February 13, 2017 - 11:21am
Hi Everyone!
Hi there! Huge sourdough enthusiast and line cook from Canada here. I'm trying to round out my culinary education by getting into the nitty-gritty of bread making. I used to do a lot of starters and bread but fell out of it when I left the bakery I was working for.
Anyways! Now I have three starters at the restaurant and we're going to be baking some of them off in the next week. Me and some of the cooks were experimenting with them and we decided to add wheat beer to the starter instead of flour and water, to really supercharge the growth. We're trying to get a really sour loaf.
I'll keep you all posted! I'd love some tips and tricks for maintaining starters over a long period of time because mine tend to die a lot after the third week.
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You've got an advantage being in Canada. I spend a few months a year here in BC and the flour gives me much better crumb than in US.
wheat beer to a starter to promote a sour bread will not work very well but it doesn't hurt to experiment. he siur in bread comes from Lactobacillus which can produce two kinds of acid lactic predominately which is the base sour but also acetic acid which is the 'tang'. Really sour bread has an abundance of both. There are some good ways to do 4 things to increase sour.
ncrease the LAB to yeast ratio so there are more LAB making acid and reducing the amount of yeast to allow the LAB to produce acid longer before the dough is proofed and has to go in the oven Promoting the production of acid by LAB at pH's lower than they normally would by using bran as buffering agent. Using low temperature and hydration to promote acetic acid production of LAB, Using high and low temperature to promote LAB to yeast ratios and increase the reproduction rates of LAB while reducing the reproduction rates of yeast. Finally adding fructose to the mix to give the LAB another electron receptor to make acid. All of the these things work very well at producing a bread that is sourer.
LAB also are inhibited by alcohol levels over 5% so adding beer to the mix will only get in the way of LAB making acid to make the bread sour. Here is a link that will help explain this better.
Welcome and happy baking
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106434/
Thanks for the tips, she's turning out really well right now but it may be because we used so little beer. Either way she smells great and if it doesn't make her more sour it definitely hasn't seemed to hurt her. I'll keep you posted on how the loaf turns out, I'm baking in the next week.