January 20, 2019 - 5:38pm
How to make non-sourdough?
Hi everybody! I have been making bread at home in the past two years and now experimenting a lot with sourdough. As much as I love the concept, my family apparently does not. For them, the bread is too sour and in general has some unwanted taste. I tried 100% starters and 60% starters, I tried different amounts of starter in the bread without success. Whenever I make bread with polish, biga or sponge, the reaction is much more loving…So I am looking for a way to bridge between my sourdough enthusiasm and the gastronomical desires of my most beloved tasters. How do you make sourdough that has mild, even sweet, taste? The kind that you do not need to tell people that sourdough his an acquired taste?
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Simple. That's exactly why commercial yeast exists. No use compromising, just switch. And continue to make enough sourdough to keep yourself happy as well.
There's nothing special, superior, or noble, about sourdough.
This article has been referred to as a good source of information on how to affect the sourness of your loaves:
https://brodandtaylor.com/make-sourdough-more-sour/
Another option for making naturally leavened but non-sour bread is to raise it with Raisin Yeast Water, or a ferment seeded from another non-grain source. Some have reported good results inoculating with tea leaves. I started a very well-performing yeast water from a few crabapples stripped from tree prunings one Spring. They are easy to maintain, fed with just a spoonful or two of honey weekly. And they can have pretty explosive leavening power. And no sour whatsoever.
Search TFL for RYW or Raisin Yeast Water.
Tom
Why the perverse/superstitious avoidance of commercial yeast?
Perverse? Superstitious? Unexpected adjectives, but thank you for the added color to this morning's TFL content.
I use CY all the time, at least once/week. It would work just fine by itself of course, or in addition to SD (cf. Forkish and french practices).
Tom
...if I sounded offensive or strident. Sourdough is good when you want sourdough. But there's a point where reinventing the wheel more expensively, less reliably, and less conveniently, becomes comical.
No problem David. RYW is a fun third alternative for enthusiasts or purists who prefer to raise non-sour loaves naturally, without CY. I suspect palettes more discerning than mine can detect flavor differences between loaves raised with RYW versus judicious amounts of CY. I got a kick out of quickly generating an amazingly potent leaven out of a handful of crabapples I pulled off of a tree. No Luddite. Just playin.
Tom
For example, the Japanese Hokkaido sandwich bread is excellent when made with commercial yeast ("CY"), but the sourdough version tastes weird to me. Making non-sour bread with sourdough can be challenging because even the "sweetest" or "youngest" levain (sourdough) will impart some sourness. If your tasters accept that, then making such levains is your solution. Otherwise, continue to use commercial yeast to make preferment or use yeast water ("YW") to leaven your bread.
YW is simple to make and easy to maintain. You may use it to ferment a dough directly or use it to make a preferment. Either way, your bread will not be sour. Also, the flavor of YW loaves has more depth because YW ferments dough more slowly than CY. Additionally, you might enjoy the challenge of handling YW dough because it is less predictable than one made with CY.
Simultaneously fulfilling your passion for sourdough and pleasing your tasters requires compromise. Good luck.
Yippee
I'm not sure I like this CY abbreviation! Will we need to have CADY, CIDY and CFY variants ;)
Lance
..."CYA" into a very strange occupational disease. :D