How to liven up canned sourdough - Mcooker: best recipes

The Adventures of Drying and Crumb or How to Revive Canned Sourdough

How to preserve sourdough read here How to "preserve" leaven

Author Elena Zheleznyak
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Now my entire kitchen table is filled with jars of sourdough, from time to time I glance at them, open the lids, smell, make notes with a felt-tip pen, take pictures. Today I bring them out of their lethargic sleep, bring them back to their senses, warm them up and feed them and watch with pleasure how they grow and gain strength. Last time I showed two methods of long-term storage of sourdough, one I dried in a dehydrator, and the second I ground with flour into loose crumbs. Let me remind you that with the first storage method, the starter culture can live up to five years, and with the second - about a month. But in order to check how everything went and whether it turned out to be "canned", I decided not to wait so long and restore the leaven in hot pursuit.

The scheme for restoring the dry starter culture is simple: first, pour the required amount of starter culture and weigh, add twice as much warm water and flour equal to the weight of the starter culture, so that in the end you get a starter culture with a moisture content of 100%. That is, we must get a leaven consisting of equal amounts of flour and water.
The sourdough, ground with flour, which I tentatively called "crumb" (hey, baby!) Must be restored in the same way - by mixing with warm water, only without adding fresh flour. Below I will show how I "woke up" my hard workers.

Dry rye sourdough - awakening!

As I wrote above, I weighed the right amount of dry starter culture and added twice as much warm water to it so that the contents of the jar were well moistened.

After half an hour, I added flour, mixed, covered with a lid and left for a day at room temperature.

Likewise, with the "crumb": weighed, added the same amount of warm water to get the sourdough 100%.

Why 100%? Because with a thicker consistency, fermentation slows down, but on the contrary, we need to somehow revive it or even stimulate it, and with a thinner consistency, acidity accumulates worse. Therefore, a sourdough with a moisture content of 100% is optimal here. Besides, it is also convenient: you can easily count any recipe.

Look, the day has not yet passed, but activity has begun inside both cans. But it is understandable, the leavens have not really been stored yet, therefore the restoration is proceeding at such a pace (on the left "drying", on the right "crumb").

For the sake of fairness, I note that although fermentation arose rather quickly, it was not as active and vigorous as in the usual conditions. At 10 am I recorded an increase in the volume of the starter cultures and left them for several more hours, but nothing happened, the "drying" remained in place, and the "crumb" generally settled. After making sure that they reached their peak, I fed them again, adding 30 grams each. warm water and whole grain rye flour, and after three hours they showed the class, bubbled beautifully and very actively, even though right now take and knead the dough. In the photo "drying".

What's next? With the restoration of these starters, that's all for today, but to make sure everything went well, I ran two test baked goods. On the “dryer” I baked awesome homemade Lithuanian bread with caraway seeds, and on the “crumb” - fragrant whole grain wheat bread with raisins. I was very pleased with the result)

Lithuanian rye

Wheat with raisins

But that's not all. In the process of working on the material and fiddling with the leaven, I suddenly remembered something very important.Almost 3 years ago, Veronica, an excellent baker from Italy, sent me several jars of dried Italian sourdough (Levito madre - as the Italians call their sourdough) from three Italian maestros. Then I went deeply pregnant with my youngest, we were going to move, there was a lot of things to do and I never got to these jars. I hid them in the freezer, which calmed my conscience and curiosity. As you understand, these jars have been there all this time, they survived the move, one, however, was lost, but two somehow waited until our times. On the jars there were stickers with the inscriptions on what kind of master they were, but from one jar the sticker fell off and was lost, but on the second it remained intact, it was a leaven from the very (great and mighty!) Francesco Favorito! Of course, it became interesting to try to "revive" these deposits of sourdough.

I didn’t feel much hope ... but no, I didn’t feel it anymore - a burning desire and hope that life would be revived in at least one bank. I opened the cans to see-smell-taste, in one, which is nameless, the leaven was damp.

I weighed both Levito Madres, and I also smelled and tasted. Both were noticeably sour, one almost did not smell, and the second, which was damp, had a specific candy-milk smell with light notes of either acetone or something else.

I poured in twice as much warm water sweetened with a pinch of sugar and left for 30-40 minutes to swell the flour.

Added white wheat flour, mixed, covered

In the photo sourdough Francesco

Of course, I expected that the next morning bubbles would appear in the jars, at least in one. Even after a few hours, she took the flasks and closely examined them for the beginning of fermentation. In one, which is unnamed, it was dull, and in the one from Francesco Favorito, I fancied tiny air bubbles. My heart fluttered, I was confident that everything would work out, but by the morning the situation had not changed. It did not change during the day, but by the evening I really noticed a few new bubbles in the jar with Levito Madre from Favorito. First thing in the morning, I hurried to the kitchen to check how my Italians were doing. Nothing happened in the jar where the nameless sourdough rested, it continued to "rest" and exude a light sweetish aroma.

And for that in the cup with Favorito sourdough aaaaaaa, there was a cap of small wonderful bubbles! There was no doubt, she came to life, fell flat, came out of her lethargic sleep!)))

I weighed it, because, in joy, I forgot how much of it there (it turned out to be 60 grams) and added another 30 grams. white flour and 30 gr. warm water, lightly sweetened. What she became magnificent after 4 hours! I fed again, and when I was ripe, I transferred it to a thick state.

Italians most often use a ferment with a moisture content of 50%, when the flour is twice as much as water, it is believed that in this way optimal conditions are created in the ferment for the symbiosis of yeast and lactic acid bacteria. But the bread with this sourdough (also Italian - the Simili sisters' wooden bread), it turned out to be huge and very lush! There is not even a hint of sourness in the taste, the aroma is wonderful, thick bread, delight))

Next time, if you are interested, I will continue to tell you about the Italian sourdough. Italians are real bread maniacs, believe me!)))

P.S. Friends, while the point is, I "woke up" and a resident of the second bank, wow!

How to "preserve" leaven