King arthur flour- sourdough starter tips 1

 
                KING ARTHUR FLOUR - SOURDOUGH STARTER TIPS 1
 
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 Serving Size  : 1    Preparation Time :0:00
 Categories    : Information                      Breads
 
   Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
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                         CARLSON   (PHHW01A) -- KING ARTHUR FLOUR HI
 
 The following information comes from King Arthur Flour "A Short Course in
Cooking With & Keeping the Elusive Wild Yeast".
 
  What is a Sourdough Starter? 
   "A sourdough starter is a wild yeast living in a batter of flour and
 liquid.  Yeasts are microscopic fungi related distantly to mushrooms. There
 are many varieties of these tiny organisms around us everywhere. Wild yeasts
 are rugged individualists which can withstand the most extreme of
 circumstances.
 Some will make delicious loaves of bread; others will create yogurt and cheese
out of milk; still others will turn the juices of grains and fruit into beer
and wine." 
   "Active dry yeast, the kind we can buy in packets at our grocer's, is a
 domesticated descendant of these wild relatives, one which has been grown for
 flavor, speed of growth and predictability. But domestic yeasts are much more
 fragile and can't be grown at home without eventually reverting to their
 original wild state." 
   "If you can imagine a world without any packets of active dry yeast, you
 can imagine how important your sourdough starter would be to you. Without it,
 you would be doomed to some pretty awful eating. It is no wonder that
 sourdough starters were treasured, fought over, and carried to all ends of the
 earth.  To the early prospectors, it was such a valued possession (almost more
 than the gold they were seeking), that they slept with it on frigid winter
 nights to keep it from freezing. (Ironically, freezing won't kill a sourdough
 starter although too much heat will.)" 
   Fermentation (or the Microscopic Magic of Yeast): "As we mentioned
 above, yeast is a microscopic fungus.	As it feeds on the natural sugars in
 grain, it multiplies and gives off carbon dioxide (just as we do when we
 breathe). This invisible activity of yeast is called fermentation. When you
 make bread with wheat, by kneading the long elastic strands of wheat protein
 (called gluten) into an elastic mesh, you create traps for these carbon
 dioxide bubbles causing the dough to expand as if it contained a million tiny
 balloons."
 
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