Starting sourdough with NW Ale yeast and natural lacto

[Owly055]

I'm currently working on getting a sourdough culture started using NW Ale yeast, whole wheat flour, and about a T of malted barley to innoculate it with lacto. I also put in half a dozen drops of AG300 to break down starches. I'm feeding the culture every day, and hoping to kick the lacto to life. I'm wondering if I should have just used the malted grain, and added no yeast, allowing wild yeasts to gain a foothold.... assuming they are present.

This is just a wild assed experiment to see what happens.

I'm also thinking about how to use some Chinese yeast balls. Perhaps crushing some unmalted wheat, and soaking it at gelatinization temps for a day or two, then draining and innoculating with Chinese yeast balls, letting the process go for awhile, then using it in baking bread.

Anybody here play with crystal wheat or crystal rye malts in bread, crushing, grinding, and/or soaking them? Or make four out of malted wheat? We have all kinds of interesting brewing products that have potential in baking. I've used DME numerous times, and thought about making a mini mash with malted wheat, then making bread instead of beer.......

H.W.

 

[stpug]

That's an unusual route to get to the end product (i.e. a sourdough starter), but sometimes the road less traveled is just more interesting. Have fun with it and keep us posted on how it works out.

I have both a rye and white sourdough starter going; started using different methods (one more complex than the other). The rye starter was the simple, straight-forward: rye, water (halve, repeat) method. It produced a fully leavened bread on day 9 using only the yeast and bacteria that came from the stone ground rye and air.

I use very scant amounts of base malt in my breads, and even at such low additions, it's presence is obvious and noticeable. I've been thinking of how or why I might include other malts into bread baking (amber, victory, chocolate were a couple that crossed my mind), and crystal could be an interesting addition.

Fun stuff!

 

[Owly055]

That's an unusual route to get to the end product (i.e. a sourdough starter), but sometimes the road less traveled is just more interesting. Have fun with it and keep us posted on how it works out.

I have both a rye and white sourdough starter going; started using different methods (one more complex than the other). The rye starter was the simple, straight-forward: rye, water (halve, repeat) method. It produced a fully leavened bread on day 9 using only the yeast and bacteria that came from the stone ground rye and air.

I use very scant amounts of base malt in my breads, and even at such low additions, it's presence is obvious and noticeable. I've been thinking of how or why I might include other malts into bread baking (amber, victory, chocolate were a couple that crossed my mind), and crystal could be an interesting addition.

Fun stuff!

I mention wheat and rye crystal of course because they do not have a husk. I'm curious what effects you observe from using base malts in bread......... also weather it is crushed or ground to flour.


H.W.

 

[stpug]

I mention wheat and rye crystal of course because they do not have a husk. I'm curious what effects you observe from using base malts in bread......... also weather it is crushed or ground to flour.


H.W.

What I experience when using the barley malt in bread is a distinct malt-like character in the bread. It's presence is fairly light but it is most certainly there. I baked two batches, same recipe and process, with one containing the malt flour and the other did not. The one that did not have the malt flour came out very much like a traditional home-baked sourdough bread, which just means is was on the lighter side of the "sour" spectrum but still very present. The loaves that had the malt flour had a more hearty and bready quality to them, and their sourness was lighter; they did not resemble that traditional sourdough bread character. This is what I could tell myself.

Now, it's said that including a small amount diastatic malt flour (i.e. base malt flour) will preserve it's enzymes and therefore the enzymatic actions that can take place. I don't know the science behind how these enzymes might play a role in bread baking well enough to comment too much on it, but from what I've gathered there is definitely some additional actions taking place in the bread.

It should be noted that many all purpose flours already include a scant amount of malt flour in their production and packaging, and it's usually noted on the bag itself. However, the primary flour I've been using up to this point does not have any included so tasting the difference was pretty noticeable.

As for using a husked grain (like barley malt): When it's boiled down to the comparison of how much malt flour to wheat flour, it would be something on the order of 2 teaspoons malt flour to 7-8 cups of wheat flour (e.g. 4-5 grams of malt flour to 900 grams regular flour). Already you can see that the husk would be negligible. Additionally, I mill it along with other grains (rye, spelt, wheat, etc) into flour so that husk material is pulverized into minutes-sized grains of husk that are then hydrated/softened in water and baked into a wonderful crumb.

I imagine that if I were to include character malts like crystals, toasted, roasted malts in loaves of bread that the percentage would probably go up compared to the base malt flours I've been using, but I still would not concern myself with the husk since I am able to mill it into flour. I also can't imagine the percentage being too terribly high as compared to the wheat flour that would form the base of the bread. There is certainly nothing wrong or prohibitive in using huskless malts either - just a different character that would be imparted, IMO.

 

[stpug]

Here's a shot of today's fruit and nut loaves that utilize my starters:

View attachment uploadfromtaptalk1456688619989.jpg

 

[Owly055]

Here's a shot of today's fruit and nut loaves that utilize my starters:

View attachment 340568

Very pretty............ makes my mouth water!!

I don't have a flour mill, only my BC (barley crusher). Today I crushed about 1/2 pound of malted wheat, and added it to my starter along with some white flour, with idea of innoculating the starter with a bit more lacto to "jump start it". I don't plan on feeding it for 3 or 4 days now. My real objective is to achieve a lot of lacto action as compared to the yeast action. The best sourdough I ever made was a starter I made from ordinary bread yeast, and was using for waffles, which I set aside and forgot for about 4 months in the fridge. I was snowed in for 21 days in the high mountains that spring, and ran out of many things. I missed bread, so I set out to make home made bread from the starter, which was the only "yeast" I had. The loaves took 24 hours to rise, but the result was beautiful tart tangy real sourdough, like I have never been able to reproduce since. The key, I think was the fact that the yeast was nearly dead, giving the lacto plenty of time to act before the bread was ready to bake.


H.W.

 

[stpug]

I think you could use a coffee mill, or possibly blender, to grind up some barley malt to a flour-like consistency because it's such a soft and friable grain, if you're interested.

I maintain pretty small starters and build up when I'm getting ready to bake. Each starter is held at 50g. They are fed every 12 hours (I plan on adjusting to 24 hours soon) on a 1:2:2 schedule (starter:water:flour) which makes them 100% hydration (technically a "liquid" starter but they certainly aren't runny by any means). Even though I did not set out to maintain two different starters, I have found that each has it's own unique characteristics. The rye is like a full-fledged sourdough starter and produces loaves you would associate with the term "sourdough" while the white starter kind of minimizes those characteristics so I am able to produce other baked good/loaves that don't emphasize the "sour" component (breads like foccacia, fougasse, fruit bread, pancakes, etc.). I guess I'll keep both around until I tire of them or neglect them so badly that I have to start fresh again.

There are many ways people coax more sour out of their bread, but probably the single-best method is time (which it sounds like you ended up giving to the loaf in the mountains). The more time you give the dough to ferment and/or retard, generally, the more sour you can get out of the bread. Granted, the microbial population needs to be somewhat kept in check during this time because if they progress too quickly then you can loose the structural elasticity of your gluten and end up with a flat loaf the spreads rather than rises (I've done this a time or two).

For my "daily loaf" I prefer a bread with light sour character so aim to produce that from the process I use. In order to get this I generally use a large-ish levain, short-ish bulk ferment, short-medium and fairly cool retard, and about 20% whole grains. This produces the type of loaves we like to have around as an everyday bread. I've only recently started using the barley malt flour and it makes for a different (perhaps better) tasting loaf, but you certainly can't substitute one loaf for the other because they are distinctly different.

Cheers! I look forward to hearing how the loaves work out that you end up baking. Keep us posted.