For Starters...

I started baking bread about six years ago. I like to know the why and when about things, so a little bit of research discovered the joys of brewing beer. I've used beer yeast to make bread. I've used Red Star yeast to make beer. Ok, you can make bread with beer yeast but you cannot make beer with Red Star. Gross. After making beer (wort) I usually have 10 to 20 pounds of spent grains left over. These grains usually get spread evenly over my garden and yard. I've tried incorporating the grains into bread making but this just doesn't usually go well. The grains are roughly milled and the hulls are retained. The hulls are just impossible to chew and are detrimental to the overall experience of eating bread with a small percentage of beer grains included. Not to mention the mash typically draws most of the starch and sugar out of the grain anyway, making the grains nearly tasteless. 

I digress. If bakers and brewers worked so closely together in the past, what was the nature of this partnership? How did they compliment each other? If there is a book out there with this subject, please let me know.

Starters. I make yeast starters for my beer. Typically a store bought culture that I'll activate and grow for the vigorous fermentation of my wort. The beer tea from mashing grains in very warm water. There are literally hundred of yeast styles available for making Beer. But I don't see any for bread. Why not? 

Yet don't we ferment our dough for making bread? Sourdough, poolish, preferments? Has anyone ever been brave enough to drink the 'hooch' off of a sourdough starter? Do we rely almost exclusively on the flour and adjuncts for the taste of our bread? 

I've read and re-read the recipe for a sourdough starter. I've also read various other recipes for starters. One post caught my eye. Basically, we follow the tried and true recipe to build up a starter over time. However, historically people were rather limited in the availability of resources. I mean not everyone had access to orange juice or any other kind of exotic juice. How many Russians had access to pineapple juice over three hundred years ago? Today you can have limes and lemons year round. A few hundred years ago, your village had access to whatever grain grew in the region. Your starter, grain and water were whatever you had immediate access to. What we strive to achieve in our sourdough today and what is achieved elsewhere in time and space may very well be completely different. 

So, I'm going to experiment with bread starters, just as I have experimented with beer starters. I took some Patagonia Caramel malt 190Lovibond, hulls and grain, and made a very dark flour. One tablespoon of the malt flour, one tablespoon of whole wheat flour and two tablespoons of orange juice. At the end of January, I'll compare bread made with this starter to bread made with a traditional sourdough starter and see if the wild yeast impart a unique flavor.

Please add your comments below. I'm very interested in your critiques and insight.