Bread and baking stuff

[soc_puppet]

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).)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I'd be interested in reading it, certainly. (tweet by SeamusBlackley that's partly about Passover and partly about his reconstructing ancient Egyptian baking; the latter is why I follow his Twitter.)

Fred and Ginger *snicker*

[soc_puppet]

I'll have to see what I remember and can come up with, then! For example, I know there's four different reasons we fold bread dough, but damned if I can come up with all four off the top of my head. Then there's the Twelve Steps of Baking, which I've mentioned before...

IIRC, the ones he had growing when I went through the program were Caesar and Cassius, though exactly why he'd named them for Romans I can't recall. (I named mine Audrey III, because "Feed me, Socchan!") They were sacrificed to the compost one summer later by someone who didn't know what they were, so he started Fred and Ginger up.

[sara]

Well, I would be interested because I've finally got more bread flour on the way but my yeast is kind of tired and I'm not getting the kind of rise I'd like, so I've wondered if it's time to be more creative.

[soc_puppet]

The hotel I work at has temporarily closed and put every single employee on paid leave until May, so it may be a while, but I'll do my best!