I thought yeast infections were caused by eating too much bread up until I was 16 and got one myself. I had eaten a big slice of a baguette a few days prior to symptoms, and now thought I was going to be gluten intolerant because I ate too much bread in one sitting. No one had ever taught me what it actually was, and was laughed at (rightfully so) for my misunderstanding. Thank you, American sex ed, for teaching me absolutely nothing.
this is my first mead so I'm making the basic traditional that is up on the wiki. I did boil the whole pack for 10 minutes so I believe it is safe but I'm curious if i screwed the mead with this little deviation. the rest of the recipe was to the T besides the bakers yeast.
My understanding is that the story goes something like this:
- Flour is invented and there is much rejoicing.
- The first leavened bread is made using a sourdough-type mixture, using a mixed culture wild yeasts and lactobacillus and whatever is around, which can be made at home or preserved over time like a sourdough starter. Or maybe it was stuff leftover from beer production?
- Sometime in the mid-1800s, commercial yeast production comes through, and cheap reliable well-preserved single-species yeast largely replaces starters for the home baker. In the Americas for the home baker, I'm assuming this happened around the mid-1800s, since my 1830s American cookbook assumes you'll be using a homemade "liquid yeast" and my 1860s American cookbook assumes you'll be buying yeast. But I assume it was different timelines all over and for different bakers (e.g., home vs. commercial.)
Anyway, today we think of there as being a noticeable taste difference between yeast-leavened dough and dough made with sourdough. Did the people of yore notice this difference? Write about it? (Either of them switching at home, or noticing that bread from their bakery has changed?)
I'm really curious about this transition. Thanks!
Arguably, the dorkiest thing I've ever done.
I made an improvised mash using 600 grams of pale ale malt and 500 grams of whole wheat flour, mashed for 90 minutes.
The wort was boiled for 60 minutes, 5 grams of Cascade was added at 60 minutes. Another 5 grams were added at flame out.
The flour did get pretty gooey and a long soak was necessary to clean the BIAB bag. However, no considerable issues were noted with the inclusion of flour in the process itself, in this batch.
My target volume was 5,5 liters, but I overshot that by a liter since I accidentally ended up running cold tap water (of very high quality) into the pot when chilling in the sink. Whoops.
Miraculously, no difference in SG was recorded in the cooled wort after the dilution. However, there's a straightforward reason for this: I'd previously shattered my hydrometer and took no readings. Again, whoops.
After chilling the wort, 90 grams of active sourdough starter was added to the bottom of the fermenter bucket and the 30 degrees Celsius wort was poured through a sieve, directly on top of the sourdough to rinse out/spread embedded yeast and bacteria.
Bubbling, albeit weak, was visible in the airlock the next morning.
After roughly four days (as you may have noticed, the scientific method of serendipity has been chosen as the overarching approach), little to no activity was visible in the airlock and the yeast seemed to mostly have dropped out of suspension along with a modest amount of break material. The beer was then transferred to a second sanitized fermenter bucket.
A sample of the beer was collected for tasting. It was... OK!
Actually, a little better than OK. Nothing to write home about, perhaps, but entirely drinkable. It was clearly pretty weak. The taste was predominantly beery. Something like a hybrid between a not-so-clean adjunct lager and a weissbier with less yeast character?
There was no acidity, which was to be expected as my sourdough is not very tart to begin with and lactobacillus growth should be held back by the hops (if not harboring a hop-resistant lactobacillus strain). Possibly, it may become somewhat sour as time goes by.
I couldn't taste any residual sugar, and assume the FG was low, but attenuation largely remains a mystery as the OG was probably also pretty low. I didn't pick up clearly on any esters, but there were (I think?) some vague funky notes in the background.
One sample of trub/yeast slurry was collected from the bottom of the fermenter
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I’ve been making sourdough for a few months and have gotten quite good with getting an open crumb. Now I’ve moved onto using instant yeast recently but I cannot get the same level of openness with my sourdough.
One example: I make a baguette dough with a 75% hydration main dough and a 20% poolish. The poolish also has 0.5% instant yeast, which is all I use for the entire recipe. I let the main dough autolyse while my poolish rise for 3-4 hours. When I add the poolish to the main dough and let it ferment, I feel like the fermentation does not happen as evenly as with my sourdough, even though I mix them the same way. I also find that my gluten seems to be weaker with instant yeast than with sourdough, even if I don’t autolyse my sourdough. Finally, my crumb is a lot less open with instant yeast.
Here’s my questions: When my sourdough rises I’m used to a level of puffiness and jiggliness that indicates bulk fermentation is done. With yeast the dough just does not look the same. Is this because my yeast% is too low, my mixing is not good enough, or some other factor? Since I use a poolish I expect the small amount of yeast to multiply and be able to leaven the whole dough like with a levain. Am I wrong to think of yeast in this way? If I were to use a straight dough method, what % instant yeast should I use?
Thanks
I'm using "Fast Rise, Highly Active yeast." The recipe says to combine all the ingredients and make a dough.
Do I have to activate the yeast in something first? Or should I go ahead and just dump the yeast in with the flour, salt, and water?
I'm considering starting a microbakery and one of the things I'm really good at is making babka with commercial yeast. I'm also really passionate about using my sourdough starter for everything, but it just takes so long. I'm currently adjusting my recipe to try to use my sourdough starter for my babka, but is it dumb to wait that long for it to proof? Will you even be able to taste any sour flavors over the sugar in the dough and the jam that I'll be using to fill it?
This is probably common question but I saw a meme on Insta and was wondering if you could😳😳🤔🤔
Is this going to be good? I’m very apprehensive on the idea. I’m a distiller for a small brewery. This is not my call. I’m worried that it’ll be too flat or harsh. I need to figure out how to use it in cocktails too. Normally, you wouldn’t mix single malts behind the bar. As they are best on their own.
