making sourdough bread on the road

[ziplock]

Has anyone bothered baking bread on the road?

Have you started a starter on the road?

Did it have a better or different flavor from the one you were used to at home?

I am interested.

Sourdoughs from different environments/states.

I'm only used to mine in Maryland.

Thanks for the chat.

 

[RedT]

Have traveled with and fed my starter, have made and baked bread whilst on the road. Only problem I had was getting the oven to 510 degrees before the bake. Did not notice any change in the sourdough taste, but then I'm not a bread connoisseur.

 

[Wasillaguy]

Had thought about starting a thread, then found this one.
The wife and I and my starter left Alaska 9/9/22. Down the west coast to So. Cal, across the 40 to Missouri, all the way down to NOLA to wait out the cold spell, and now back across the bottom heading toward Phoenix.
Starter wasn't happy for the first 2 weeks, but has been great since.
I've baked a basic sourdough loaf with Guiness, a coffee pepper rye, and a long ferment wheat that has become our staple breakfast lately.
I've also made pancakes and just today, a chocolate cake with my discard.

 

[ziplock]

@Wasillaguy

I want to start a new batch of starter when we go down to St. Augustine in May. I want to see if I can capture something different:

Will a sourdough starter taste different when made in different regions of the world (the U.S. vs. Asia)?



Beth Goldowitz
home cook with 50 years experienceUpvoted by
Tilman Ahr
, trained chef with a borderline obsessive interest in food history and scienceAuthor has 17.9K answers and 51.3M answer views4y
They do indeed develop different flavors, and the usual explanation is that starters will capture local yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria, which impart different flavors to the bread. There is some controversy about this, as Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, the bacteria that makes San Francisco sourdough so distinctive has been found in cultures from as far away as France and Germany. The principle yeast in the culture is Candida milleri, but that will also vary depending on where the starter originated. C. milleri is very tolerant of the high acid levels produced by L. sanfranciscencis and other lactobacilli.
Researchers have found that once a culture is established, the yeasts tend to stay the same, while populations of different lactobacilli will vary. So cultures may contain the same species of bacteria in different ratios, which will give them distinctive flavors.
For a while I was maintaining three different sourdough cultures. One was sent to me by a friend in San Francisco, one was from King Arthur Flour, which apparently originated in New England, and one I started myself in Brooklyn New York. Each of them had a distinctive flavor and needed slightly different proofing times to get the best from them. I’ve since eliminated the KAF one, because I liked my Brooklyn sourdough better and keeping three cultures going at the same time is a pain in the ass.
The Biology of . . . Sourdough

@Wasillaguy ,

Wish I could try your starter from Alaska.

 

[Wasillaguy]

Thanks for that info Zip, very interesting. I'm of the thinking that for the health benefits, it's best to consume breads from wild sourdough from your own locale, kind of like local honey is best.
It's just a theory, but your post mentions that a strain of candida is the most common. I find that intriguing because another strain of candida may be responsible for many health issues, primarily inflammation.
Could it be that wild yeast long ferment bread act as an inocculent of sorts, where you consume the baked dead critters and your immune system kicks up as a result?
Give us this day our DAILY bread.
Daily. Like a vitamin.

Anyway, back to the fun part-
We will be going back on the road soon and I will be restarting my Alaska wild from dried.

I've decided the reason I had trouble the 1st two weeks of travel last outing that it's because the vibration is shaking the gas bubbles out, so it's too dense for the critters to get going good.
Going to try a stiff starter (80% hydration) and see if that helps. Also will try keeping in fridge on travel days to see if that helps. Means an extra day to get it revved up, but I was seeing that anyway.

Great to have a dough head to bounce stuff off of. God bless!

 

[ziplock]

dough head

I wish I was!

I haven't dried my starter and I would like a reliable set of directions and your starter recipe. You know, the one that you used to get the starter you have dried and use?

 

[Wasillaguy]

I started mine pretty much like this-

This Sourdough Starter Breathes Life Into Bread

This sourdough starter recipe is actually a crash course in parenting.

www.delish.com

Once you have an active starter, drying is as simple as smearing a thin layer on parchment paper, then crumbling it up once it dries.
To rehydrate, add a little water to some flakes until they dissolve, then add equal amounts flour/water (say 30g each), discard and repeat after 12 hrs, and again, and you should be bubbling away.

 

[ziplock]

Yeah, I've read those recipes.

I just thought you might have an Alaskan recipe. Thanks for the chat!

@Wasillaguy

 

[Wasillaguy]

As far as sourdough flavor in my bread, I can't get a good San Fran sour flavor without adding citric acid. I've tried a lot of variations, made a few bricks along the way.

 

[John From Detroit]

Will a sourdough starter taste different when made in different regions of the world (the U.S. vs. Asia)?

Well... They say it is in at least part. Dependent on the local natural (Wild) yeast. so it may.

Or it may not.

I don't know.

 

[Wasillaguy]

Did a little digging-

"bread sourdough is a very promising source of technological, antimicrobial, toxin-degrading, immune system-, and faecal microbiota-modelling biological agents for the preparation of food, nutraceuticals, and feed, which has great potential at industrial biotechnology scale."

Bread Sourdough Lactic Acid Bacteria-Technological, Antimicrobial, Toxin-Degrading, Immune System-, and Faecal Microbiota-Modelling Biological Agents for the Preparation of Food, Nutraceuticals and Feed - PubMed

This review intends to highlight the fact that bread sourdough is a very promising source of technological, antimicrobial, toxin-degrading, immune system-, and faecal microbiota-modelling biological agents for the preparation of food, nutraceuticals, and feed, which has great potential at...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[ziplock]

great potential at industrial biotechnology scale.

That is good to know! Thanks for the link!

 

[Wasillaguy]

"great potential at industrial biotechnology scale"

I can't help reading between the lines of that and see "we can make a fortune pulling each individual benefit out and making it a drug or supplement".
In the mean time everyone is buying and eating dead bread from the supermarket.
Why aren't there public service announcements telling everyone they need to eat real bread?

 

[TheBar]

I've found fresh milled flour makes as much difference as the yeast. I worked at a wheat elevator for 4 summers while in college. Once wheat hits an elevator it is stored in a 5 year rotation which loses a lot of flavor. That rotation cycle started in the dust bowl days when there were shortages of flour.

I've found many interesting yeasts on eBay. One of my favorites is the Bavarian Black Death yeast. So named because the German bakery using this yeast has been in continuous operation since the bubonic plague days 400 years ago. Who knows if that is true but the heavy course bread has that distinctive German flavor/texture with rye but is also good with white flour. This link is from a different seller but the story and the bread looks to be similar.