Social Distancing Log

April 9th, I did an hour-long Pokémon drive; dunno if my parents did anything special.

I also baked four more loaves of bread, using up the last of my instant yeast. Dad's planned to go to a bulk grocery store tomorrow (er, today), and I put instant yeast on the list, but I'm not particularly expecting him to bring back much (or any). I should try and get up on time to let him know that. Either way, I'll be switching up whatever bread recipe I use for the future; the "pan bread" recipe from work is delicious, but 1Tb per loaf is definitely a bit much.

Bread and baking stuff

I somehow feel like I should be posting more about my life as a professional baker and the certification program I went through. I am ecstatic that more people are learning how to grow their own yeast (making a sour), and delighted that everyone is so enthusiastic about sharing the information and learning more about it, I'm just wondering now if I shouldn't have been sharing that information a long time ago.

(Plus we use instant dry yeast at work almost exclusively; we don't really keep our own sour going. It's been a good six-plus years since I so much as touched a sour, though the directions for making one aren't exactly difficult.)


Anyway, some other leavening agents and techniques that are not yeast:
* Chemical leaveners, such as baking powder, baking soda, and baking ammonia (I still have a powerpoint or two from my certification days)
* Air (such as when you cream butter and sugar together, making the results extra fluffy)
* Water (such as with flaky pastry, where the rising action comes from the water in the layers of butter between the layers of dough boiling off)

Yeast and chemical leaveners are definitely among the easier options; water is probably the worst, especially if you don't have a sheeter (machine that flattens your dough for you to a uniform size).


In a final bit of trivia, the wheat and rye sours that our primary baking instructor keeps to start certification student sours with are named Fred and Ginger. (Ginger, the rye sour, does everything Fred does, but backwards and with amylase (a protein that has similar binding properties to gluten, but is not as strong).)