Stitch It Up

I considered putting active dry yeast in the new flour, because other people have done that, but I thought to myself, I don't want too much leavening. My starter should have enough in it, especially if I'm going to let it rise for a long period. I didn't want the dry active yeast making it take off and ferment too fast and then not be any good by the time I was ready to bake. I wasn't sure my starter culture wouldn't speed through the new flour and do the same anyway. So I left out the dry active. I did as that guy The Bread Code said on YouTube and put a small portion of dough in a small jar with the rubber band to mark the level and then I could easily see when the dough was double.

I slept, I had that dream - that started off so bad, but ended good. Then when I got up and looked, my dough was doubled. I said out loud, "Wow!" The belated Christmas morning had come, and I had gotten what I wanted. It felt so good to see that, after having that dream. It made me feel like everything will be all right. (Also my first starter was doubled in its original, main jar, which means it is fully mature and active now. So I'll be baking again soon. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

I tried to shape it into a loaf, but it was still quite sticky, so I just folded it a few times and dumped it in the loaf pan and covered it. It rose, but even though it did, it still looked small because it was actually too small for the pan. Next time, I will make a larger loaf. I didn't want to waste a lot of flour on something I wasn't sure would work. But, after letting it rest again for two hours I baked it. I think I baked it 20-30 minutes with foil over the top, then about 10 with the foil off. (I set the timer on my phone several times but got distracted in-between, so I'm not sure.) I took it out; I let it cool. I cut into it. It was beautiful.

I struggle not to let myself be pulled into the nihilistic materialism of this world, but sometimes I get a reminder that my life is one of symbolism and meaning. I am not here because of cosmic happenstance.

I gave both starters whole wheat flour today to see how they like that. My second one was started with all-purpose, then I remembered that the Internet said it's hard to start them with bleached flour because the bleaching kills microbes that unbleached and whole wheat flours have. And the microbes on the flour is the start of their culture.

I put the first starter in the garage to stay cool, and left the first one on the kitchen counter.

The Internet said that this indicated that the starter was hungry, so I gave it another spoonful of flour, this time, all-purpose. Twelve hours later, same thing, Huge rise. Very sharp aged cheese smell.

Further research indicated that very young starters go through a phase like this when they are still getting their bearings. The bacteria flourishes first, all kinds of bacteria, then the Lactobacillus makes enough lactic acid to kill off other bacteria. Then the yeast swoop in and start to colonize the starter. Acidic environment encourages yeast, basic environment encourages bacteria.

I also looked up: I accidentally put self-raising flour in my sourdough starter. Someone on Reddit said it would lower the pH.

I remembered a couple of years ago watching some YouTube videos and reading the Wikipedia article about salt-rising bread, where Appalachian people and pioneers would make a starter with bacteria instead of yeast. So I looked it up again. The main difference is that they would keep the starter somewhere warm, like in a box on the wood stove. As opposed to keeping sourdough starter somewhere cool.

A characteristic of the salt-rising starter is that it balloons quickly, within hours rather than days.

The YouTube cooks, as well as the websites that I read, (which the YouTubers obviously also read, because it was all the same story,) said that commercial yeast wasn't available, so old country people had to invent this new starter to leaven their bread. Well, I don't buy this because they had exactly the same access to wild yeast that people always had. So there was some other reason to invent this bacterial starter.

And I figure that reason was that they needed to bake but didn't have a week to wait on sourdough starter to mature, so they thought, "If I put the dough in a warm place it rises faster, so maybe if I put the starter in a warm place it will rise faster." And it did. It wasn't the same, but it worked.

I found an article where a contemporary baker of salt-rising bread described the smell of the starter as sharp aged cheese, and said that it can be very off-putting to some people.

One YouTube cook mentioned her family member putting baking soda in the salt-rising starter.

So I figure I accidentally started out with salt-rising starter. The self-raising flour did chemically what the elevated temperature does. When it was quadrupled and beautiful, I could have used it as leavening.

1 tablespoon / active dry yeast 1 cup / warm water 1/4 cup / sugar (divided) 1/8 cup / olive oil 1 teaspoon / salt 2+ cups / all purpose flour (divided) melted butter

Stir yeast and half of the sugar (1/8 cup) into the warm water and let it rest 5-10 minutes until bubbly.

Add yeast mixture, olive oil, salt, and the remaining sugar to about half of the flour (1 cup) and mix until evenly wet. Add 1/2 cup of flour at a time and mix until 2 cups of flour total are incorporated in the dough. Add a little more flour if it's too wet. Continue to mix until the dough stops sticking to the bowl.

Turn the dough into a greased bowl. Spin it over so the top and bottom are both coated. Cover with a cloth and let it rest for 1 to 2 hours, interrupting it twice to fold it several times.

Without punching it down, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide it into 16 sections. Form each section into a ball, pinching the dough together on the bottom, and arrange on a greased cookie sheet.