April 22, 2011 - 7:15pm
Altamura Tantrum Loaf
Pane del capriccio; from Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" Made with Durum Flour. Using the Sterile Sourdough X Starter.
It is possible to sterilize flour and water to create a useable starter and bake a loaf. Tasty with a mild sour taste.
Jim
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but it's pretty cryptic. Why tantrum? What do you mean by sterilize? And what is that wicked cool shape? More details please.
If you read the other posts there's more explanations, but I'll give ya the short version. The Tantrum loaf is from the Altmura region of Italy where they're known for their outstanding durum loaves. The Tantrum part refers to shaping a flat loaf (wicked cool shape) that would bake quickly to satisfy the children who were throwing a tantrum waiting for the bread to bake. I imagine the shape allows it to be torn apart quickly.
The sterilize part was after a long post (Sourdough Water) as to where the wild beasties come from. As an experiment (X) I sterilized durum and water, with heat, in an attempt to catch wild beasties. It did work yet I need to do another X to prove that the sterilization actually killed the beasties that come with the flour. The reason I chose durum was because the labeling said 100% flour (no additives) and I just recieved some from KA.
I'm keeping the durum SD going and switched over to unsterilized durum after I baked a few loaves and ran out of sterile.
Jim
I just read through these posts (I admit the one on sourdough water had me dreaming of cliff notes). So the bottom line is you sterilized some flour and water and then used them to create a viable starter presumably with wild critters captured from the environment, thereby disproving the theory that wild yeast starters are populated mainly by the yeastie beasties in the flour? Hope I got that right. And you did this with a durum starter. And you still manage to bake bread with all this microbiology going on. And wicked cool shaped bread besides. I'm impressed. So how was the Altamura tantrum bread?
I didn't disprove any theories, just tried to show buggies could be captured. There are enough buggies in flour to start a starter; some good some bad some live some die. It just confirms ones environment/maintenance eventually determines the uniqueness of their starter.
The first Tantrum loaf seemed to have lactic acid and very little acetic acid. Tasted good; no bite. My wife said the loaf was sweet but not on my palate. Second loaf, Volcano, I gave a bold bake with black and white sesame seeds. More flavor; tiny bite. Rather than trying to fool with the starter to get a bigger bite, I added altes brot (old bread) and I like it a lot.
Thanks for the interest - Jim