[Sca-cooks] citations on sour dough from the OED

[Bill Fisher]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:10:25 -0500, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:

> Again, a sign of quality is not the same thing _as_ quality, any more
> than, say, pouring fresh blood over stale meat makes it fresh again.
> And I agree that some did, and would, equate the sourness with
> quality, but then some people used to believe that thunder caused
> milk to sour, too, when in fact they were joint effects of the same
> phenomenon, not cause and effect. I'm not saying sourness should be
> ignored for that style in that setting, I'm just saying we should not
> forget our priorities, and that sourness provided by lactothingies is
> some unidentified percentage level less important than the leavening
> power of yeast in this equation.
> 
> 
> 
> Adamantius

I have to agree.

There is one thing I can't see happening in the process of making 
bread.

I can't see a medival baker,  pioneer wife, or trail cook  waiting to use
a starter until it becomes sour enough to taste.  I can see if that starter
is fed and kept alive that it would become sour in time.

>From doing some homework, the fridge isn't the best place for yeast or
lactobacteria.  Normal yeast and lactobacteria are active at human body
temperatures.  They actually thrive in out bodies as an ecosystem.

So by refrigerating your starter, it will take forever for your dough
to get sour
and for it to bubble,  but keeping at 80-90 degrees it should sour quickly as
that is the best temp for both yeast and lactobacteria.

It also seems that the lactobacteria aid the yeast by breaking down starches 
it can't eat into sugars it can eat, and also the waste products of the 
lactobacteria keep other nasties in check, making the starter safe to eat.

>From what I can tell the two go hand in hand environmentally. They also
arrive the same way if you let other items naturally ferment.

In an environment without refrigeration or a finely controllable heat source,
you are at the season's mercy as to how your starter will sour.

In the warmer months of the year, the bread will be more sour, and in the cooler
months, less sour.  It should vary based upon the metabolic cycle of the
critters involved.  Medieval people would quickly figure out that blood heat
would do the trick for a starter, but hot and cold are hard to reglate when you
don't have a thermostat.

That being said.  The sourness of the dough would be an side effect of 
the leavening process, not the target of it.  It would be something that
would come in under the radar as a daily or seasonal change in the
breads, and a regional difference as well.  

Modernly, we know to reproduce the sourness, and it is a trait we desire
in the breads, we know the ecosystem involved as well.

Does anyone have any documentation for the keeping of a starter, how 
long they would be kept and  how it would be treated?   That would 
settle this pretty handily.  

If starters were kept for long periods of time, then they would tend to be
more sour and that would point towards purposely engineering it towards
the flavor aspect.  If they just recycled odd bits of dough from each batch
and didn't keep a starter, it would not sour as much and it would point 
towards use as a leavening agent with sourness as an after effect.

It could also be a regional thing as well, as we know, methods vary 
from area to area.

Cadoc

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