hey everyone so if you've been watching our channel you know that we picked up a
wood-fired clay brick pizza oven and I've been experimenting with baking
bread in it some failures so far and so I'm revisiting this whole bread idea
bread is bread is my nemesis it's something that I've played with over the
years and I've tried but I've I've never quite gotten good enough and we've
always lived somewhere where there's been a bakery that you know for a dollar
or two dollars you could get a really good artisanal loaf of bread but I'm
gonna take another run at it and taking another run at bread means of course
naturally leavened bread or sourdough bread needs to be brought into the mix
and I really like the idea of of baking bread with with natural yeast wild yeast
all yeast is natural so let's call it wild yeast or the yeast that that comes
on the flour so in order to to go down this road you have to make a starter and
it's really simple I mean it happens all on its own if you mix an equal part of
water with an equal part of flour the yeast that already lives on the flour is
gonna bloom it's gonna multiply and then all of the other bacteria that's in that
in that flour will also bloom and multiply and a couple of things are
going to happen the lactobacillus that's in there is going to come to life and
the pH is going to lower to the point where only good bacteria and only good
yeast can live making it safe so it can sit on your counter forever and it won't
go bad and so here's how you start out on day one you take equal amounts of
flour and water two ingredients that's it
mix them together put them in a nonreactive
container either glass or ceramic for the first couple of days I mark the
container just so I can see when the yeast starts working and you won't see
much activity by day two you really want to see any until probably day three but
a please supply stack wrap over it and leave it overnight day two you come back
if some of the liquid separates and floats to the top in between feedings
that's okay everything will be fine I like to give
it a smell every time I feed it what it looks like and what it smells like is
really going to tell you the health of your starter you'll get to know it
really well you add another cup of flour and another
cup of water
now mix it together again really well you're looking for kind of a loose
batter like pancake batter
put it back into a glass container market if you want to cover it in
plastic wrap and leave it for day three day three you might start to see some
bubbling action you should start to see something but if it if it hasn't
happened yet don't worry about it every time I feed it I give it a really good
stir to make sure it's a homogenous mixture take out half and get rid of it
throw it out it's no good you can weigh it or measure it to figure out what
happy is but for the most part eyeballing it is fine - the remaining
half mix in one cup of flour and 1 cup of water mix it up really well again
you're looking for kind of a pancake batter consistency put it back in your
container use a clean container if you want to and cover it with some plastic
wrap now from day three to day seven you're going to do exactly the same
thing you're going to take out half you're going to put back in one cup of
water and one cup of flour give it a mix cover it and leave it on your counter by
about you know day three to day five it should already be working you should
have a pretty good amount of yeast and lactobacillus in there working and it is
viable at that point to go ahead and bake bread but you really want the
flavors to develop the whole reason for using wild yeast and and this wild
culture is the flavor it's not just about leavening the dough and and
creating lift and having it rise it really is about all of the other flavor
components that come with it by day seven it should be working it should be
fine you should be able to start baking bread now if you leave this culture on
your counter you're gonna have to stir it every day you're gonna have to take
out half everyday and then feed it again with more flour and more water
give it a stir cover it and then the next day come back I got to tell you
that's a bit of a pain in the ass even for someone who cooks as often as I
do for someone who spends their life in a Test Kitchen baking and making
stuffing and every day feeding I'm not really all that interested so this can
live in the fridge and if you're someone who only bakes once a week or once every
other week having it live in the fridge really is the best option so you feed it
it stick it in fridge the night before you want to bake something you take it
out get rid of half feed it and then the next morning when you're going to bake
it will have bubbled up again it'll be good and viable take out what you need
for baking your bread feed it again put it back in the fridge and forget about
it really you don't have to take much time
or care with this it's gonna happen on its own it's going to take care of
itself I know a lot of people get freaked out and they want to weigh it
and they want to be really exact I've spoken to a lot of professional bakers
who are just like yeah you know if put some in take some out puts them in take
some out it's not rocket science humans have been doing this for
thousands of years but here are some really good tips for you in order to get
started and keep it viable when you first start out I just used unbleached
bread flour in this batch a lot of people like to start with with rye flour
unbleached rye flour it has a slightly different group of flora and fauna and
I'll list the ones that are probably in there but if you only have bread flour
in your pantry go ahead and use that it'll be fine but really you should be
using unbleached bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour make sure
the flour is unbleached because that whole bleaching process strips away a
lot of nutrients but it also strips away a lot of the natural bacteria and yeast
that are that are there it kills them and it's
gonna take a lot longer to get going and it's not gonna taste as good and it
won't be as viable and you'll kind of look at any go ha this is no good I'm
not gonna do this anymore so unbleached flour rye flour is a great
starting point and you know every once in a while just feed it again with rye
flour you feed it with bread flour in between and I've started with white
flour but I've fed it a couple times with rye flour and it smells really good
really good the next thing is water tap water for
most people is going to be fine but some places over chlorinate or over
chloramine over bleach their water to make it safe and all of those chemicals
in the water will slow down the development of the bacteria that you
want if you live in one of those places use bottled water it's probably the best
choice distilled water bottled water mineral water just don't use your tap
water if you think it's over chlorinated so that's it sourdough starter or levan
some people will call this a farm whatever you want to call it come on
back we're gonna bake some bread with it we're gonna make a lot of other things
with it because you're gonna be feeding this and discarding and you don't always
want to discard it so you know maybe you might want to make some waffles or
muffins or cakes pretty versatile thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you