[HN Gopher] The Sourdough Framework
___________________________________________________________________
The Sourdough Framework
Author : hendricius
Score : 386 points
Date : 2023-05-16 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ww520 wrote:
| It's great that more and more software practices are bleeding
| into other walks of life.
| OJFord wrote:
| Glad to see this get some traction here, I submitted it myself a
| few months ago as it happens. I've been baking my ~weekly bread
| according to 'the bread code' for years, thank you!
|
| Interested to notice the standalone 'pizza-code' this time when I
| had another skim - I've been using the (third party contributed
| believe) pizza dough recipe in the bread code recently.
|
| (I still use it rather than this repo just because, in the case
| of bread, it's in my head; for pizza, it's easier to reference in
| the old repo structure/format on mobile, not being formatted for
| book.
| tomp wrote:
| Ah, the _Bread Code_ guy! Engineer + chef, definitely my type of
| person.
|
| I was recently following some of his YT videos, the invaluable
| tip that I got from him (and I haven't seen elsewhere) is to take
| a _sample_ of the dough and observe its rise, to know when the
| main dough is ready for baking.
|
| I just made a beautiful baguette yesterday using this tip!
| HanClinto wrote:
| We absolutely love this book. Thank you for your work on this! My
| wife has been a user of open-source projects for a long time, but
| this book was the first time that she made me sit down and teach
| her about pull requests, because she wanted to contribute back to
| this one.
|
| We love the idea of managing and distributing a book through
| source control like this. Brilliant execution, and fantastic
| content!
| hendricius wrote:
| Thank you very much! Also thanks a lot for opening up so many
| pull requests with amazing fixes!
| lysecret wrote:
| Damn, thats interesting. Are there more examples of open source
| books? Quite an interesting idea, especially for non fiction.
| junon wrote:
| I thought this was going to be yet another javascript frontend
| framework with yet another less than descriptive name, but lo and
| behold this is _actually_ about sourdough. Neat!
|
| EDIT: Appears the author has one for Pizza Dough[0]. Gotta try
| that one out as it's more applicable to me than sourdough.
|
| [0] https://github.com/hendricius/pizza-dough
| HeckFeck wrote:
| sourdough.js was initially appreciated for being an airy-light
| framework, but as it rose to a great height many security holes
| were spotted under the crust; it wasn't quite ready for the
| daily crunch of production.
|
| The dev team tried to butter over these concerns, but it wasn't
| enough. It was forgotten and the codebase is mostly stale now.
| majikandy wrote:
| Clever. Time to use Rusk. Oh no that's Rust isn't it.
| junon wrote:
| Devs too to long to cook up new features which left a sour
| taste in my mouth tbh.
| ericghildyal wrote:
| Don't worry, it looks to be on the rise, there will be more
| features baked in before you know it!
| chrislan815 wrote:
| lmao my thought exactly
| projektfu wrote:
| I was wondering the same thing, and if there was some way that
| you needed to hand bits of the framework to other people to
| enable them to use it.
| xipho wrote:
| The present work is a merger of that effort he claims.
| hendricius wrote:
| The current repo combines most of my experience from the past
| years into one single framework that you can use as basis for
| other recipes.
| Yeroc wrote:
| Is there any plan to introduce some simplifications to the
| processes using things like a bread machine to handle
| automating the rise and kneading of the bread doughs?
| soperj wrote:
| As someone who bakes bread and other doughy items weekly
| and has for over a decade, bread machines are more work
| than making by hand and make bread that sucks. If you use
| less yeast, and let it slow rise there's no kneeding
| involved and it tastes way better.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Sure. But with sourdough the dough needs to build gluten
| when mixed, hence the window-test. More gluten gives a
| stronger and airy loaf. You can do that by hands but it
| takes too much effort compared to a machine. Imo
| soperj wrote:
| I leave it on the counter overnight. I don't kneed it at
| all and end up with a nice airy loaf.
| jan_k_ wrote:
| You can make excellent sourdough without any kneading
| using the fermentolysis technique. No machine needed and
| absolutely not "too much effort".
| hendricius wrote:
| Agreed! Bread machines don't make sense. You can make a
| very simple dough in 1 minute of work. I recommend 500g
| whole rye or wheat, 400g water, 100g sourdough starter,
| 20g salt. Mix all with a spatula for 1 minute until no
| chunks of flour are left. Put into greased loaf pan. Wait
| until roughly doubled in size. Bake in the oven at
| 200degC until core temperature is 92degC.
| soperj wrote:
| I do 1.5 cups of water, 3 cups of flour, sourdough
| starter and some amount of salt that it around 1 or 2
| teaspoons. Mix with a spatula for a minute as well, and
| then put a lid on it and leave it on the counter
| overnight. Bake at 500degF for 45 minutes in a dutch oven
| or a ceramic cookware that's loaf shaped.
| hendricius wrote:
| Just posting this here too, my pizza calculator could be
| interesting too: https://pizza-calculator.the-bread-code.io/.
| It's part of the repo as well.
| b33j0r wrote:
| I was hoping it would be isomorphic. I could just like make the
| recipe, and weigh out the ingredients... and then some geek
| browser would do the work.
|
| Disappointed, but I'll have to learn to adapt! My hydration
| levels were way too low the last time I tried. (Any joke you
| find in there is probably true about my experiences haha).
| 2rsf wrote:
| I have a pet at home, having another spoiled one like sour dough
| is too much for me
| hendricius wrote:
| Your sourdough is resilient can can survive for years without
| being fed. When dried the spores last for thousands of years
| :-)
| [deleted]
| iraldir wrote:
| The concept is appealing but the name seems reductory. Sourdough,
| despite its fame, is but one type of bread. Seing that you had
| another book called the bread code I went to check that out but
| it's marked deprecated by this one.
|
| So is this a case of an ill-fitting name that does not do justice
| to the content, or is the content just limited to sourdough as
| the end-all of bread making?
|
| I'm personally not found of the sourness of sourdough bread
| compared to a Ciabatta or a French baguette
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Sourdough is many types of bread. The only thing in common is
| that the leavening agent is natural rather than commercial
| yeast. You _can_ have sourdough that isn 't "sour", in fact,
| it's typically not sour. Ciabatta and baguettes are frequently
| made with natural levain (sourdough).
|
| I think that the sour taste reputation comes from particular
| styles like "San Francisco sourdough" and the fact that many
| folks over-do it with the starter or allow the dough to rise
| for too long.
|
| Try bread from some artisanal bakers, you'll very quickly
| experience the range of naturally leavened bread.
| tomp wrote:
| Do you know of a bullet-proof sourdough Ciabatta recipe? All
| that I've made either didn't rise, or were too _weak_ so they
| spread out a lot before rising...
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Ciabatta is hard. I have tried the recipe (and others) from
| "the perfect loaf"-- but never exactly because I don't have
| easy access to the flour brands he uses.
|
| This one: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/ciabatta-bread-
| recipe/
|
| The key thing, IMHO, is high-protein (high gluten) bread
| flour. It helps to keep structure with any high-hydration
| dough. Also, if I remember correctly, ciabatta should not
| proof too long, or it gets too slack. I used a canvas
| couche and made the loaves relatively small.
| soperj wrote:
| Yep, it's actually more difficult to get the sour flavor than
| it is to not get it.
| tomp wrote:
| Really? I'd love to get less sour flavour, but proofing
| overnight (in the fridge) looks like it's really hard to
| avoid it...
| soperj wrote:
| I leave it on the counter overnight. I really have to
| work at getting any sour flavour at all. My starter
| smells a little like cotton candy to me though when it's
| ready to go, floats really well in the water.
| joe5150 wrote:
| "Sourdough" is a spectrum of breads resulting from various
| natural and/or long fermentation techniques. Ciabatta is
| usually made from a partially natural fermentation (biga or
| poolish) and baguette made this way is also popular.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's only a type of bread if you're a marketing guy for a pre-
| sliced going on a shelf in a supermarket.
|
| Otherwise it's a (bad name IMO for a) leavening method.
| Basically just not using controlled/commercial/instant yeast,
| but from the environment.
|
| Guarantee original baguettes were made with an environmental
| yeast starter/levain, probably some bakers continue to.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| They are all good depending on your mood and food pairing.
| styeco wrote:
| Check out his Youtube channel:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/thebreadcode I've been watching his
| videos for years now, he genuinely cares about his subject, and
| doesn't compromise for views. He's an engineer at heart, admits
| when he's wrong and updates and shares his knowledge. Thanks
| Hendrik!
| hendricius wrote:
| Thank you too!
| AlanYx wrote:
| This is truly phenomenal work! Have you experimented with any
| traditional additives, such as adding a small amount of citric
| acid to increase diacetyl production during fermentation?
| hendricius wrote:
| Not too much yet! I am mostly focused on trying to find the
| best flour/water/salt combination currently.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Making a good airy loaf with a good caramelised crust is a craft
| that most people will come to find extremely difficult.
|
| It's so much about bacteria, flour type, humidity, heat/cool,
| rest, gluten, proteins and practice.
|
| A good idea is to use the same flour when you practice. Over and
| over again.
|
| Use less water in the beginning and use a machine for kneading.
| Don't be pedantic about exact grams but be as precise as you
| feel.
|
| It's a really really interesting process and it becomes
| interesting because its a living thing. It's bacteria that does
| the magic. Love it
| phreeza wrote:
| I use a machine for the initial kneading but then do manual
| stretch and fold a couple of times.
| Neff wrote:
| This reminds me of the Fermented Hot Sauce repo -
| https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente
|
| I love to see people share these sorts of experiments and
| document their evolution
| Sugimot0 wrote:
| If anybody seeing this wants to dive deeper into the rabbit hole,
| I'd recommend this:
|
| https://www.thefreshloaf.com/
| frsandstone wrote:
| Have you considered making a standalone tool to take input
| variables and generate custom instructions?
|
| Your introduction suggests that you know people's input variables
| (type of flour, environment, other ingredients, etc) have a heavy
| influence on the end product. It might be easier to generate
| custom instructions rather than generate content for every
| possible combination.
| hendricius wrote:
| It would be great if this were possible. I believed it could be
| done initially, but then I realized it depends on too many
| parameters: Flour, water, temperature, sourdough starter
| microbes, starter microbial activity level, desired
| consistency, baking times and a few others. One guy once tried
| to put together a table with different starter levels: https://
| www.wraithnj.com/breadpics/rise_time_table/bread_mod.... In
| practice it doesn't work though.
| andreasscherman wrote:
| Here's a declarative sourdough "recipe" generator:
| https://breadfriend.com
| petee wrote:
| I think this may have been posted on HN, but i forget --
| https://makefastworkshop.com/hacks/?p=20200515
| timdiggerm wrote:
| From the intro:
|
| > It is crazy if you think about it. People have been using this
| process despite not knowing what was actually going on for
| thousands of years!
|
| Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever
| lemming wrote:
| _Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever_
|
| Or a lot of modern medicine right now. Lots of useful drugs are
| discovered totally by accident: "Oh look, my patient took this
| for foot sores and it turns out it helps his hair loss", and
| then the drug gets used forever more, despite having really no
| idea at all why it should work. We don't even really know how
| paracetamol works.
| mayormcmatt wrote:
| Just yesterday I started watching the video series promoting
| Bill Hammack's book "The Things We Make" in which he discusses
| how many incredible ancient structures were built using rules
| of thumb rather than an actual understanding of the science
| /math underpinning their strength. Truly fascinating.
|
| https://youtu.be/_ivqWN4L3zU
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Modern engineering still works that way for lots of thing.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Its pretty crazy. I wonder how many things like that we do
| now...using a process without _really_ understanding what is
| happening. Computers, cars, and technology are easy guesses but
| I am willing to bet there is a lot of "non-tech" stuff that we
| do like that. Doing something with a proven process, but never
| really understanding why that process works.
| th3byrdm4n wrote:
| Literally everything AI right now
| mpsprd wrote:
| This book got me into making my own bread, thank you hendricius!
|
| Toughts I didn't take the time to put in an mr:
|
| -The text is dense like a fruitcake. A bit of air would go a long
| way to make it more digestible. Sometimes long explanations on
| progressions are mixed in with key information, and it makes it
| hard to follow.
|
| -I forget if I compiled it or used the pdf but by memory it was
| the default latex font, which makes the text look like a paper.
|
| -Starter care and setup was the hardest for me to parse. Having
| bullets for key concepts would really help. The diagram helps but
| still has some ambiguity.
|
| Even my grandma, impressed by my beautiful bread, adopted your
| technique :)
| anotherevan wrote:
| Anyone have experience baking bread using oat flour? I have a kid
| with serious IBS issues, so no wheat, no eggs and limited spelt.
| There's one brand we can buy at the local health food store that
| fits the bill - which they can eat as much of as they want.
|
| All the recipes I've found so far either require egg, or mixing
| in a bit of spelt.
| chefandy wrote:
| I should make some of these for savory cooking. I'm a classically
| trained chef, (though glad I no longer work in food service,)
| designer, artist, long-time developer, and have a useful balance
| between the technical and aesthetic perspectives on cooking.
|
| While I'd normally call a document like this a deep-dive into a
| "technique" or, maybe a collection of techniques, calling it a
| framework might be a useful mental model for the dev crowd.
| Recipes lie-- without knowing the underlying reasons that certain
| techniques work the way they do, you'll never really know what
| you're going for and why. This stuff is not difficult to explain,
| but recipes aren't the appropriate places to explain it. Most
| people are really surprised to see how few recipes there are in
| many professional cooking text books. They're similar to books
| about programming languages while cookbooks are essentially
| collections of standalone tutorials that don't explain much
| theory.
|
| Is there any particular deep dive you'd enjoy reading about? Meat
| cookery really trips people up. As does seasoning. Sauces too.
| rtehfm wrote:
| From a security perspective, as someone who enjoys cooking as a
| hobby, I thought it would be interesting to use a tactic-by-
| technique perspective. You could visualize the tactics and
| techniques as a matrix of cooking techniques grouped by tactics
| moving from researching menus, procuring ingredients, preparing
| ingredients, to cutting/trimming techniques, to
| cooking/grilling/sauteing, to plating/presenting.
| chefandy wrote:
| My _gut_ says these processes are too context-dependent to
| easily express that way, and even making multiple matrices
| would require abstraction to the point of not being useful.
| But I 'd have to chew on it for a while.
| 9dev wrote:
| I've been cooking for most of my life, with my mother letting
| me help in the kitchen starting with 4.I never learned much
| theory and just went by what felt right or tasted good. I would
| say over time, you get a feeling for the basic building blocks
| - which ingredients match, how to a certain texture, when to
| reduce things or add some liquid,and so on - which makes
| recipes more like guidelines, or inspiration, introducing a new
| idea or combination.
|
| Incidentally, that also matches the way I've learned
| programming, and likewise, I notice the same downsides -
| sometimes, I know there's a better, or more reliable, way to
| achieve something, but I lack the theoretic background to go
| there.
|
| Having said all that: I would really appreciate learning the
| way different taste combinations work out. High quality
| restaurants always seem to combine simple ingredients into an
| elegant ,,pattern" of aroma (you see I notice good terms),
| something I never quite manage. I bet there's some simply
| chemistry involved, some generic rules broadly applicable. I'd
| love to read that!
| chefandy wrote:
| > I've been cooking for most of my life, with my mother
| letting me help in the kitchen starting with 4.I never
| learned much theory and just went by what felt right or
| tasted good. I would say over time, you get a feeling for the
| basic building blocks - which ingredients match, how to a
| certain texture, when to reduce things or add some liquid,and
| so on - which makes recipes more like guidelines, or
| inspiration, introducing a new idea or combination.
|
| That's how most professional cooks I've known have learned to
| cook, initially. Those sorts of experiences certainly help
| form your personal taste.
|
| > sometimes, I know there's a better, or more reliable, way
| to achieve something, but I lack the theoretic background to
| go there.
|
| I think a lot of people are in this boat, but probably
| underestimate the utility of that theoretical knowledge. I
| think it's akin to being a musician-- while many people who
| play instruments in their spare time can likely play a few
| songs that are quite appealing to most people, there's
| probably a vast gulf in the raw, general-purpose capability
| of an experienced, dedicated professional or a degree-trained
| music student.
|
| > High quality restaurants always seem to combine simple
| ingredients into an elegant ,,pattern" of aroma (you see I
| notice good terms), something I never quite manage. I bet
| there's some simply chemistry involved, some generic rules
| broadly applicable. I'd love to read that!
|
| Sadly, that pattern doesn't exist. While the fusion chefs
| from a few decades ago tried their best to codify this (and
| came up with some pretty tasty food in the process, even if
| it is a bit passe,) it's just not that simple.
|
| So how do they do it? Imagine your five favorite dishes...
| now imagine how much you might learn about them if you cooked
| them repeatedly for 1.5x to 2x the number of hours in a
| standard office job for a week? A month? A year? A decade?
| Now imagine that in this process, you'll have worked with
| dozens of other people who've dedicated their lives to
| creating and reasoning about food and flavors that are all
| also cooking your 5 favorite dishes with you? And on top of
| that, you're serving them to a fickle dining crowd who will
| throw it right back at you if it doesn't delight them? To
| boot, restaurant food is WAY more labor intensive than home
| cooking because economies of scale allow it. You have
| professional prep cooks that will simmer that beef stock for
| 16 hours to get it exactly like you want it. Things like that
| add so much to the final product, but you just can't put your
| finger on _how_.
|
| When it comes to things that tongues sense-- saltiness,
| sweetness, tanginess, glutamates, bitterness-- there are
| pretty straightforward ways of reasoning about them even if
| the rules are a bit nebulous. Saltiness tends to tamp down
| bitterness which is why it's lovely with chocolate and dark
| caramel, for example. Sweetness tends to round out tanginess
| really well which is why many things from citrus glazes to
| high quality candies to many cocktails are so much more
| delicious than something that is either merely sweet or sour.
| When people say your sense of taste is dulled because of a
| cold, they're mistaken. Your tongue senses everything just as
| well as it did before-- but you can't _smell_ anything. If
| you take a cherry hard candy and a lemon hard candy and put
| them in your mouth with your nose totally blocked, you won 't
| likely be able to distinguish between them. As soon as the
| aroma hits your olfactory bulb, they're as different as
| different can be. When you sense something intensely with
| your olfactory bulb AND your tongue is activated, that is
| when your brain says "there's something in my mouth right
| now." That's why it's so difficult to eat in the midst of
| unpleasant smells, and why under-salted food tastes so
| boring. Playing with things sensed by your olfactory bulb--
| pretty much anything you consider part of flavor that isn't
| one of the broad-stroke things sensed by your tongue-- is
| dramatically more complex.
|
| These do it so well because a) they've spent years, if not
| decades, deliberately training their palate, personal taste,
| and understanding of these interactions, b) spend 60 or 80
| hours per week cooking and understanding how these things
| work together, c) have their dishes are tasted, workshopped
| and tweaked by all of the other experienced professional
| cooks around, d) etc. etc. etc. It is truly the 'art' in
| culinary arts and the only way to get good at it is to do it
| a whole lot for a long time.
|
| A really good example from my recent past is a parmesean
| peppercorn dressing I've made hundreds of times. One time, I
| was in a hurry and toasted the black peppercorns far more
| than most generally would, so the citrus notes totally
| subsided and it took on this deep toasty property. I was
| worried the dressing would taste burnt, but it was _Fucking
| Magic._ The people I was cooking for-- all competent and
| experienced cooks-- looked at me like I 'd just spun gold.
| Black pepper in most circumstances doesn't benefit from being
| that heavily toasted, but it's just one of those things that
| you kind of have to be taught, specifically, or discover by
| yourself.
|
| A good resource for reasoning about these things is The
| Flavor Bible.
| deathanatos wrote:
| I know the HN hivemind just updoots whatever tickles the hive-
| fancy for the day, but in my current day, it's hard to see this
| trending on HN and think anything other than software engineering
| as an industry has simply given up, and is just becoming things
| like breadmakers now. Farming, pottery, basketweaving are
| probably also decent career segues.
|
| I literally got so fed up with trying to debug another team's
| service that I stood up to quell my frustration by eating, like
| most people do. In my attempt to procure a sandwich, the POS
| terminal -- which has only a hole for chip and pin cards -- asked
| me to swipe the magstripe on my card.
|
| Since I can't even buy a sandwich, I suppose this guide will come
| in handy for the bread.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I think "tickles the hive-fancy" needs to be a concept - Inwant
| the economist to write articles about it. :-)
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Docker to build a book is definitely something new. Not that it
| doesn't make some sense just something I've never seen.
| woolion wrote:
| I was wondering about that. It's using texlive-full, which
| requires several gigabytes to install and is, for me at least,
| always the longest step when setting up a new (Linux) computer.
| It can also make sure to have reproducible builds, which I
| don't think there is a Latex-native solution for. Or is there a
| better approach?
| dlisboa wrote:
| I don't think there is. I've compiled books in LaTeX and in
| Pandoc, nothing but regret filled my veins afterwards.
| Installing those dependencies is just a terrible experience.
|
| Leave it in Docker to save people the hassle.
| ar_lan wrote:
| I love this concept, and applying open source to it. I have long
| seen the correlation between code and food, because recipes are
| just instructions for humans on how to interact with food to
| construct something.
|
| Recipes are code, just a different form.
| darknavi wrote:
| I love the idea of "compiling" a book.
|
| Do people do this with music? I really like the idea of
| programmatically making music and compiling it.
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Funnily enough thats the original usage or common definition of
| "compile".
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/compilin...
|
| Here it's really a two pass compiling. One by human and one by
| the machine.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Have I got a thrill for you!
|
| https://www.mutopiaproject.org
|
| https://lilypond.org
|
| https://www.hacklily.org
|
| ...it really helped me understand why "$SCORE = ( $MELODY +
| $BASS )" was sometimes superior to viewing sheet music as a
| "wall of notes and chords". You have to "play the wall" as it
| comes at you, but mentally, thinking of it as "melody goes la
| la la, bass goes boom bang boom" helps to provide context to
| what are the roles of the two notes you're playing.
| gomezjdaniel wrote:
| Hey hendricius! Just wanted to say thank you for your free
| material. I discovered you months ago and I love your
| 'scientific' approach
|
| Looking forward to that Kickstarter campaign :)
| hendricius wrote:
| Thank you very much!
| api_or_ipa wrote:
| Oh man ~180mb to build a _book_. It's 2023, why hasn't someone
| figured out a good way to check in photos and other binary
| objects into a git repo? I'd expect someone in the latex or ML
| community to have build a pre-commit hook to, I don't know, link
| & upload to S3 or something, right?
|
| I think git (and vcs in general) could be revolutionary to the
| way experts in all fields including law, medicine, book editing &
| publishing, etc can collaborate and track changes on shared
| documents, but yeah, we really haven't figured out how to handle
| necessary accoutrements like images without blowing up the repo
| size.
|
| Otherwise, definitely enjoyed seeing a project layout using
| directories for chapters. Might crib (with attribution!) the
| project layout next time I feel like writing something.
| marssaxman wrote:
| perhaps this is the tool you want?
|
| https://github.com/plaidml/git-big
| martopix wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're suggesting. If you want to version
| control your images you can, and then they will use up size, if
| you don't want to, don't version control them. In github, you
| can also just download the master branch as a zip, instead of
| cloning, if you don't want the whole history.
| malikNF wrote:
| Started making sourdough a few months back thanks to the bread
| code youtube channel [1](someone here actually recommended them)
|
| He taught everything from creating your starter from just water
| and flour. And then goes in to so many little details that made
| my first sourdough bread actually something I was proud if. He's
| a great teacher.
|
| It's really fun and you don't need that much to get started.
|
| [1]https://m.youtube.com/@the_bread_code
| racl101 wrote:
| This is amazing! Thank you!
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| As an occasional amateur baker with a five year old starter in
| the fridge and lots of hard learned lessons (aka. tasty
| failures), this looks like a well researched but probably
| slightly intimidating book on the subject.
|
| I started out like many by watching some Youtube movies. Except I
| did it a few years before Covid. So, slightly before it got
| really hip to do it.
|
| Some things that I've learned over the years (with the help of
| lots of Youtube wisdom):
|
| - There are a lot of Youtube bakers parroting each other and not
| all of what they insist is the one and only way to do it is
| necessarily very valuable or good advice. The key thing to
| realize is that you are implementing a process, not following a
| recipe that is set in stone. It's not that they are wrong but
| they tend to present a detailed recipe without a lot of context.
| If you don't understand the process, that's not going to end
| well. Unless you get lucky. Look for the ones that explain why
| they are doing certain things. The ones that explain the process.
|
| - The fridge is your best friend. You can park your starter there
| for long periods of time. It will be fine and you can revive it
| in a couple of days when you need to. This also largely removes
| the need to discard left over starter. A well established starter
| can take a lot of abuse. Move it to the freezer if you really
| plan to not bake for a few months/years. Countless youtubers tell
| you to keep it outside the fridge and feed it daily. You don't
| need to do this unless you want to. The fridge works like a pause
| button on metabolism. My starter has survived a lot of abuse over
| the past five years. And it still works fine.
|
| - Flour matters. But most flours can work. Whole wheat and rye
| are tasty but also more tricky to deal with. For beginners, use
| some proper bread flour with a high protein content. Hold off on
| the more complex mixes until you can nail that the simpler white
| bread.
|
| - Measure by weight not by volume. If you know what you are doing
| you can totally eyeball it and go by feel. I baked sourdoughs for
| over a year before even buying scales. Lots of failures but also
| lots of tasty bread. But being exact is what makes your process
| repeatable and allows you to fine tune, optimize it and get luck
| out of the equation. E.g. dialing back the hydration requires
| that you kow what it was to begin with. Be aware that you still
| need to adjust for temperature, flour, humidity, etc. There are a
| lot of variables that you can't control. Measuring by volume your
| margin of error is too high to say anything definitive about
| hydration levels. It might be 80% it might be 65%. The difference
| is important if you want to fix your mistakes.
|
| - Larger quantities make it easier to measure more accurately.
| Bake 2 breads instead of 1. Again this matters to make the
| process repeatable.
|
| - All the numbers are arbitrary, up to you, need adjusting for
| environment and flour, and largely a matter of taste.
| Understanding what happens when you change the numbers is the key
| to producing good results consistently.
|
| - Use the clock for planning. But always verify your dough is
| actually in the state where you assume it to be. This is subject
| to so many variables (temperature, dough, humidity, how fresh
| your starter was, etc.) that it can be hard to predict. So, use
| the clock to plan when to check. Check more often if it is
| warmer. Things go quicker. Keeping track of weights and timings
| makes it easier to figure out the correct timings.
|
| - Use a Dutch Oven. It helps. The lid traps the steam and that
| allows the bread to expand before a crust forms. Bake with the
| lid on at the max temperature of your oven. Basically until it is
| done expanding. 15-20 minutes typically. Remove the lid, and
| lower the temperature until the bread is done (I like my bread
| dark & crusty). Size of your loaf matters obviously. Adjust
| timings to your taste. another 20-25 minutes would be normal. You
| can play with the temperatures and timings of course. And what
| actually works will depend on your oven of course.
| wiredfool wrote:
| My starter dates to March of 2020. It's a pandemic baby.
|
| * Timing is flexible. Especially if you toss in a tiny bit of
| yeast.
|
| * The dutch oven is great, but it complicates baking. You get
| to do one loaf at a time. OTOH, It's a relly good loaf. Sadly
| though, the electricity costs are high.
|
| * Wet doughs can use basic flour, which is good because hi-
| gluten bread flour has been scarce in Ireland for the past
| couple of years.
|
| What I do:
|
| 540g bog standard white flour. (lidl, definitely _not_ self
| raising or with raising agents like most of the flour in
| Ireland). Replace up to 200g with coarse wheaten flour.
|
| 280g water
|
| 1 tbsp salt
|
| 1/8tbsp yeast if it's cold.
|
| 300g 1:1 flour/water starter.
|
| In the morning, Mix the dry ingredients with a spatula, mix in
| the wet ones to a mixed dough. Let it sit for 1/2 hour. Lightly
| knead in your hands for 30 sec or so. Oil the bowl, put the
| dough back in and wiggle it around, then cover with plastic
| wrap. Do other stuff till dinner time.
|
| Quickly (1-2 turns) form the loaf, plop it on a baking paper
| back in the bowl.
|
| In an hour or two, depending on how warm it is and if it's
| final rising fast or not, start the oven with the dutch oven in
| it. Preheat at least 30 min. Bake 30 lid on +30 min lid off at
| ~180c fan.
|
| Things not to do:
|
| * Forget to start the oven, get ready to go to bed and realize
| that the loaf is still sitting on the counter.
|
| * Worry too much. It's all grand.
|
| * Forget to take it out, though an extra 30 min is surprisingly
| ok. Just thicker crust.
|
| The starter gets equal weights of water and flour, supposedly
| every night, but more likely the night before baking and the
| morning of baking. I bake every 2 days.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| > - The fridge is your best friend.
|
| Building on this, make more than one loaf and keep it in the
| fridge until ready. For some reason I would make two loaves and
| bake them the same day. Then it was a rush to eat them before
| they lost their tastiness. Now I make two loaves and take my
| sweet time eating them. Making two loaves is only marginally
| more labor than one loaf.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| Personally I'd either freeze or leave out the second loaf.
| Putting it in the fridge seems to quicken then staling
| process, however weird that sounds.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Sorry, I mean leave the dough in the fridge and bake it
| when ready.
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