I spy with my little eye, something beginning with rye...
Following a conversation with a Finn a couple of weeks ago on the nature of Real Bread™ and how all we seem to have in the UK is Tesco Value Bread-Like Product™ I decided to take up the gauntlet and see if I could make sourdough rye bread (the afore-mentioned Real Bread™). So after some reading up on the art and science of sourdough I bought myself some rye flour and set to work making sourdough starter.
For those who don't know, sourdough starter is a frothy gloopy mess riddled with germs and fungus that is necessary to make sourdough. One would ideally prefer it if the fungus were some kind of natural yeast (which is present in all flour, and moreso in rye than in wheat), and the germs an assortment of strains of acidophile bacterium that are symbiotic with the yeast, rather than, for example, Clostridium botulinum. The recipe for this biological-weapon precursor is as follows:
Ingredients
two tablespoons flour.
two tablespoons water.
Method
Place ingredients in a wide-mouthed frog jar. Stir. Cover loosely. Leave at room temperature for two days, feeding with another spoonful of flour and water once per day. When it starts to go frothy or bubbly, smell it: if it smells yeasty and a bit sour put it in the fridge and feed once per week; if it smells mouldy and a bit rotten, put it in the bin and start again.
In the end I got something that smells a bit beery, so decided to risk it. Incidentally, the aroma of this glutinous goo caused one hundred thousand years of human social development to crystalise before my very eyes. It goes like this:
1. You're bored: crush some grass seeds between two heavy stones to see what happens.
2. You get some off-white powder that doesn't taste very nice. And it's started to rain.
3. Go back to your cave and do something more interesting.
4. Remember the soggy stuff you left under a rock a couple of days ago.
5. Go back to check.
Congratulations! You've invented bread-making and brewing, and in doing so have laid the corner-stones of modern western society.
Anyway, enough of my forays into social anthropology: back to bread-making. With the addition of a bunch more rye flour and water (plus a dash of olive oil) I have a big lump of sticky, brown, rather umm... "robust" dough. That needs to sit around for another day or so while the yeast causes it to rise (the yeast in the starter is wussy natural yeast, and not the Arnold Schwartzenegger yeast you use for more mainstream baking duties) and the bacteria hopefully break some of that weapons-grade roughage down into something digestible by more of the animal kingdom than just cows, imparting the distinctive sour taste in the process.
I will let you know how things proceed (provided I don't die from eating the first slice!). ;)
For those who don't know, sourdough starter is a frothy gloopy mess riddled with germs and fungus that is necessary to make sourdough. One would ideally prefer it if the fungus were some kind of natural yeast (which is present in all flour, and moreso in rye than in wheat), and the germs an assortment of strains of acidophile bacterium that are symbiotic with the yeast, rather than, for example, Clostridium botulinum. The recipe for this biological-weapon precursor is as follows:
Ingredients
two tablespoons flour.
two tablespoons water.
Method
Place ingredients in a wide-mouthed frog jar. Stir. Cover loosely. Leave at room temperature for two days, feeding with another spoonful of flour and water once per day. When it starts to go frothy or bubbly, smell it: if it smells yeasty and a bit sour put it in the fridge and feed once per week; if it smells mouldy and a bit rotten, put it in the bin and start again.
In the end I got something that smells a bit beery, so decided to risk it. Incidentally, the aroma of this glutinous goo caused one hundred thousand years of human social development to crystalise before my very eyes. It goes like this:
1. You're bored: crush some grass seeds between two heavy stones to see what happens.
2. You get some off-white powder that doesn't taste very nice. And it's started to rain.
3. Go back to your cave and do something more interesting.
4. Remember the soggy stuff you left under a rock a couple of days ago.
5. Go back to check.
Congratulations! You've invented bread-making and brewing, and in doing so have laid the corner-stones of modern western society.
Anyway, enough of my forays into social anthropology: back to bread-making. With the addition of a bunch more rye flour and water (plus a dash of olive oil) I have a big lump of sticky, brown, rather umm... "robust" dough. That needs to sit around for another day or so while the yeast causes it to rise (the yeast in the starter is wussy natural yeast, and not the Arnold Schwartzenegger yeast you use for more mainstream baking duties) and the bacteria hopefully break some of that weapons-grade roughage down into something digestible by more of the animal kingdom than just cows, imparting the distinctive sour taste in the process.
I will let you know how things proceed (provided I don't die from eating the first slice!). ;)