Cooking Cheap

At Cooking Cheap it’s all about using up the stuff in the fridge. This time I’m using up the jar of yeast. Then I can go back to making sourdough.

I started a biga or poolish yesterday. 4 1/2 oz of flour (1 Cup), 4. 1/8 oz of water (1/2 Cup) and 1 tsp of yeast. I let it ferment for some hours in the warm spot and put it in the fridge overnight.

Today, I let the biga warm up for an hour and mixed in 10 1/8 oz of flour, 5 1/4 oz of water, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of yeast. That should make for a 65% hydration. Hand kneaded for 10 minutes. I probably should have done it longer. I let that rise for 2 1/4 hours on the counter. It had doubled but was still tacky to the touch and a bit of a pain to shape.

I put in the banneton for 2 hours on the counter top, slashed and baked at 450F. It looks like many of my other loaves of bread. Some things look good, some not so good. It looks fine to the untrained eye but not worthy of taking a picture and posting it.

Disappointing? Hardly. I’ve proven to myself that there is no magic in using sourdough instead of yeast. It’s a nice looking loaf of bread, but no better looking that some previous sourdoughs. The taste will be different of course, I predict it will be good.

The lesson? If you’re reaching for muliple day rises and retards to build taste or texture or crumb the time advantage of commercial yeast is lost. There are other differences but I think it’s really about kneading and timing and temperature, not the source of the yeast. If I choose to learn one well, it might as well be sourdough because IMO, the taste is better, and growing your own yeast is a lot cheaper than a $5 jar of yeast.

This loaf could end up as bread crumbs. Not because there’s anything horribly wrong with it. Bread crumbs are useful and home made is a lot cheaper. Just thinking about another batch of bread dumplings gets me all worked up. There is a real difference in meatballs for example, made with home made bread crumbs.

[Next Day]
It made fine bread crumbs