Itterating

My absence here indicates one of two things. I've 1) lost steam and stopped baking, or 2) been so caught up in it that posting is more of a distraction. The latter is actually the case. Once I have more of a method and someone to photo/video the process, posting will go much more smoothly. Here are some of the things I have been working on figuring out: 
1) refreshing my sourdough - what % of water works best? I've decided on a 70% water to flour for my starter. This makes it much easier to incorporate into the dough since I don't have a mixer. Another starter quandary was how often to refresh. It seems that refrigeration is the best option here. Refresh, put in cooler, take out 6-12 hours prior to using for a dough.
2) using my sourdough starter to start other starters. Lots of starts, no stops there apparently. I've tried this with rye, wheat, and teff. Teff, as stated in the last post, is by far my favorite, but the other two offer their own unique flavors and personalities. I've gotten some positive feedback for my wheat starter, but it did not do well rising the dough. The best thing I've found to fix this is to start the wheat starter with a teff one. duh.
3) refrigeration of doughs. I've been playing around with bulk fermentation in the cooler vs. dividing and shaping loafs before putting the dough in the fridge. The second option seems to be the best, though the first option works - especially if it has a teff-based starter. It was beneficial if I was short on time, say, mixing a batch to close to bed-time. With bulk fermentation, I mixed the dough, let it rise for an hour and a half, folded it, and stuck it in the cooler. If I waited to divide the dough before refrigerating, it would have cost me an additional two hours of sleep. But dividing the loafs first is best because all you have to do is take them out of the fridge and let them finish proofing for a few hours - there's not really any additional work involved. Plus, you can leave them in the cooler for up to two days if the temp is at or below 45 degrees.
4) mixing methods - I've finally settled upon a tweaked version of the bertinet method (see video from earlier post). Now I'm trying to figure out the biggest batch size I can do using this method. I'm up to a six pound batch now, and I think I'll be able to do a ten to twelve pound batch at maximum. This would allow me to produce eight loaves at a time! And give me a decent upper body workout.
5) steam methods - I think for now I've settled on dumping about 6oz of water in the oven, 3oz on each side wall. I really should get a spray bottle. I imagine the current way is not very good for the oven floor.
6) there are a few other odds and ends that I have incorporated into my bread production that have helped efficiency, but I'll get to those once I have another post up depicting the creation of bread.
7) future considerations... I'm about to experiment with freezing my dough. I'll divide it first and put the loafs in molds before plastic wrapping them, or using some other way of making them air-tight. This way I could potentially increase my production quite substantially, but without increasing the amount of hands-on time spent. 
Anyway, this has been in part an update, but mostly just an excuse to put off running in rather warm weather. So before it gets any hotter, adieu.

St. Elmo Sourdough with Teff Starter

I've just discovered something about teff flour that, to me, is pretty amazing. Teff is a grain best known for its use in Ethiopian dishes, most notably the flat bread injera. I started experimenting with teff because I loved the flavor of injera the first time I had Ethiopian food - a very rich, sour flavor with intriguing hints of yogurt. I've used it as a starter a few times, but only noticed this morning that it has a rising capability seemingly akin to yeast. I wish I had taken a few pictures yesterday when I began my teff starter (1:1 flour water). I put about an ounce of my sour starter in the teff mixture at 8:30AM, and after I had incorporated the flour, water, and starter, the contents took up maybe an inch and a half of the container. By 12:00PM the starter had tripled in size filling at least six inches of the container, which isn't too uncommon for even a normal sour, but still very good action. By about 9:00PM that evening, I mixed my dough using 6 ounces of this teff starter (which smelled almost exactly like yogurt at this point) and 8 ounces of my sour starter. The formula was for a rye starter sourdough, but I substituted the teff starter for the rye. The dough was predominantly bread flour, but had a small amount of rye flour in it as well. I let the dough autolyse for about 20min after roughly mixing it together, and then kneaded it for 15min until I had decent gluten formation. I put the dough in a covered bowl and let it rise for an hour. When I checked it to give it a fold, the dough had doubled in size! I folded the dough, and put it back in the bowl for another hour. It doubled again! I let it sit for a final hour before dividing it and it still doubled. I divided and pre-shaped the dough and let it rest for about 15min before shaping and putting into loaf pans. I then covered these with plastic and placed them in the cooler at about 1:00AM, the loafs sitting a good inch below the top of their molds. I woke up today at 8:00AM and took the molds out of the cooler to find that the loafs had risen to the tops of their molds. This is with no yeast at all. I let them warm up at room temp. until 10:30AM, and the loafs were a good half inch above the tops of their molds. I've not seen this kind of action in traditional yeastless sourdough breads, so I was pretty excited.

                                                     This is my sourdough starter

I used about an ounce in the teff/water mixture

This is the resulting teff starter

                                         A view after I used most of it. Smelled just like yogurt.

Look at these guys! No yeast!

 

And the side view better illustrates the rise. Maybe even more than a half inch.

This bread also has one of the richest, most intricate sour flavors I have tasted. I am definitely going to explore the possibilities of teff further!