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Tag: Bread Making

Return to Sourdough Bread Making

Post Views: 1,699 So, I rewatched the “Netflix Original” documentary set “Cooked” again.  Based on the book by Michael Pollan, it also features and is narrated by him.  One chapter in particular, “Air” is what got me on the road for making my own bread. So, I tried several times to make bread using an “air start” sourdough core.  In every case, what I got was a flavourful but remarkably dense bread.  It was edible, but it just wasn’t matching what I thought bread should be.  Commercial yeasts did what I expected, but it was missing the depth of flavour and aroma that my sourdough experiments yielded. So, about a week ago, I went back and rewatched “Air”.  I figured out what it was I was missing.  Bread,…

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Air-Start Sourdough

Post Views: 464 I recently watched the Netflix documentary series “Cooked” (http://michaelpollan.com/videos/netflix-documentary-series-cooked/). It’s a remarkably good series, and I strongly recommend it. In it, Chef Michael Pollan spends a significant amount of time on the topic of bread making. One of the points that is made is that the fundamentals of bread have changed significantly since the early 1900s … arguably for the first time since bread was invented by the ancient Egyptians. Specifically, the introductions of white flour and commercial fast-rising yeasts has radically changed the state of the art. The effect has been a reduction in the naturally present nutrition contained in the flour, as well as a reduction in the nutrition and flavor that comes from a slower fermentation process. Wait, what? Bread ferments? Yes,…

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