gluten free sourdough starter notes; day 3

Something silly about me is that the idea of fermentation really freaks me out because I am terrified of alive bacteria and mold and fungi, which my brain lumps together for some reason. Terrified. I cannot deal with mushrooms, for example, unless I’m hiking and see them in the woods. This fear doesn’t make any sense but I still have it. Like, I learned about the bacteria in yogurt and did not eat it for 4 years. I still have to actively block out my knowledge of cheese and yogurt. I was only recently able to start eating pickles. Blue cheese, Sauerkraut, and Kimchi all freak me out. This is silly and I am actively trying to get over it. It took me a while to become alright with the idea of making sourdough due to this, but the allure of being able to cheaply make my own bread instead of paying a ton of money for gf bread from the farmer’s market or store was so powerful I decided to try and over come my fear (prompting friends and my partner to be like omg so proud of you--that’s how bad my phobia is). My rough understanding of sourdough is that it is not like cheese, it is different because yeasts are feeding on the flour rather than the flour molding (???). If I am wrong please do not tell me! So I have been reading about sourdough for a fuller understanding, esp. about different yeasts types.

This brief article suggests that the diversity of sourdough microbial communities cannot be explained by location--and here’s another article talking about how microbial communities in sourdough are also on bakers’ skin biodome. But both articles are talking about gluten flours (wheat, rye, etc). I was wondering if there are specific yeasts attracted to rice flour, but this Serious Eats article suggests that the flour doesn’t matter as long as it converts into the right kind of sugar for microbial production. However this Scientific American article says a lot of yeasts come from the flours itself and the flour determines the flavor, I guess because of the yeasts and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) attracted to the flour/attached to it?? Hm! If this works out maybe I will also try a sorghum flour starter.

The Serious Eats article says that the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in sourdough are also at work in pickles and sauerkraut and kimchi! so I need to get over myself!! 😭

I started my gf sourdough starter, Jonathan, 3 days ago. A baker once told me to bring my mix of flour and water outside and walk through a field to attract wild yeasts so I took my starter out into the yard and took a lap around. I’m using brown rice flour based on this recipe. I also have been tying a dishtowel over the quart jar I’m using instead of using the lid. I am storing it on the top of the fridge for temperature reasons.

I was a little concerned about the starter working because I chose to use tap water and the recipe advises to not do this b/c most tap water has chlorine, which impedes the growth of the starter. However my city has some of the best tap water in the world, so I ignored this. It’s working out quite well. I’ve been feeding Jonathan 50 g of brown rice flour & 50 g of water twice a day. By last night there was some sort of liquid on top--it is possible this was hooch? The recipe says hooch forms when the starter is “hungry” so I am wondering if 50 g of flour is not enough. I hope to start switching to 100% hydration feedings (1:1:1 ratio of starter/flour/water) soon.

By this morning at 7:30 the starter had almost tripled in size and was light and springy with a lot of bubbles. The recipe advises to start discarding today. There’s still some bad bacteria in the mix since it’s only 3 days old so I can’t use the discard for anything yet. It definitely smelled sour.

I am going to try to make sourdough with this recipe. I will start with the suggested flour mix and boule shape. I am fascinated by the idea of using psyllium husk as a binder/gluten replacement. I haven’t used it before; these days I mainly use flax egg as an egg replacement. My research suggests psyllium husk is very popular with the gf sourdough community right now. Since it’s a literal husk (the recipes I’ve consulted do not advise using psyllium husk powder) I’m a little concerned about how it will mix in with the bread. I’m hoping I can start experimenting with the bread itself after I’ve had the starter for about 2 weeks.

#sourdough diaries #i wrote out the instructions and recipes in my admin journal so I don't constantly have to refer to these recipe webpages #bc the recipe essays are like 2000 words long #anyway i'm lucky i live in an old house i think #I am SO sorry this is so long idk how to do a cut anymore #long post tag #bread #food tw #baking #edit the other nice thing about sourdough is that it is baked at like 500 degrees so the fermentation aspect is not as scary to me #blue cheese is not cooked (to me knowledge) and thus terrifies and confounds me daily

marnz reblogged

dearorpheus

funeral

“In Atwood’s world, fresh bread smells of decaying corpses, of yellowed bones and broken teeth, of moss and maggots. The morbid and almost aggressive imagery in her poem shocks the reader and brings to the foreground the importance of death to the survival of the living. The decaying bodies of the dead are among some of the most important ingredients when it comes to enabling the earth to grow food.”

— Avant-Gardian Musings: All Bread

#i love this actually #margaret atwood #poetry #lit #bread #high priestess of death #queue it

marnz reblogged

jamwingles

memecucker

Invention of bread is weird bc it’s like some Neolithic ppl were like “hey you know that tall grass thing that’s sorta edible but not really how about we take it and grind it into a very very fine powder which is extra backbreaking right now bc the wheel won’t be invented for awhile and then we mix it with water and heat it up and you know what let’s also toss some mold in there just to see what happens”

quoms

there are a number of distinct steps though, each of which can be observed in isolation. “grind tough seeds to make them edible” is practiced with other foods besides grains (like acorns). the natural next step after that is to add water, which gives you porridge: a common ancient roman meal was puls, very similar to modern cream of wheat. once you have that you also have a simple dough, and baking it to preserve it is a logical experiment (as is baking some you forgot about and left out for a few days, just so you don’t waste it... voila, leavened bread)

there could have been, and probably was (though i’m not an archaeologist) a substantial time between each of these innovations. it’s not too hard to imagine people being chill with “grind seeds for soup, select plants for bigger seeds” for a good while

quasi-normalcy

Do you ever wonder how many amazing things are fated to go forever uninvented because each step necessary to invent them is a completely unintuitive thing to do?

noctumsolis

Okay, that's not how bread was invented. I wrote a potted history, I could try to dig that out if anyone is interested?

quasi-normalcy

Please do

panecultus

I'm putting this on my bread blog, because of course I am. Also tagging @appendingfic who I think expressed interest.

Tens of thousands of years ago people foraged and hunted for their food and ate whatever they could. Among their forage were wild cereals, which included the ancestors of modern cultivated wheat, barley and others.

People like sweet things. Grains are starchy, but if sprouted they start converting those starches to sugars, so people would've left grains in water to sprout. These sprouts are also easier to digest, thus more nutritious, which bestowed an invisible advantage on those sprouting their grains.

If grains are left in water too long, however, they begin to ferment. Alcohol is produced. People like alcohol.

In ancient Mesopotamia the fermented grains were experimented with, resulting in an early form of beer. The process of making that beer was quite complicated and involved a combination of sprouted and mashed grains.

People wanted beer all year round, but early beers did not have long shelf lives and the grain could only be harvested at certain times. So the ancient Mesopotamians invented a way of storing the ingredients for beer.

It was made of the grain mash, honey, dates and spices that were fermented to make beer. For storage, prior to fermentation, the mixture was baked dry, cut into smaller pieces and baked again to remove all water. This produced bapir, a product very much like biscotti, which could be stored for later rehydration and fermentation. Sometimes it was eaten instead.

I've made bapir, and I've eaten it. It is brittle but delicious. It's also a form of unleavened bread.

Bread was invented as a way to store the ingredients for beer, which was most likely a development from a chance discovery. Leavened bread (that is, with bubbles) may well have been discovered when a mixture like that for bapir was accidentally allowed to ferment before baking. Yeast is responsible for both alcohol production and leavening.

There's a lot more to it, in terms of the cultivation of grains and the development of milling, than I've written here. It's been a process of millennia to go from chewing sprouts to eating soft white bread like that pictured. But every step along the way was small and simple.

quasi-normalcy

I never would have guessed that beer pre-existed bread. I've always just assumed that beer was an accidental discovery by breadmakers.

#I HAVE BEEN WONDERING THIS FOR YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#food tw #history #bread #WOW