January 8, 2015 - 6:17am
Milk and cumin in starter
I was surprised to hear that some starter recipes call for milk. Does the starter somehow keep the milk from going bad?
Joe Ortiz has a starter recipe that includes ⅛ tsp of cumin for ½ cup of whole wheat flour. The cumin isn't for seasoning.
Cumin helps to kind of engender the happy bacteria out of the air.
I'm not sure what that means! Can anybody elaborate?
Janet
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When Joe was on Baking with Julia (can be found on YouTube) he said that the the wee beasties were captured out of the air. We now that this is Bunk in the Hokum:-) Some say that the cumin is an antiseptic that keeps the bad wee beasties out but this too is urban myth. Both flour and cumin have huge amounts of wee beasties in them just waiting for a liquid to bring them to life. What the tiny amount of milk Joe uses is beyond me too since it is pasteurized.
What does work is his starter method. I have used it several times and it works every time for me and holds the record from start of starter to baked bread in 4 days. sweetbird did a great write up on it here on TFL.
Happy baking
After only 1½ days, too. I've tried plain whole wheat flour before without success, so it's possible that the milk and cumin made the difference. (Can't say for sure, as that was a different batch of flour, in a different part of the country.)
My only other successful starter was Debra Wink's "pineapple juice solution." It'll be interesting to see if this new starter stays viable on its own.
I just realized that this milk and cumin starter uses KA Organic whole wheat flour. My previous, unsuccessful starter was made with regular KA whole wheat.
Is organic flour better for starter?
Yes it's better for a starter - IMO. A lot will depend on exactly how flour is grown/handled/processed in your country though - e.g. non-organic might be sprayed with pesticides and so on - and that may retard natural yeasts from starting up. Hopefully organic wheats have not been sprayed, so should have more active yeastie beasties on them.
The organic stoneground wholemeal flour I use will start itself without anything special being done to it. (other than adding water, of-course!)
-Gordon
Gordon,
I don't remember seeing stoneground in the store. What brand do you use?
Janet
I'm in the UK - guessing you're the other side of the pond, so this probably isn't going to be helpful for you, but ...
I get my stoneground flour directly from the mill close(ish) to where I live in Devon, England - http://www.ottertonmill.com/ Great folks there and I love visiting and chatting to them and going back with a 25Kg bag (or 2) of their flour, still warm off the stones.
My other flours come from Shipton Mill via courier. http://www.shipton-mill.com/
-Gordon
What about raw milk? Would that inoculate the starter with Lactobacillus?
Years ago, I was given an Amish Friendship Starter that was maintained by adding flour, milk and sugar. The breads it made were tasty, but more like cake or quick bread and not leavened by the yeast. I located a recipe for the starter - inoculated with active yeast, so would be fairly territorial within the culture.
http://www.food.com/recipe/amish-friendship-bread-and-starter-153
I can't say that cumin won't work miracles, but also can't say it will.
After my brother made a SD starter, he sought to intensify the sour in his bread, so fed his starter with buttermilk a few times. He swore it made a difference and that the starter became super vigorous as a result, but since he otherwise tended to starve it, I wonder if it was just thrilled to be fed at all and would gladly have eaten its container if it hadn't been plastic with a half-life of millennia.
Happy 2015!
Cathy
Could you explain this in more detail, please?
What does the milk starter smell like after 27 days?
I just meant that active yeast grows quickly, so would tend to outcompete many invading microbes, such as the wild yeasts. It has been a long time, but I think the starter smelled yeasty, maybe yogurty.
I didn't keep it for a long time, got tired of feeding it.
Cathy
Water + flour has never failed me.. I've made starters with well water and even chlorinated city water. Back in the day before I owned a scale, even. I've no experience whatsoever with pineapple juice, bottled water, strict feeding schedules, carefully calibrated temperatures. My very first starter method I tried did call for a pinch of yeast 'to attract the wild yeasts in the air' (presumably with some mythical yeast pheromones). But flour, like probably all members of the vegetable kingdom, is already chock full o' yeast and bacteria.
I expect if you start with whole rye flour you'll see fermentation within hours. But good ol' unbleached AP plus tap water has always worked for me. It probably doesn't hurt that my kitchen is far from aseptic, and that I've never lived anywhere with soft water.
I made some yeast water once with figs that were fizzing away as fast as I could pick them, and it made dandy fig and fennel bread, but ultimately it was just easier to stick to sourdough since I seem to have a yeasty thumb or something.
...that were fizzing away.
Do you mean that they had started fermenting?
Figs on our trees ripen in July when it's nice and hot and humid. The instant they get ripe a bird typically gets the first taste, or if there's been any rain the fruit swells and cracks and the fizzing begins. The figs have a visible bloom of yeas on their skins just like grapes.
I tried making Joe Ortiz's milk-and-cumin starter, following his drectrions from Baking with Julia exactly. In a couple of days it had grown some lovely mold.
This ^^^
several times and it always works for me - it's the easiest method I've found besides Mini Ovens make a WW dough ball about the size of a golf ball, submerge it in white flour in a brown paper bag and put it on top of the fridge for 7 days. That one worked great too - twice and is the most .no muss no fuss. way to make a starter:-)