[ChristianRock]

I have zero experience with sourdough... but my bread yeast is about to run out in 10 days or so. I make about 2 breads each 3 days - in the bread machine. My bread machine is great - put it all in at night before going to bed (it only takes a minute or two), program it, and wake up to the smell of fresh bread.

I know quite a few of you make your own bread...

I'm not afraid of making sourdough... but I'm afraid of the time commitment. From what I hear, it demands quite a bit of time if you're to make a loaf every day (without dry yeast) - you can mix it in the bread machine but you'd have to take it out and leave it for a while because it doesn't rise as quickly. Then you have to heat up the oven, with a tray of water to get the bread crispy, and bake it - basically being there for the entire process...

I'd hate to go back to store bought bread but buying bread once a week or so might make sense rather than spending an hour or hour and a half committed to the bread making process... and my wife - who's a great cook but who really favors what's most practical - won't do it at all.

Or am I really overestimating the time it takes?

[mhoule418]

Simple questions

• how much cost a bread?
• when you work (or worked if retired), what is worth your hourly rate?
• how many bread do you produce in the allowted time?

From the practical side, can you use your time better?
You may buy one or two breads in fewer minutes, for probably much less time

(Unless you really like cooking and have «*free time*» in your hands)
Right now, lots of people have lots of free time.

[ChristianRock]

Bread's not that expensive - we have an Aldi about 15 minutes from the house and their bread is cheap and very good. Costco is 5 minutes if we need it, but less variety, just your regular sliced bread.

I do work, and have a family with 3 kids and other community commitments - so not a lot of spare time. And I believe we can afford to buy bread It's more about the taste of fresh bread and knowing what goes in it I guess I was trying to see if there are practical, time-saving ways to make good and tasty sourdough, like I do with my regular, dry-yeast bread. I'm not looking to make it in beautiful flower shapes to post on Sourdough

[normhead]

As far as I remember, if you bake in the day, your culture will replenish over night.

[thazooo]

We did sour dough for years. It's a ritual all by its self. We did the Potato/Sugar kind. Gives the bread a sweet flavor. You have to feed it every couple of days and give away or dispose of the extra base, weekly (?). I don't know about a bread machine, we did it old school. The recipe to create your 'Starter' is in the Old Yellow Bell cook book. Good Luck

[ChristianRock]

Aaaaand I just watched this:

You Tube

You Tube

Incredibly educational.

But... the time commitment is even greater than I thought it was - about 9 hours plus baking time (yeah you have to do things only every hour or two, but you have to be there the whole time... and sometimes I have meetings back to back for 3-4 hours at work)
Eventually I'll be working form the office again and won't be able to continue doing it even if I do start and am successful. And if I tell my wife she could try it, I'll get the evil eye, if you know what I mean ... she's got enough to do already!

If my dry yeast runs out, I guess it's going to be store bread...

[bertwert]

Not sure about these fancy bread machines and how to work with them, but here's what we do...

First there's different ways to make starter - you could use just flour and water and time, or you could give it a boost with some yeast too.
If you don't want to make bread everyday, keep the starter in the fridge.

In the evening take half the starter (and feed the rest of your starter with equal parts flour and water) and mix it with flour, water and salt to form your dough - let it rise overnight.
In the morning beat it down again and let it rise in the baking tin (we'll often use a Dutch oven - you can put the lid on to keep the crust softer). Then bake in oven.

Overall, it can as simple or as complicated as you like.

[normhead]

We did sour dough for years. It's a ritual all by its self. We did the Potato/Sugar kind. Gives the bread a sweet flavor. You have to feed it every couple of days and give away or dispose of the extra base, weekly (?). I don't know about a bread machine, we did it old school. The recipe to create your 'Starter' is in the Old Yellow Bell cook book. Good Luck

Old school you say? We kept ours on top of the fridge and cooked it in a wood cookstove. This was in a 100 year old 30x20 log farmhouse that I restored.) My grandma born in 1897 (and was 94 at the time and was raised in a log cabin of abuut the same dimensions) was throughly familiar with the whole process and used to look on approvingly.

That's old school.

[bertwert]

Old school you say? We kept ours on top of the fridge and cooked it in a wood cookstove. My grandma born in 1897 (and was 94 at the time) was throughly familiar with the whole process and used to look on approvingly.

That's old school.

In the winter we have fresh bread pretty much everyday. The masonry stove is perfect for bread. Though you don't get bread until midday, unless someone feels like getting up at 4 to light the fire...

[normhead]

In the winter we have fresh bread pretty much everyday. The masonry stove is perfect for bread. Though you don't get bread until midday, unless someone feels like getting up at 4 to light the fire...

For a few months in my 20s I lived in a rooming house. Whenever I made bread I made 4 loaves, as soon as I made bread and the smell filled the house, everyone came down and chatted in the kitchen until it was done. Two loaves for my roomies, two loves for me.

Some of those people I never saw until bread time, and without it I would never have known they lived in the same building. Now that I think of it, maybe they didn't. Maybe some of them were coming in off the street.

[ChristianRock]

Not sure about these fancy bread machines and how to work with them, but here's what we do...

First there's different ways to make starter - you could use just flour and water and time, or you could give it a boost with some yeast too.
If you don't want to make bread everyday, keep the starter in the fridge.

In the evening take half the starter (and feed the rest of your starter with equal parts flour and water) and mix it with flour, water and salt to form your dough - let it rise overnight.
In the morning beat it down again and let it rise in the baking tin (we'll often use a Dutch oven - you can put the lid on to keep the crust softer). Then bake in oven.

Overall, it can as simple or as complicated as you like.

If you leave it raising all night, doesn't the yeast get "past peak" and becomes "discard"?

That's the part that I'm afraid of, where people say that the whole process centers around baking the bread at the time when the yeast is at its peak, otherwise you get a bad loaf.

I tell you, if someone finds a way to automate the sourdough bread baking process, they'll probably make tons of money...

[normhead]

If you leave it raising all night, doesn't the yeast get "past peak" and becomes "discard"?

That's the part that I'm afraid of, where people say that the whole process centers around baking the bread at the time when the yeast is at its peak, otherwise you get a bad loaf.

I tell you, if someone finds a way to automate the sourdough bread baking process, they'll probably make tons of money...

It's like cameras. Some want "peak performance" (which they can't actually guarantee no matter what they do) and some just want a loaf of bread.

[ChristianRock]

Old school you say? We kept ours on top of the fridge and cooked it in a wood cookstove. This was in a 100 year old 30x20 log farmhouse that I restored.) My grandma born in 1897 (and was 94 at the time and was raised in a log cabin of abuut the same dimensions) was throughly familiar with the whole process and used to look on approvingly.

That's old school.

I guess I can talk about old school...

That brings memories of spending a lot of time at my grandmother's when I was a kid, down in Brazil. She was part of a German settlement there, and things were very old school at her house. The big masonry wood stove was the only stove. But there was also a wood fire oven at the building next door, which also housed the laundry and the bathrooms on one side and the well at the other side, next to the huge firewood pile room (see, I told you it was old school... but we did have electricity)

While my grandma went to milk the cow around 5am or so, I got up to start the fire in the stove.

Once or twice a week, in the afternoon around 3pm or so usually the oven was lit up with a lot of wood to burn real hot - sometimes I'd do it, sometimes I'd be playing and she would do it. Once there were only red coals left, they were shoved to the end of the oven area and the breads, cookies and cakes would go in, with a metal plate covering the entrance.

I don't remember ever having bread as good as what came out of there...

Maybe when I'm retired in 20+ years and I'm home all day I can do these kinds of things again...

[ChristianRock]

It's like cameras. Some want "peak performance" (which they can't actually guarantee no matter what they do) and some just want a loaf of bread.

I think cameras nowadays are more like pizza... even if it's not all that good, it's still very good

[VSTAR]

First it was the run(sorry for the pun) on toilet paper, then hand sanitizer,masks, gloves, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and then....who could predict..,,flour and yeast!

Christianrock...my wife uses her bread machine all the time....she had to get a small amount of yeast from a friend. In the meantime she kept checking her Facebook friends and finally one posted that a bulk store close to us had it. Went there, they had a mountain of boxes! Good luck.

If we opened up a flour and yeast store right now we could make a fortune! Who knew. One day we better look back at this time and laugh...remember when we drove all over town looking for....yeast!