High Heat Mortar Primer Getting Started Discuss High Heat Mortar Primer in the Pizza Oven Design and Installation forums; Hey C. I am trying to get a sourdough starter going. The crusts I have been coming up with are ...

[Lars]

Hey C.
I am trying to get a sourdough starter going. The crusts I have been coming up with are okay, but I wanted something with a little more flavor. Gosh, I only had one decent rise out of the stuff and it has been about a week!

I did make a pizza on it last saturday and... well, amazingly, the kids all liked it better than the plain white pizza crust on the other four.

L.

[cecilB]

I LOVE talking about the sourdough - and pizza making!

The sourdough I make is the Desem from Laurel's Bread Book and Thom Leonard's Bread Book.
I've had it going for 5 years now! The thing is is that it's something that I have really had to work at and it's been an ongoing learning experience.

Do you have either one of those books? I can give the instructions, but it's not really a recipe. But what is in the back of mind is ....How will it be when I can use the brick oven? I'm kind of nervous.

Do you use steam in the first part of the baking? I used to bake my loaves in terra cotta bakers - you know, the cloche or rommeltopf bakers - I could only do four huge loaves at a time. Now I have finally gotten the courage to use a cloth and "couch" the loaves and flip them over, slash them, and put them on a preheated stone - that's been heated for an hour at least at 450. I can do three loaves instead of two on a stone. I put a sheet pan either on the top rack or the very bottom rack - it stays there all the time - and when I put the loaves in, I pour water on the pan. Things I have learned: Use hot water...try not to get the water on the glass window - Both of my oven windows are cracked! (one's a junk oven on the back porch so it doesn't really matter...but the other one....oh dear!) I think if the water were boiling hot, the glass may not have cracked.
ANYWAY, I grind my own grains - wheat or spelt...or rye...and the spelt makes the best Desem. Today I've made three spelts and three mostly whites.
But I make french bread that's pretty awesome, and a loaf that's called bloomer - it's a British type of French bread with poppy seeds all over...
I also do regular loaves that are not artisan, but good for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and old people who don't get into the "real" stuff!

and pizza - I used to stick to the Bread Bakers Apprentice directions, very good - easy, too, when it's all made the day before....it's just having these darned ovens heating up all the time - I can't wait for my brick oven!!!! - but I got a really good pizza dough recipe out of Saveur magazine or La Cucina Italiana or something....from Naples, they say. It's not as hydrated as Reinharts, and there's very very little yeast....just nice long cool rising times! It's the best, so far - but will be better once we can use the Brick oven!

Anyway...

Hey - the lime - a good friend stopped by today after he was at our local lumber yard - he brought me a sack of ....LIME!!!!
Wow! Right here in little ol' St. Mary's! Whoda ever thought?!?!?
So, now I just need the silica!


cecelia

[Lars]

Cecilia,
I am looking at a large bowl with a wet blob of (not yet) dough. It has been bubbling a bit, but mostly tiny, bubble gum type bubbles for the 12 hours.

Supposedly, I will mix a few more cups of flour in there and let it rise for 2.5 hrs. Rise, mind you. I have a feeling it will just sit there and sneer at me.

Anyway, my starters kind of smell like feet. I don't mean feet that have recently been washed. It tried one with wheat flour, and one with bread flour. The one time I tried this, oh, perhaps 15 years ago or more, I don't recall quite so pungent a smell. And, I did lose interest because the bread ( while it rose well) was not too different from my regular white bread.

Do you grow your own grain? I have wondered how much space I would have to devote to wheat to have enough to make bread for my family each year. Sowing, harvesting, grinding, we sure have learned how to divide the essential tasks of survival to the point that it is almost alien to the average person.

Lars.