Making dry Sourdough Hopped French Bread Starter

[eDJ_]

Here is a craft you can try in camp when you are kicked back for a few days.   You only need a few ingredients
and a stop by a Home Brew Shop to buy a cheap bag of pelletized Hops.  You'll also need some potatoes, corn meal,
and perhaps some whole wheat flour.  You may have the other stuff already on hand.  

I used to watch my Dad make this stuff and I remember the one of a kind biscuits and rolls he made with it. 

Dried Hopped yeast cakes:

These are for those who want to make their own hop yeast leavener.   The ingredients necessary are two medium potatoes,  one to one and one half ounces of pelletized hops and a little white cornmeal.   

Wash and peal the potatoes, boil until cooked,  then mash them until smooth as you can get them.   Place hops (you'll have to experiment with amount but I'd suggest may five pellets) in 2 quarts of water in a cheese cloth sack and simmer them slowly for a half an hour.   Then strain off the hop liquid into the mashed potatoes.  Place this mixture in plastic bowl (never metal)  cover with lid or plastic wrap and allow it to remain at room temps for twenty four hours.   

Second step:

Take one half to one cup (amount varies) of corn meal and scald it with enough hot water to make a paste.  Take this mixture and combine it with the hop liquid & potato mixture, after it has aged for another twenty four hours.   Mix the two thoroughly so that a completely smooth blend is made.   If needed, and enough more dry cornmeal so that the mixture can be rolled out on a dough board to a one third inch thickness.  Cut the dough sheet into three inch squares, then set them aside in a dry airy place.  Turn these several times a day until they are completely dry.  

Store these in tightly sealed jars and use as needed.   

When you get low on these you can boil some more hops,  potatoes, and corn meal and repeat the process and put a cake in some warm water to dissolve it.   Then stir this into the new mixture as it will get the next batch fermenting again
and with each batch improve the flavor.  You can also give friends a couple of these cakes to start their own batch of sourdough starter.

To get this starter ready to use for making bread, pizza dough, cakes, cinnamon rolls, or whatever......
Place a couple of cakes of starter into a PLASTIC or glass bowl and add some warm water to dissolve.  Wait until it starts to bubble and become active,  use it with your favorite bread & dough recipes.  

I've even used it with my bread machine.

Yes the difference in taste and flavor is much different than that of Fleishmann's or Red Star. King Arthur offers a French Sourdough starter but a 5 gram (8 1/4 tsp makes 8 loafs) envelope is $10+.   (called Florapan)  but you could use 1/4 tsp to make your own starter and keep it going.

This may be fun to do as a demo at a Rally or Weekend meetup.  Then bake some French artisan bread in a Dutch Oven on a camp fire.  And again,  this would be cheap enough to do.

You can add cocoa powder,  molasses, etc to darken your craft bread if you so choose.  But just experiment with your favorite bread recipe.

Pelletized hops:

 

[jacqueg]

Never heard of this kind of dried starter!

Going to try it out.

 

[eDJ_]

Yes,  this goes back to old world ways of making yeast.   In fact some bakeries in centuries past would have this type of yeast being made on site for generations.  It had become what their bakery had as it's unique propriety standard of flavor.
If for some reason the strain died it was a disaster for that business.

I would mention that as Peach Trees are beginning to grow leaves now,  peach leaves can be substituted for hops if anyone wants to try that.  But the pelletized hops will keep for a long time in a refrigerator and impart their own unique flavor to a starter.  

I've mentioned rolling this out flat and cutting it into squares and then drying it.  If you do this you could find a plastic three pound coffee container to store these cakes in.  You may want to cut wax paper and place between layers.

If you don't want to roll it out and go thru the process of making and drying cakes, you could let the starter dough dry fairly well and crumble it in your hands and allow these crumbs to dry well before storing them in a plastic container. Just try them well so that they don't clump together.  

I have some other techniques anyone can use that start with a packet of dry yeast that I'll post later.  But you would need refrigeration to keep it.  If you don't use it regularly,  you need to stir in a spoon of sugar each week to feed it so it will stay active.  

My dad traveled in his work and I can still hear him having words with mom when he came home and found his starter hadn't been fed as she had forgotten to do that.   It became one of my jobs to make sure it was fed.  I think most of the stuff mom baked used baking powder anyways.  But what people remembered was the stuff dad baked.

 

[WanderingRose]

That’s a very interesting process, and thanks for sharing!

I have had traditional sourdough starter a number of times over the years, but you have to keep using and feeding them and all that.

I have frozen starters with success, but haven’t had one now in years.  This method would be fun to try.

Making your own bread is such a satisfying process, tho, and one I am deeply wedded to, using the no knead artisan recipes these days.

That is a beautiful looking loaf of bread there.

 

[eDJ_]

I know one fellow who cooks on an Alaskan Tug Boat and makes sourdough bread for his crew a couple of times a week.
When I PM with him he tells me he makes a large batch of dough and divides it into three big batches.  Two of them
go into large zip lock bags and into refrigeration while he bakes the last into loaves.

The refrigerated keeps well so that he can make the dough once a week  when he has time (or other crew members willing to help out and not have so much work to do in baking for the next two batches.   

As for keeping sourdough starter,  I have always understood that if a starter more liquid refrigerated starter wasn't being use regularly to feed it at least once a week to keep it alive.    It is a living thing. 



If you want to make a sourdough starter that will take a week to be ready  you can do this.  It will need refrigeration once ready to use.

In a plastic bowl add 2 cups of warm water.

To this add a package of yeast and dissolve and wait for it to start bubbling some.

Once bubbling add a tablespoon of sugar and stir with a plastic or wooden spoon. (don't use metal)

When this begins to bubble again,  stir in 3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour. Stir well until mixed.
For the next week keep it out in a warm place above 70 degrees F and stir two or three times a day and keep 
a cover over it.  The mixture will become thinner in time and may have a liquid form on top.  Just keep stirring it into 
the batter/starter.  

In this time the starter will get some airborne bacteria in it when stirring and that will aid the souring process. 

When done place in refrigeration.  

If you use from this starter replace that quantity you use with 3 parts flour and 2 parts water.  Stir well and let it sit out
overnight covered before placing it back in refrigeration.  If you don't use any for a week,  stir in a teaspoon of sugar and  place back in the refrigerator.

When you are ready to bake,  take the starter you are going to use out of the jar or bowl you are keeping it in,  sit that starter where it can warm up for about 4 hours.  Add flour and water to the starter container and let sit out covered over night before putting it back in to the refrigerator.

When adding sourdough starter to flour to make a loaf of bread you may want to use a lot more than what you would if you were using active dry yeast.  Perhaps as much as a Cup.  Then observe the action in the bread to see how it rises.

 

[Dingfelder]

Love the idea of starter, and have made fantastic bread from aged starter. I find feeding it is the problem, and that sometimes aged starter, even starter aged not that long, and fed daily or every other day, does not want to rise much, forming an extremely tasty but also very dense loaf. I'm okay with dense, but I don't want to have no choice, you know?

I can say I've succeeded regarding taste, but the dough became lifeless in the oven even with the addition of wheat gluten, a bit of extra sugar and/or wheat, etc. I'm just not really pleased yet.

 

[WanderingRose]

If you have, say, a quart of old starter, that isn’t doing what it should, try throwing out all but 1/2 cup or so, and proportionately feeding that.

If your starter is still good, this should revive and refreshen it.