July 29, 2007 - 3:37pm
If you don't have spring water what do you do with tap water
I'm out of spring water for baking sourdough and remember reading that if you leave tap water out for several hours that the chlorine will disapate.... how many hours does it have to sit out?
Sylvia
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My understanding is that it's only for several hours, perhaps three or so. If I think of it, I leave mine out overnight, though that's probably overkill.
-brian
how much impact does using tap water have on the bread? I know everything I've seen or read has said to use de-chlorinated water, and maybe I should try it next time, but I've used tap and my doughs still rise okay. does the taste change? does rising time change because the yeast has to try and survive the chlorine?
I use tap and I use filtered. I find it makes no difference at all. :S
The chlorine thing, if you put the water in a wide upen topped pan, like a skillet with high sides, it willl take an hour maybe 2 at the most to evaporate. Large area = quicker evaporation. :) Or so my microbiologist chemist friends told me last week. ;)
I've used spring water, tap water left overnight for evaporation, and water straight from the tap, and have never seen any difference in the bread dough. Most modern water systems use a charcoal filtration process that radically reduces the need for chlorine, so even straight from the tap the chlorine level is very low. You might give a call to your local water department to find out if they use the low-chlorine system.
"I am not a cook. But I am sorta cooky."
There are two ways to Chlorinate water in water treatment plants. One is Chlorine (the most common) and the other is Chloramine. Chlorine will dissipate upon sitting awhile but Chloramine will not, and most sourdoughs will not tolerate Chloramined water. My city tap water is very lightly chlorinated and my starters and doughs do fine with it. If you can smell chlorine in your tap water I would be wary of using it. I cannot detect any smell of chlorine in mine.
According to Peter Reinhart "Bread Baker's Apprentice" this is not necessary at all, unless you live in a water district who just has really bad water. He feels that the chlorine flavor will completely dissapear during the baking process. Does anyone have a thought on that?
rcornwall
Maggie Glezer states in A Blessing of Bread, page 82; “…Ordinary tap water is fine to use in a sourdough starter—if we can drink it, so can the microflora…”
Jeffrey Hamelman states in Bread, page 51; “…In the creation of a sourdough or levain culture, there is another consideration. If the water used is highly chlorinated, the chlorine can have a negative impact on the culture by inhibiting the metabolism of the developing microorganisms. In this case, simply leave a bucket or jar of water out overnight, uncovered. By the next day, most of the chlorine will have dissipated…”
On page 353 Hamelman states again; “…Chlorinated water impedes fermentation and can be harmful during the fragile beginnings of culture development. Chlorine gas rapidly dissipates, however, and by keeping an open jug of water on the counter for several hours, most all the chlorine will dissipate. Filtered water and well water can, of course, be used to begin a culture…”
It is interesting what Sourdoughlady said and I really didn’t know about chloramined water. So I just looked up what we have here in our city and it is chloramined water – chlorine mixed with amonia. I have always used water right out of the tap without problems for starting and maintaining my starter or my bread doughs.
I wonder why there seems to be so much disagreement on this issue.
And what about hard well water?
I am on a farm where the well water doesn't smell off but the taste is off. We have it tested for the use for poutry and livestock and it is safe but I know the calcium level is incredibly high too.
I should try it with a batch of bread, then it would be an authentic pioneer style bread. Hopefully not something to build a house with :)
As for the smell of chlorine burning off during baking, I would support that as I have used bakers ammonia in some cookies and the ammonia bakes off there completely.
I wonder if there have been any real studies done on this topic. Certainly there is a logical consideration being taste. I was at our local community fair on Sunday and ran into someone selling water filtration systems. He had me try the filtered water and then our home tap water. I was blown away by the difference. Its probably better to be safe then sorry and use filtered water.
rcornwall
All I know from my own experience is that I have used both tap and bottled water and have always had excellent results. In fact I have a sourdough starer that came from tap water and I love it. Maybe there isn't that much chlorine in the water where I live? I don't know, but I do wonder if there have been any conclusive studies done.
rcornwall
I use spring water for the starter itself (out of an abundance of caution), but tap water for anything else. If I have some cool boiled water in the tea kettle, I'll use that too, instead of spring. My water does not smell of chlorine, but it is chlorinated. It is quite tasty to drink, straight out of the tap.
I have been going a bit nuts with my bread and while I seemed to be doing everything right I was not getting my wonderful results that I used to get when I baked before in another location. The last time I baked my loaves, I was so pleased - and the only thing I did differently was to feed my starter and my dough with a bottle of Aquafina instead of previously boiled tap water. Small adjustments can bring big changes in outcomes, and for now I am going with the idea that somehow this tap water is too hard here, and that the bottled water did the trick.
If I was a guessing man, my guess would be that the whole “don’t-use-chlorinated-water” idea was borne out of a bit of over-cautiousness coupled with a bit of intuitive reasoning. Since chlorine is added to water to help kill off harmful micro-organisms, it’s only logical to assume that it wouldn’t be good for the micro-beasties that live in our starter. However, I think that the amount of chlorine in the water, as well as the age and robustness of the starter, will play a significant role in how successfully things will turn out. For a new and/or a relatively weak starter, water with a high level of chlorine can be deadly. For a well established starter with very active yeast and bacteria cultures, the same water may not pose a problem at all, as each chlorine molecule can only kill a small number of microorganisms before it is neutralized.
As for well water and other sources that contain higher levels of mineral hardness: yes, these can affect your finished product’s flavor and texture profile. This is what gives bread baked in certain regions its distinctive (and often hard to reproduce in other locations) flavor. Whether or not it will affect the life cycle of your starter depends on whether or not you’ve been using the hard water regularly. If your starter is used to filtered water, and you switch it to a hard water source, you may see an adverse reaction for the first few days. However, this will pass once your wee beasties get used to the new minerals in their environment. Something to keep in mind is that if you are using “spring water” that you are buying from a store, what you are using is water that has been steam-distilled or reverse-osmosis-filtered, and then it has had minerals added back to it to affect its taste. The small print on the bottle should tell you how that water was prepared, and what minerals are present.