Ok, so my wife and I are going to Paris and we want to eat our way through all the MUST SEE bakeries.  It is my first time there and, as we all know, bread is quite an obsession of mine.  Does anyone have any good current itineraries or suggestions of how to attack Paris?  It is quite overwhelming for me so I really appreciate any knowledge anyone can lay on me!

Thank you so much my baking friends!

Nick

This was going to be a blow-by-blow account of reviving a starter that had been dried for travel.  Yeah, my eyes are starting to glaze already, too.  So this will get more of a Readers Digest treatment.  And I'll try to stay awake until the end.  What you do is up to you.

Here's the back story: Man lives in Pretoria, South Africa.  Man has sourdough starter.  Man will repatriate to his home in Kansas City.  Man does not wish to lose his starter or begin a new one after his return.

Still with me?  Good.

Having read two different methods right here on TFL for preparing a starter for travel, I chose to do (drumroll, please) both!  And knowing that some or all of my luggage would be subjected to the tender mercies of either the TSA or U.S. Customs, I wanted to make sure that I had enough with me that at least one packet got through.  Or so I hoped.

Technique #1 involves adding enough flour (if your starter is runny) or enough water (if your starter is more like a dough) to some of said starter to achieve a thick batter consistency that is still smearable.  I don't know if smearable is a word but it is the key.  The traveler (your faithful reporter in this instance) needs to smear a thin layer of the suitably hydrated starter on a sheet of parchment paper and wait a day or two for the smear to dry to until it is roughly as crisp as potato chips.  Or potato crisps, for those of you who are still in South Africa.  The dried smears / chips / crisps can be broken into smaller pieces and placed in plastic bags for eventual placement in your baggage or on your person.  Note that thinner smears = shorter drying times.

Technique #2 involves adding flour to your starter until it is so dry that it is reduced to crumbs.  Some mechanical intervention will be necessary; perhaps the edge of a spoon or maybe a pastry blender or even a food processor.  I can say that a mezzalune is effective.  The more flour you try to force into the dough, the less cooperative it becomes; hence the need for mechanical assistance to cut it into ever smaller bits while force-feeding it yet more flour.  As with the flakes, the crumbs can be bagged for travel.

I strongly recommend that you clearly label each bag so that there is no leeway for interpretation by the various uniformed officials who may have their hands in your luggage at some point.  We all know what happens when we assume, right?

Thus prepared, your faithful reporter placed a baggie of dried starter in every piece of luggage.  And, for reasons yet unclear, every bag and every baggie made it all the way to the proper destination.  On the same day.  

Being somewhat surprised to find myself the proud possessor of a surfeit of dried starter, I did what any American male worth his salt would do: I set up a competition.  Keeping one baggie in reserve as insurance, I combined 10g of flaked starter and 25g of water in one container and 10g of crumbed starter and 25g of water in another container.  Here's how they looked at the start of the competition, flakes to the left and granules to the right:

Pretty exciting, huh?  Other than some fogging of the inside of each jar, they looked about the same 24 hours later so I added 15g of flour of each.  At the end of the second 24-hour period, they were still pretty flat.  There was a whiff of...something...from the granules jar but the flakes jar smelled mostly of wet flour.  By the end of Day 3, there was evidence of bubbles in the granules jar and a hint of expansion.  The flakes jar was still pretty quiet; just a stray bubble or two.

Yep, that's right, the excitement continues to build!

At the end of Day 3, I discarded half of each sample and added water and flour in a 1:2:3 ratio.  I also moved them to some smaller plastic containers.  Here's how they looked after dinner and settling into their new digs:

Just to keep you on your toes, I've switched the granules container to the left and the flakes container to the right.

Some 12 hours later, there was some genuine growth going on:

And from a different perspective:

The crumbs sample has expanded noticeably and is riddled with bubbles.  The flakes sample has expanded just slightly and has fewer bubbles.

And that's pretty much how it went for the next few days.  The crumbs sample consistently out-performed the flakes sample.  Even on a 12-hour feeding schedule, the crumbs sample smelled consistently of acetone which suggests that it was burning through its food between feedings.  The flakes sample never developed a notable yeasty / fruity / sour odor in the week's time that I ran the comparison, although it did get past the wet flour odor.

If your eyes are still open at this point, you can hang on for the wrap-up.

For short-term storage, such as for travel, I would choose the granules approach to drying starter over the flaked approach.  I've done the flakes technique twice now and it required a full week to get back to a sluggish level of activity in both cases.  For longer storage, I'd use the flakes.  Why?  Because it seems to be a more stable form that is less susceptible environmental upsets.

I have some notions about the difference in behavior of the two.  First, the granules weren't as dry as the flakes.  That seems to have allowed the yeasts and bacteria of the starter to get back to work faster, possibly because they were less stressed and did not shut down entirely.  Second, although the organisms were tightly bound in a relatively dry environment, they were also surrounded by food even if they could not exploit it easily.  The down side for the granules is that their higher moisture content would make them more susceptible to attack by molds and other organisms, which militates against using them as a long-term storage option.

The good news is that there are options for the traveler, as well as for disaster recovery.  The easiest way to travel with a starter, of course, is to tuck a small blob in a plastic bag or other container.  That's probably the easiest way to lose it to a zealous inspector, too.

And the reward for any of you who have stayed awake through this entire dissertation?  Pictures of the pain au levain baked with the reconstituted starter, which now smells the way a healthy and happy starter should.  Note that the bread was made at about Day 7 or Day 8; not because of the starter's readiness but because of the baker's schedule.  The starter could probably have been used on Day 4 or Day 5.  First, the loaf:

And then the crumb:

Happy travels!

Paul

As part of my preparation to move from South Africa back to the United States, I dried my sourdough starter using two different techniques.  The first was to simply smear a thin layer of batter-consistency starter across some parchment paper and allow it to dry at room temperature.  The second was to mix flour into some starter until it was reduced to crumbs.  I found that a mezzalune was very helpful in the latter stages of incorporating the flour by allowing me to chop the progressively stiffening starter into smaller and smaller pieces while blending in more flour.

The finished product, two bags of crumbed starter and three bags of flaked starter:

That gives me one packet per suitcase.  Each will be appropriately labeled.  Hopefully, at least one and maybe all will arrive home with me. 

I'm interested to start rehydrating a bit of each to see which one comes back to fighting trim more quickly.  I'll post follow-ups when I can.

Paul

Friends -

I'm traveling from Oregon to Maui at the end of this month and will be staying with friends I want to bake for. They've asked for sourdough, and I've seen some hints here for traveling with starter, but does anyone have advice for keeping it alive on a long plane flight?

If anyone has recommendations for bakers or bakeries to visit in Maui, I'd love those too. :-)

Toneweaver

Years ago (about 16!) my wife and I visited a restaurant in Cinque Terra on the Ligurian coast of Italy.  On our first night we randomly chose a restaurant, and we had the best pizza we had ever tasted.  We visited a second time, and we ordered a covered risotto.  When we got our food, we were presented with a stunning risotto in a large clay bowl that was encrusted with bread.  I had forgotten about it until recently, when friends of ours asked for restaurant recommendations for their upcoming trip.

I've also been thinking about trying a version of Jeff Verasano's pizza after reading about it on TFL - thanks David - (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24320/pizza-margherita-after-jeff-verasano).  I decided to try to make a variation of that dish we had using this dough.  I was quite happy with the way it turned out.

Here is the dish after finishing the bake.  The dough domed up in the oven (sorry, I didn't take a "before" photo).  It browned rather nicely at 525˚F.  I had to turn down the heat so that the dough on the outside would cook without the top burning.

On serving, the dome is broken open and the risotto (wild mushroom with leek and peppers in this case) is served.  Of course, we ate the bread! 

In retrospect, I would do a couple of things differently.  I'd lower the heat a bit and make the top dough thicker to allow the sides to cook longer.  But I was very pleased for a first try.

By the way, if anyone is interested, the restaurant is called Ristorante Miky and is located in Monterosso al Mare.  They served the dish in a rather large bowl, maybe around 14-inch diameter, and it was very showy. Apparently it is one of their specialties.  Judging by their website, Miky's looks a little fancier than when I was there. http://www.ristorantemiky.it/index3.html

Brad

Hello to all the bakers and Loafers!  I'd posted about 5 months ago about my upcoming camping journey around the Mediterranean, and received so much wonderful advice...  I can't thank everybody enough for their kind, helpful ideas, or begin to tell all the traveling tales.  

Apart from a broken camp stove (aaah!) I did discover a number of fantastic, unique local breads, but I will have to wait to post some pictures and descriptions of those (though I promise I will!)...

But as I'm sure so many of you can imagine, now that my husband and I have returned to our home in Hungary, I'm enthralled just to have an oven again!  Every day has featured me dancing around a new bread, and it's been a blast - but it's high time I share a bit!

Though my husband, David, disagrees, I think this recipe has been my favorite new bread thus far...

Greek Fennel, Yogurt, and Honey Bread

I unearthed this recipe in The Bread Book, by Sara Lewis, which my little brother's girlfriend gave to me last December.  I'd never heard of it, but I very much enjoy the breads it's offered.  Both my husband and I try to eat as healthily as we can, so I admit this recipe has been somewhat modified, and though sometimes this leads to problems I was entirely satisfied, and if fact declared it my best ever!  Multiple times! 

On our camping trip, we spent a month in Greece, between beaches and ancient ruins, and found a lot of fabulous flavors - yogurt featured prominently, as did spices like fennel, anise, and sesame.  This evoked it for me...  It's very sweet, with a dense but extremely soft crumb, and a soft, pliable crust, and filled with the flavor of the fennel seeds and a tad of citrus.  

These ingredients, by the way, are scaled down to an individual loaf, for me, because my husband doesn't like sweet breads, but it's easy to multiply as desired. 

Ingredients:

165 grams flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1-3 teaspoons honey (all depending on your personal taste for sweetness)

(dough enhancers I utilized):

2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

pinch of ginger 

1 teaspoon lemon juice

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

2 oz. + 2 teaspoons yogurt (warmed to room temperature)

2 oz. warm water

Extra honey, milk, and fennel seeds (to glaze)

Instructions:

Whisk a little bit of the flour, yeast, honey, lemon juice, and water in a large bowl to autolyze for 3-5 minutes.  

Add the fennel seeds and yogurt and blend well to distribute the seeds.

Add the salt and the rest of the flour and knead with floured hands on a well-floured board.  With the large proportion of honey, the dough will be extremely sticky at first, but after ten minutes of kneading it tends to become smooth.  Knead for 15 minutes, or until the dough is elastic and does not break if stretched.  

Allow dough to rise in a covered bowl until doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  

Remove dough from bowl and give it several soft kneadings and envelope turns.  On a lightly greased baking sheet, shape into a spiraled loaf, like a cinnamon bun.  

Allow loaf to rise for 45 minutes or so, while preheating the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.  

Lightly glaze loaf with milk, sprinkle with extra fennel seeds, and drizzle with honey, especially in the creases of the spiral (yum!).

After rising time, bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until shiny and golden brown, with an inner temperature of 205 degrees Fahrenheit.  

Allow to rest and cool - and enjoy!

p.s. if anybody would care to look at some travelogue accounts and photographs of our Mediterranean trip, as well as here in Hungary (currently how we are making our own wine), my blog address is http://erzsebetgilbert.blogspot.com...

OK - Crazy question, but I know that I will get some great feedback so here goes. I will be traveling by plane to Miami Beach, Florida from Baltimore, Maryland on Christmas day (Hooray!). I would love to bake my challah for my family and friends down there on Friday, but I dont want to mess up my host's kitchen and/or bring all my little helpful tools. I was thinking that I could bake the bread at home on Tuesday and carry it on the plane (though that would be bulky) OR - is there a way to make the dough, freeze it and then take it with me?

I figure that I will be in transit for about 6 hours all told - what if I make my dough and then put it in a garbage bag and freeze it over night and then put the bag in my checked luggage? Then when I get there leave it out all night to come to room temp and rise and shape and bake?

Anyone have any experience traveling with raw dough? Would love some advice.

Sharon

www.thebraidedloaf.com