Skipping yeast from books
Hi,
I'd like to ask for your help. I'm a beginner bread baker, making my own sourdough (Reinhart recipe) at home and baking 100% whole wheat bread (from Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everyday) on a regular basis. I'm quite satisfied with the results. To make it a bit complicate i'm on a candida diet, can eat only whole grain flour and not allowed to use yeast. So sourdough is a natural choice. But that's the only recipe i know where i can bake without yeast.
I've recently bought Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads and the Hamelman Breads book as i would like to try new recipes. I'm a bit disappointed as almost all of the recipes are with yeast (but they are great books of course). I know that's not that easy to just leave yeast. Is it any way to increase the sourdough or any other method to leave yeast somehow?
In the Artisan Breads the yeast is only optional, so maybe there is some way to use those recipes.
Any advice would be helpful.
Thanks in advance,
Csaba
It takes a little experience and initiative, but in my short 2 years of baking breads, I am able to convert almost any recipe using commercial yeast to use only natural, wild yeast(sourdough).
In the meantime, there are hundreds of great, published sourdough recipes.
A good starting point for recipes, and theories of converting is Mike Avery's website: http://www.sourdoughhome.com/
Sourdough IS yeast. It is the yeast that is naturally occurring on the grain (wheat flour) and captured locally when you create an environment that is favorable to yeast growth by adding water and warmth to a quantity of flour or fruit. Every food we eat and surface we touch is covered in some form of yeast-there is no way to avoid it and we even use yeast symbiotically in our bodies to create vitamins we need and digest food. It is a myth that you can avoid yeast altogether. However, you can affect the balance of the symbiotic microorganisms in your body and digestive tract by the nutrients you feed or don't feed your local culture (in and on your body).
Please talk to a real nutritionist(NOT someone who is self educated but someone who is formally educated!) OR a registered dietician who is well versed in nutrition and probiotics. You will not regret it.
In my reading of the diet, it restricts grains containing gluten as well as yeast, that means NO WHEAT. Please, get a nutritianist to give you help on the diet. As clazar said, sourdough DOES CONTAIN YEAST as well as helpful bacteria.
Ford
Thanks guys for the replies. First of all, my diet is supervised by a doctor who is an expert on this. As i wrote earlier i can use all whole grain flours and sourdough is allowed to use. But yeast is a no way. That's why i asked you about some help with converting yeast recipes to sourdough. Thanks for the link Mrfrost, could you tell me some general guidelines how you convert the recipes? It would be great.
When I make a single loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread in a 9 x 5 loaf pan, I use 16 ounces of flour and 10 fluid ounces of water, plus 8 ounces of leavening made by feeding my starter with 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of water the night before I bake the bread. Others may use less leavening for that amount of flour, in which case they put more flour and water in the other part of the recipe. In other words, when converting a recipe that is written to use commercial yeast, some of the flour and water needs to be used to make the leavening. To run it in reverse, my sourdough bread made with commercial yeast would require 20 ounces of flour and 14 fluid ounces of water.
The other main difference will be rising time. Although it is best to watch the dough rather than the clock, as a general rule you should estimate that sourdough will take twice as long to rise as a dough made with commercial yeast. This is true for every rising step. Baking time, however, is the same.
Even though your physician is supervising your diet, and you have faith in that, it does no harm to you to realize that sourdough does is in fact contain yeasts. They are not the exact same species as commercial yeast, and are evidentally less harmful to you in your condition, but they are still present. I am sure that your physician knows this but it may further your own understanding.
I've had good results from Reinhart's WGB by just leaving out the instant yeast. I've done it with the miche, the ww hearth bread, and the 45% hearth rye that I remember. No formula adjustments needed (I assume your using the starter option and not the yeasted biga), just omit the yeast in the final dough and let it rise longer. First rise about 3-4 hrs, second rise 2 1/2 - 3 hrs. Your results will vary, but that's the ballpark.
Once you've tried it you can adjust the starter amount to suit your taste. I converted the ww rustic/focaccia dough to sourdough at one point as well with pretty good results, here's a link. Good luck and happy baking!
Marcus
I bake using PR WGB all the time and, as others have said, you don't need to add the yeast..
Most all of the formulas in WBG can be made with a starter rather than a biga. Weight amounts are the same. He has the formula for his starter all worked out so you just mix a batch up and take out what you need when you are going to bake. Very easy.
I started my odyssey using WGB and from that switching to SD was a lot easier too because I was already familiar with his method.
Good Luck and I don't know if this makes a difference or not as I am not a Dr. or a nutritionist but all the yeast, wether commercial or wild, is killed during the baking process....
Janet
Thanks for the great advices from all of you. They were quite helpful for me. So i will go for the more rising time without yeast and start experimenting.
Marcus: I'm using the starter option, right. In the book most of the recipes are made with biga. Is it any simple way to replace it with a starter? I could try more recipe this way. As i saw all the bigas are quite different, so it's maybe not that easy. Nice focaccia recipe, i'll try it next time:)
Janet: The same question for you, how can i simply convert bigas to starters? All the bigas have different weights, ratios.
Today i've baked the first Rye Sandwich Meteil from the book, hope it will be great tomorrow when we'll cut it.
Good Afternoon Csaba,
To get started on substituting SD for IY look on page 78 where he begins the formulas for baking his Master Loaf. He mentions that it can be made with a biga or a starter and he gives directions for both. You will need a 'mother starter' from which to take 64g to build the final starter.
Directions for making a sour dough 'mother' starter from 'scratch' at home are given starting on page 59 and once completed that is what you store in your refrigerator to take a bit from for any final leaven build.
The simplicity of his method is that for any formula you just use the formula on page 80 to do your build. If you look through his formulas most bigas weigh approx 398g so the formula on page 80 fits right in.
I began by baking his Master Loaf first to see how it would differ. Once I got that down I moved on to the other formulas that I had already baked with IY. It was very easy because it fit right into my baking rhythm. I did leave out the IY so fermenting times did change considerably. ( The 1 hour fermenting time when using only IY changed from anywhere from 2-6 hours depending on the temp. in my kitchen on any given day...)
Once I understood the process I began to bake formulas that people were posting here on the blogs. If you do a search for txfarmer she has several breads where she uses SD and whole wheat. Her directions are easy to follow and she explains the reasoning behind what she does in a very easy to understand way. Her method is different than PR's so it helped expand my working knowledge of using SD.
Another member here converts most of her formulas into PR's format and many are whole grain and SD. Simply do a search on Hanseata and her blogs will appear too. (She does include a bit of IY in the final dough for convenience sake - she sells her loaves to a local store and needs to cut the fermenting time to fit the baking schedule...)
Once you get the hang of what is happening you will be able to convert formulas too....then the adventure of baking gets even more fun :-) (You might like to check out all the blogs on Fruit Yeast Waters.....)
Hope this helps. As a wise person told me here when I first 'joined' - "just work with your dough...nothing compares with experience." I will add - don't be afraid to make mistakes. My best learning has come from my mistakes and my family and neighbors have loved even my disaster loaves - affectionately called my 'frisbee' loaves.
Take Care,
Janet
***edit - I posted this before I saw Janet's reply (I'm a slow typer), I apologize if it is redundant. =)
Csaba,
For most of the formulas I think it actually is that easy - just replace the biga with an equal amount of starter (by weight). I don't have the book in front of me but if I remember correctly, most of the bigas (at least for the breads I was baking) were around 300g - 400g, so 400g became my standard starter build.
If you change his percentages a little that becomes an easy number to get to: 200g flour+150g water+50g mother starter = 400g starter, or 200/150/50. That’s less mother starter than the formula in the book but it works just fine and is easy to remember. From there you can just make a little more or less as the specific formula dictates. Absolute precision matters less than having a healthy starter and keeping an eye on the rise.
One other thing to note: The starter amounts in these formulas will be pretty large as a percentage of the total dough (something like 40% of the flour is in the starter, I think), because they are designed for a fast, yeasted rise. If you find the flavor not to your liking try reducing the amount of starter by about half so that it contains around 20% of the total flour in the formula. The amount of flour and water that you took out of the starter you can add back into the soaker or, maybe better, the final dough.
I hope this makes sense. Like Janet said, this book is great for learning to convert recipes to SD because most of the formulas are split-up into preferments/predoughs already – just takes a little practice. =)
Marcus
Hi,
If you are looking at breads like in Hamelman, chapter 6, then it's OK to skip the yeast. All you need to do is to watch fermentation time. It will take a bit longer.
See discussions in:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23956/detmolder-sourdough-and-without-yeast-comparison
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23900/rye-sourdough-recipes-added-commercial-yeast
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23830/german-baking-day
Happy Baking,
Juergen
Janet: You're right, i'll start with the Master Loaf for my next bread. I've got a good working mother starter I've been using for months (aka Reinhart). Until now I've only baked a 100% WW Sourdough bread from the "Artisan breads", but the method is different and a little more complicated than in this book. The next project will be to get rid off the frisbee loaves, as i've got them if i make a batard. Thanks for the blog tips, i've subscibed to their blog (just like to Marcus's blog)
Marcus: Okay, I'll replace the bigas with the starter and it should work fine. If the difference is a bit bigger than i can somehow calculate with the given baker's percentage.
Juergen: Thanks for the links, nice looking breads:)
FYI, yesterday i've baked the first bread from the book, a rye sandwich meteil. I haven't used yeast and worked with a longer proofing time and the result was pretty good. The dough has risen pretty nicely and the consistency of the bread was absolutely fine. Thanks again for the help from all of you!!! It was really helpful for a beginner home baker like me:)
Sounds like you are on your way. Reinhart is a great teacher. Once you have the hang of it all else will fall into place.
Enjoy,
Janet