local climate. any starter should be refridgeratable, but I found that it takes my starter about 3 days to recover enough to start a build for bread making, so for baking weekly, it doesn't work to refrigerate it.

I know there is a longstanding tradition of baking once a week, and many people find that sourdough actually tastes better after a few days. Traditional sourdough or levain (the french term for wild yeasted bread, usually not particularly sour tasting) from certain areas of France was baked in large several pound loaves, to last the week. I imagine it must have been somewhat stale at the end, but I find that before the crust is cut, the loafs have excellent keeping power, and other than a dry bit on the cut edge, best for croutons, even cut will stay good for 2-3 days.

So if you can get a starter to work well quickly after refrigeration, that might be an option.

If you want to try the wild fermentation or other homemade starter again, and want some help troubleshooting, feel free to let me know. It sometimes takes a few tries and some meddling to get it to work, both in terms of any rising power, and in terms of working for your life.

Good luck making bread which feeds and sustains you and your family's body and soul.

[kl5]

Thanks Magelet, that is really interesting. We do have a sourdough starter that we keep limping along, I am just not an experienced enough baker to know whether or how I could substitute for the yeast in the recipe above. As for the intentional cultivation of good bacteria, I understand the concept, but not how it affects the end, baked product. Flavor?