Greetings from Myanmar
Hi all,
I'm a fairly new baker (baking for 2 months) with a lot of interest in sourdough breads. As you can imagine, baking culture is quite stale in rice prominent third world countries like Myanmar but we do have a few good bakeries in cities that can do classic stuff like croissants and pastries quite well. But nothing fancy like sourdough artisan breads. No french baguettes or country style boule loafs here. Basically no bread loafs in interesting shapes that you have to slice yourself. Just pan loafs, cakes and pastries. I found one bakery that have "sourdough" bread but to be honest it looks nothing like it, too crumbly and it barely has a sour taste.
My primary challenge here is to find local whole wheat flour. The mindset here is that brown breads are only for people with diabetes, lol. We got whole wheat flours that are imported but the price is pretty damn high, like 3 times as much as local flour. So my latest experiment is to mix filtered wheat middling that we use to make local traditional desserts (we translate it as semolina but it's not made from durum wheat, just bran and germs with excess white flour leftover from milling). May be after trying out a few loafs, I could find a good balance that can imitate whole wheat breads. If you've mixed bran and bread flour before and know a proper ratio, would appreciate the help :)
Anyway, I got two starters at the moment. One that is not completely natural because I used dried active yeast to make a dough and ferment it for a few days before I start baking with it. Another starter is the one I got from youtube channel "Peaceful Cuisine", which uses raisins to make yeast water but I couldn't find natural raisins here, only the oiled ones. So I got some natural dried mangoes instead (being a south Asian tropical country, mangoes here are super sweet, creamy and cheap) and made yeast water with it. Made the first loaf with this starter this morning and waiting for it to cool and try it out.
Anyway, I've been hanging around here for the last 2 months and got a lot of knowledge from you guys about baking and finally got around to joining the forum. Thank you all for that.
to seeing your Mango yeast water loaf! It won't taste of mango but could have some lovely crumb colour!
Mini (not too far away in Laos)
You only need flour and water to make a starter. A cup of flour and enough water to make a batter consistency. Put it in a jar big enough for the starter to expand, cover with a damp tea towel and put under a bush until it bubbles.
Feed it once a day for 2 weeks, discarding about half when it gets too much. You can use the discarded starter for pancakes or drop scones cooked on a flat heavy pan.
You can start using it when it smells yeasty and sour.
If you then keep the starter fairly stiff and in the refrigerator, it will further feeding every 2 weeks.
Love to hear how your mango starter goes.
Robyn
I got inpatient with my first starter, so I added dry yeast. I'll try out a new starter later. Looking back, I think it's because of high temperature in Myanmar summer. Back then, it was summer and even indoor, the room temperature was over 35. We have to stay in air conditioned rooms most of the time. I thought yeast would like warm temperatures better but not that warm I guess.
I actually tried the sourdough pancakes but for some reason it was way too sour. I think it fermented too long. Now I just keep very small amount of starter and make a sponge before baking the next day overnight. I tried to keep stiff starter as well but needs a bit more work than liquid starter since you have to knead a bit. With liquid, i just have to stir with my chopsticks.
Mango starter's pretty active and the loaf turned out well albeit a bit under-cooked. It was a small loaf since I'm just testing out and about half of it is already eaten today. Will definitely upload and ask for some advice in the future.
I haven't made yeast water yet, but it's on the list. I've got fresh blueberries in the garden right now and plums will be coming soon. As the yeasts are on the outside of the fruit, I think those two will work well. No fresh mangoes here (Canada's West Coast)!
Of course, yeasts are also on the outside of grains. That said, the wheat middling that you mention might actually work very well for making a starter; probably better than just using white flour that doesn't have any bran in it.
Some commercial whole wheat flour is essentially white flour with bran added back in, so mixing the middling with white flour should be fine. The problem with some wheat grown in warm countries is that it isn't very strong so is difficult to make good artisan bread with. Do let us know how you get on!
I'm not quite sure whether yeasts cultivated from fruits are different or more efficient from the ones made from flour.
Thanks for the ideas. The wheat middling's super cheap here, only less than a dollar for about 500g.
I know in India, they grew a strain of durum wheat and call it atta, which I tried to bake bread with and had poor results. So I pretty much gave up on it. Normal wheat here is quite okay, I think but then again I haven't tried european or americna flour. Needs a lot of kneading to get supple dough, though. Around 15 to 20 minutes.
it can be watered down and more fruit added. It just keeps going... so don't use it up with each bake. It can easily be refrigerated while fermenting, while it is effervescent. It keeps for days or even a week when cold.
I find it good to have a first day of a flour and water starter warm, around 33°C for the first 24 hours. Then back down for 25 to 26°C the rest of the week to favour yeast more than bacteria (they more than outnumber the yeast.) Don't over feed the developing starter. Better not to feed at all the first 3 days, and then only a spoonful of flour until the yeast show up. Now is a good time for starting sourdough starter but keep an eye on the temperatures. The commercial yeast starter will also get going into a sourdough starter if left long enough, feeding flour at about day 4 or 5 and allowing natural yeasts to take over from the commercial yeast. The natural yeast will wipe out and eat up what remains of the commercial yeast once it takes over.
Later, Once the starter is yeasty and is constantly hungry, keeping it thick in the tropical heat helps control it. Too thin and newly formed yeasts will work thru the flour food too quickly making for constant watching and you becoming a slave to feeding it. The refrigerator then becomes a valuable tool.
I'm enjoying our humidity at the moment and as long as there is cloud cover, the upper twenties temperatures. I no longer need plastic and put the AC on "dry" to reduce moisture in the air. My variable in temperature and humidity are constantly changing during the day. The AC offers some stability. My fed starters get moved around, inside or outside, depending on the weather and my baking schedule.
before I used it all up in trying to make mango wine. I though I should just keep the dough starter. Should have maintained the water.
I think the weather in Lao should be about the same as in Myanmar. Now is monsoon and it's not very hot. Thanks for your advice on the starter. Guess I should thicken my starter a bit. Even refrigerated, I'm having to feed it every 2 to 3 days since it's becoming liquidy too fast with brown scum on top.
Hi,
I'm in Myanmar and been trying to find some whole wheat as well. I have a bag of wheat bran and germ and mix it with white flour. For the correct ratio read this post.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/26724/whats-proportion-endosperm-bran-germ
Also, can you give me the local name of the wheat middling you mentioned. I would love to try it out for some bread.
For sourdough starter, I did make a successful starter 2 years back from atta,a little fresh pineapple juice and water. Once it started bubbling replaced the atta with white flour. It worked quite well, but I lost it due to power cuts. Haven't tried my hand at a starter again but you could try some pineapple to give it boost.
I've having problem uploading image so here's the link to online grocery page.
http://citymallmm.com/hmwe-semolina-150g-shwe-kyi-888.html
The brand name is "Hmwe". You can google "Hmwe Semolina". Do note that their package doesn't have any English words on their brand name. So understandably, foreigners would be hard pressed to see what these are. They also produce rice flours and gram flours as well. You can check out the respective designs and pick up at any City Mart.
Good thing that power cuts are fewer these days. I'll try the pineapple juice some time. Cheers. :)