Bread – How I Can Do That

A Yeasty Fix

It’s common to hear stories from people about how they started a yeast starter but forgot about it and had to throw it away.

Another common comment is about how finicky people assume starters are.

Yes, there are some things to keep in mind and understand about yeast when keeping a starter. However it doesn’t have to difficult to keep a starter. And yeast is much healthier than most people assume. You have to remember that yeast is found in the air around us. It lives on our skin and is an invisible friend. It was created to survive in the same world that we live in.

One of the common misconceptions that I find people perpetuates in starting and feeding yeast is that you have to have a wet starter. Ever since I posted about keeping a drier starter, more and more people are talking about how they now keep a dry starter. And before I posted on my blog, I talked about this in community pages. In one thread a microbiologist agreed that it made more sense to keep a drier starter of yeast.

The benefit of keeping a drier yeast is that you do not have hooch (a liquid layer on top of your starter) by week’s end.

I firmly believe that hooch is an indication that your environment for your starter is out of balance. Excess water created a home for bacteria and mold to grow and ultimately lead to a situation where you have to throw your starter out. Once mold forms, there’s nothing you can do to resuscitate your yeast. That is the one kiss of death to starter.

And mold loves water.

If you keep your water levels in check, you don’t have to do anything else to prevent mold.

How can I state that with surety?

Let’s just say that the Christmas season was so busy that I forgot about my yeast for an entire month! Perhaps over a month… I last used my starter for Thanksgiving and forgot about it until after the New Year.

My Neglected Starter

If you pulled this out of your fridge what would your reaction be?

This “black” layer is hooch that is showing that my starter is sick and anemic.

Usually I remember my yeast when I haven’t used it for two weeks. It has this layer of hooch on it, but it’s clear. This is the worst that I’ve been a bad yeast mom. BUT I did not kill it.

My initial thought was, “well it’s a good thing I have a freezer yeast back up.” (There will be a future post on this. Now that I have four years invested in this starter, I want to make sure that I have a back up starter that I can fall back on Incase I really blow it and lose my main mother.)

The first thing I did was remove the lid, look for mold and sniff test my starter.

With no mold, I knew I could recover this yeast. And the sniff test confirmed that I hadn’t killed off my yeast. It still had a sour dough tang scent with no additional scent (which would be an indication of a colony of something different from my yeast). My starter smelt weak/anemic. And that’s because it was.

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Recovery

The hooch is guaranteed to be where additional growth, competing with my yeast, is living. So first things first, I poured off all the hooch.

As you can see here, there was still some discoloration with the presence of left over hooch.

When I fix neglected starter I always start with a fresh/clean mason jar. I do this because everything about healthy and unhealthy starter is microscopic. I want to minimize the transfer of anything but the yeast I’m rescuing.

Since I don’t want to transfer this tainted hooch, I take a spoon and scoop out this liquid and the top layer of starter.

It’s important to remove the top layer because it was in contact with the pooled hooch. It will be the part of the starter that has the higher counts of any of the foreign colonies (if any is present).

If you want to be extra careful about to continuing contamination, you’ll want to make sure and use a clean spoon with each scoop.

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I didn’t take a picture after the first scoop, but this is after a couple of scoops. As you can see in this above picture, there is a distinct color difference between that sickly top layer and this more beige color.

This color difference is a good indication of what needs to be removed and what can be salvaged.

The white layer was watery, pasty, and had every indication of “do not keep me”. The beige layer beneath had a cake batter like texture and looked “healthier” even if this rich color is darker than the color of my normal starter.

Nature is good with communicating information by using layers. So I follow what my yeast tells be and grew confidence that I could absolutely save this starter without having to get the yeast out of my deep freezer and hope I could make that work.

Now that I had the information I needed, I finished scooping out all the left over hooch and the white layer.

With everything removed, I grabbed my clean jar and started scooping out starter from this jar and depositing it in the new jar.

Because I wanted to minimize anything that might be deeper in the jar, I only scooped out starter from the center. I was careful not to get starter from the sides of the jar or from the bottom.

The top left is the old jar. The bottom right is my new jar transfer.

Normally I try to transfer as much starter as I can scrape out of the jar. This is an instance where that was not going to happen. Again, my goal here was to stay away from any potential starter that was exposed to the hooch.

The good news is that even if all you have to transfer is a couple of soup spoons worth of starter, that’s enough to recolonize a starter.

The amount of starter that I estimate I put in the clean jar was maybe 1/4 Cup. (I’m not as confident about guessing how many grams as this is the unit of measurement that I didn’t grow up using. However because I use the metric system for bread making, 50-75 grams is definitely more than enough to restart your starter for the ability of having enough yeast in your colony for bread making in a day or two.) Even the tiniest amount of transfer starter is enough to get you going again. Just know that until you build your colony up, your raise time is going to be slow and weak. You do have yeast, it will just take time to build your numbers back up.

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Next I added salt into the yeast that I just transferred. As you can see above, I used about a teaspoon worth.

In Meet Frankenstein I talked about the gluten free starter I made and how I had to bring that one back to health. That starter had a different issue that I was resuscitating it back from, but the treatment is still the same… salt. The reason why salt is your first aid for wild yeast starter is because the salt creates an environment that decreases the growth of everything that is competing with your yeast colony. And at the same time salt does not affect the growth of your yeast.

At a previous time I had used 2-3 teaspoons of salt for a starter that was healthier than this one. My starter bounced back quickly. It made my first batch of bread excessively salty. (So make sure that your first bread after a treatment cut back on the salt.) Even still there was no negative effect of the salt on my starter. So don’t feel like you can be too heavy handed. I still wouldn’t put in an absence amount. First you just don’t need it. Second, if you treat all your kitchen resources as valuable (whether they become scarce or just because it frees up a few cents to put elsewhere in your budget) you just use what you need to use to get the job down.

Now can you use too little???

I haven’t yet experimented on how little you can get by to bring your yeast back into health. Here’s what I would look for though if I suddenly ran out of salt and only had a pinch to put in. If my yeast became discolored, hooch formed again, if the hooch is not clear, there is an off scent to your starter… add more salt.

Once the salt is in the jar, give the starter a good stir. This gets the salt where you want it working. If you feed your starter first, the salt is going to be diluted.

When I first started on my journey with a starter I noticed that I don’t stir as thoroughly as I thought I did. Originally I ended up with starter kept on the bottom of my jar and hydrated flour on the top of my jar. That’s another story for another day. But that’s how I came to understand that just because you have a consistency that you think is right, it doesn’t mean that you thoroughly stir and blended everything.

So that is why when I treat with salt, I treat my starter first. Then I feed it.

After the salt treatment I start my feeding process. Water first!

I changed the way that I feed my starter. I now start my feeding with water because this dilutes yeast and ensures that it’s fully incorporated throughout the fed starter. There is no second guessing if I’ve stirred enough to completely incorporate the yeast into the flour. The colony is spread out entirely through all of the water. So when I stir in the flour, everything that is wet has yeast.

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As you can see here, there is no doubt that my starter and water are fully incorporated. And it just takes a couple stirs, less than my eggs take when I scramble them.

Bread Recipe That Hasn’t Failed Me is the post where I share my bread recipe that I always use. And since I know how much starter that I need to make two loaves of bread, I know exactly how much to feed my starter. I use 300g so when I pour the water, I aim for 150g. And that means that I also start off with 150g of flour. Once I have that measurement in my mason jar I stir it and check my consistency. Depending on the humidity levels in my house, I tend to always add about 15-20g more flour. This gives me a thick brownie batter consistency. When I keep my starter with this thicker consistency I never have hooch (unless I neglect it for longer than 2 weeks–and that error is on me).

And as you can see with the picture on above right, I stir my flour in just enough to incorporate it into the yeast water. The flour is the food for the yeast, so as long as the yeast water is connected and mixed in with the flour the yeast will find its food and go to town.

As a little side note, I make bread one to two times a week. By the time I get to my yeast, these flour lumps are no longer there. The flour continues to hydrate during the rise time.

I keep my yeast in a quart jar. After a feeding, my starter fills around half the jar. I don’t keep a rubber band around my jar because I know that my yeast is ready when it reaches the top of my jar.

As you see here, my yeast still needed to rise a bit more. But the time in my day was running out and needed to make my bread dough, so I cut my time short.

TIP: My mom hack for making bread with no time to do it during the day is that I make my dough after dinner (right before I start to relax for the night), put it in my bread molds, and let it proof in my oven over night. When I wake up in the morning I turn on my oven (without touching my bread and deflating my rise) and let it cook. By the time lunch comes around, my bread is cooled and ready to slice.

Normally, when I leave my starter out on my counter to double, it takes anywhere from 1-3 hours depending on how cool my house is. When I took the above picture (directly before making a batch of bread) 9 hours have passed and it really could have used another hour our two.

My starter took this long to grow even that much was because the yeast was weak from being neglected. This didn’t concern me. I would have been concerned if there was no rise at all. But obviously I have yeast in there and they were doing their job.

I took a picture of the top of the jar, with the only thing I did was remove the lid, so you could see that there was no hooch. There was no discoloration. This picture tells you nothing as far as smell. But it was predominantly the sour yeasty smell. BUT there was also a flour smell to it. You will notice this flour note when you first feed your starter because you have unprocessed flour in the jar. The fact that the yeast had grown and ate the flour, the smell of flour tells me that the yeast is still weak and the flour hasn’t been all eaten up. This doesn’t raise any red flags. It just tells me that I should expect my proofing to take longer than if my yeast is healthy and happy.

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What to Expect After Treating Your Yeast

As I mentioned above, the first thing you should expect is that your yeast is going to take longer to double. I mentioned that my yeast, in my home, normally takes 1-3 hours to double. If I feed my yeast and immediately store it in my fridge, it will double in about 3 days.

Because of how long it took my yeast to double after this treatment, had I put it in my fridge after feeding, it probably would have taken a 5-7 days to double. My guess is about 5 days because that’s how long it took when I treated my starter before after 2 weeks of neglect.

The point to this is that you should expect your yeast to double over a much longer time. There’s nothing wrong with your yeast. It just takes it a hot minute to start eating and doubling its colony population.

Once your yeast has come to a usable stage, the next thing that you should expect is that the flavor is going to be off. If your starter has a sour smell and flavor to it, this first doubling time is going to make it milder

almost no sour flavor

The mild flavor isn’t going to be an issue. What will be an issue is the fact that you will be able to taste the salt that you used to treat your starter.

If you choose to use your starter as usual, and keep true to your recipe, you will most definitely taste that your bread is more salty.

The time that I aggressively salted my starter and used my bread recipe as usual, the bread was inedible for sandwiches. I had to use the bread differently–namely as grilled sandwiches and as bread cubes or crumbs for a recipe.

INSTEAD go ahead and alter your bread recipe up front.

With the bread recipe that I use, I now immediately halve my salt portion of the recipe. So instead of using 22g of salt I use 11g. By doing this there was no change in the saltiness of the bread. It tasted normal.

I know that most people don’t taste this difference that I do, but using treated starter in a bread recipe (even when you cut back on the salt portion of your recipe) tastes exactly like the dry active yeast that you buy in the store. I’ve always had this problem with the flavor of bread from conventional dry active yeast. I always had to add herbs to get a bread that tasted good (garlic, onion, oregano, rosemary, etc.).

In the same manner, with the bread that I made with this recovery from a month long neglect I had to add ground herbs. So in addition to the dry ingredients that are in the bread recipe, I added:

(Herbs were from my garden this year and dehydrated for winter use)

1 tsp ground oregano
1 tsp ground rosemary

And for the salt portion of the recipe I used garlic salt instead of standard salt.

I mention this because I want to inspire you to use other ingredients with your bread making, especially when you’re compensating for weak/recovering starter. These herbs do nothing to change the function of your bread rising. But it absolutely makes your bread more enjoyable.

Do you have any questions about the starter that you’ve been keeping? Comment below.

Links to previous bread and yeast related posts:

Valuable Resources

If you have limited resources or want to know how to make a no discard starter, this post will get you started.

Bread Recipe that Hasn’t Failed Me

I share with you my favorite bread recipe as well as how to make pull apart rolls.

Meet Frankenstein

If you’re looking for how to make a gluten free starter, here is how I made a starter from potatoes. I also share with you how I overcame my first major obstacle with creating a starter.

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Easy Cheesy

Since last week I continued my experimenting with whey and I wanted to do a follow up post on what I learned. And this information is important because of the inflation, the items that are starting to not be stocked in the grocery stores, and supply chain issues.

So whether you are trying to be more efficient with how you spend your grocery budget, or if you’re trying to find a replacement for the things you cannot find on the shelves here are some ideas for you.

First, for those of you who are dependent on keeping some probiotics in your diet for your guy health, know that whey gives you a better option for probiotics. Check the label on your yogurt with probiotics. It’s been brought to my attention that those yogurts often have higher sugar content than other yogurts. If you’re not up to making your own yogurt, you can buy greek yogurt, stir in whey and you have a probiotics yogurt, at a better price, and lower sugar content.

If you make a dressing at home (for example we make Ranch) from a packet/scratch, switch out the milk content for whey. If your dressing calls for water instead of milk, still use whey instead of water. This simple switch automatically adds gut healthy probiotics and gives you the same dressing. The whey will impart a hint of lemon to the final product, but that gives new life to a favorite condiment that you take for granted or no longer excited about.

Whey also solved a problem that we had with the Ranch dressing we’ve experienced for the last 6 months or so. For whatever reason, the dressing (same recipe we’ve been using for years) always separated after a week. I was tired of this waste, and got excited when I came across an article that talked about how homemade mayonnaise normally lasts a week. However if you add whey into your homemade mayo, the shelf life increased for one week to a month. That was what caused me to substitute out milk for whey in our Ranch dressing mix. We are approaching two weeks and my dressing no longer separates. It hasn’t turned bad yet either.

So if you’re looking to extend your shelf life on a mix, look to whey.

Do you remember the list, I posted last week, about uses for whey?

I’ve been working my way through that list.

Here is everything that I got out of that first gallon of milk:

1.5 pounds of Mozzarella Cheese
4 loaves of Bread
1 jar of Ranch dressing
1 batch of homemade Doughnuts (which my boys and husband’s coworkers couldn’t eat enough of)
Pizza dough (enough for 2 large pizzas)
66g of Ricotta Cheese
And I froze the whey left over whey before it went bad for 5 more loaves of bread.

I couldn’t believe how much I got out of 1 gallon of milk! If I had used milk for all of that, instead of whey, I would have used at least 2.5 gallons of milk.

How great is that?!!!!

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More Cheese

I know that even with my first time experience, there’s a chance that someone might still be uncertain of making cheese. So I wanted to make Ricotta from the mozzarella whey. And Ricotta is the absolute easiest cheese to make.

If you were leery trying to make Mozzarella for the first time, try Ricotta!

Now above I already stated that I was able to recapture 66g more cheese by making Ricotta from the Mozzarella cheese. This was not enough Ricotta to make a lasagna dinner with for my family. So that same day I grabbed a gallon of milk from my fridge and made Ricotta from a second method.

Get ready to make the easiest cheese from one of these two methods!

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Traditional Method From Whey

Before I made this first batch of Ricotta, I had already used about half of my whey from making Mozzarella. (I share this with you in case you’re reading these two methods to see which is going to yield you the most cheese–yes, I see you!)

With the traditional method, you put your whey into a stainless steel pot and turn on the heat to medium low.

That is it. You let it warm up to 200°F. There are small bubbles that start to form around the edge of the pot. Don’t be afraid if you don’t see Ricotta forming until the whey reaches in the neighborhood of 140°F. That was about the temperature that I started to see some action take place.

Once you reach 200°F, turn off the heat and remove the pot from the burner.

The instructions, that I followed, said to immediately remove the cheese and drain it.

Now Ricotta has smaller curds of cheese than mozzarella, so this time I used a cheese cloth to strain the curds from whey.

The instructions said to let the cheese drip dry for 2-8 hours depending on how dry you want your Ricotta. I had very gently squeezed the whey out and hung it to dry for an hour and a half before I taste tested it. It was already too dry for my liking and tasted like chalk. The instructions never told me to salt the Ricotta. So I’m going to tell you, salt the Ricotta.

Tip: Salting Ricotta is easier when it is warm instead of cooled from the drying process.

This is the left over whey that I put in the freezer to make 5 more additional loaves of bread. I pre-portioned the whey out into baggies so that all I have to do is defrost the whey in the fridge, the day before bread making day, and I don’t have to measure it out again.

The great news about this method, of Ricotta making, is that even though I didn’t stir the whey during this cooking process, my pot was clean on the bottom.

This traditional method is right in the skill level of my 6 year old’s cooking level. So if you were nervous or afraid of making Mozzarella, rest easy and KNOW that YOU CAN DO THIS! I have every confidence in you.

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Ricotta From Milk Instead of Whey

As I already mentioned, 66g of Ricotta is not enough for a lasagna dinner. It is enough to make a spread out of and eat it on top of a toasted bagel.

I grabbed a fresh gallon of milk, the Ricotta recipe from the beginner cheese maker kit (that I shared last week) and tried a different method of making Ricotta. The Recipe I used called for whole milk and a couple of cups of heavy whipping cream. All that I had in my fridge was a gallon of 2%. So that is all that I used. From just 2% milk, I yielded 630g (1.4 lb) of Ricotta.

Into my stainless steel pot I added the milk, 1 tsp. Citric Acid, and 2 tsp. Non-iodinated salt. Turn the burner to low-medium heat. Leave the milk alone until it reaches 140°F. Then you scrape the bottom of the pan with a rubber/silicone spatula. Do not touch it again until you see the cheese layer, on top, crack and the whey start to boil up through that crack(s). Turn the burner off and put the pot on a cool part of the stove. Cover the pot and let it sit for 20-30 minutes.

Strain the Ricotta through a cheese cloth, inside a fine mesh strainer.

In this method, instead of air drying I used my spoon (or you can use your silicone spatula from earlier) and pushed the Ricotta around in the cheese cloth. The whey naturally separates without the gentle squeeze or drip drying. And while you push the Ricotta, take a pinch of salt at a time and season the Ricotta to taste.

You are in control of how salty your Ricotta tastes. And you are in control of the sodium content, for those who are on a low sodium diet.

I stopped pushing my Ricotta when I got to the creamy texture that I prefer. If you prefer your Ricotta to be drier and you’re not able to get it from just pushing the cheese in the cheese cloth, go ahead and hang it up to air dry in the cheese cloth. I recommend checking on your cheese every half hour just to make sure that you do not get too dry.

Tip: If your Ricotta gets too dry and you just can’t eat it like that, don’t worry. Mix in a little whey at a time to re-wet your cheese. If it becomes too wet, hang it up to dry again.

The only problem that I had with this method of making Ricotta is that the heat was a little higher than I did with the first method. The bottom of my pan did start to scorch, as you see here.

Even with this level of scorch, the flavor of the cheese was not harmed. But it was a close call. Moving forward, I know that my stove needs to remain at a medium Low temperature.

The next time that I make Ricotta from this method, I’m going to drop my heat a little BECAUSE I know that my stove runs HOT. I am forever reminding my husband to drop the heat when he cooks because it slips his mind that our stove does this and he has burning issues. He’s a good cook, he just expects our hot stove to behave like a normal stove and it just doesn’t.

Tip: Know your stove. If your stove runs hot, drop the heat a little lower. If your stove runs cooler, add a little more heat.

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Differences in Whey

There is a difference in the appearance of the whey from Ricotta compared to the whey from Mozzarella. The Ricotta whey was not as clarified.

Independence Day weekend is very busy with my family, so I have yet to put the Ricotta whey into the pot and run a second batch. But as you see here, there is a lot of material left in this whey that I anticipate a greater return in additional Ricotta (vs. what I pulled out of the Mozzarella whey). I have time to food prep coming up early this next week. So be sure to sign up for my newsletter below and I’ll email you the results of this second run in my 7 July 2022 email. (If you are reading this past the email date, please comment below and I’ll respond with the results that I found).

Over all…

I’m excited to have cheese in the house that only has 3 ingredients: milk, citric acid, and salt. In a day and age where the ingredient lists grows longer and longer, this makes me feel good about the food I cook my family. Even more so, I learned new skills that I can teach my boys that I don’t have to wait until they’re older for them to make.

I am also happy that I have healthy probiotics on hand that I can add to as a seasoning and milk alternative to other recipes.

Please walk away from today with ideas on how to stretch your milk ingredients and add more nutrients into your other foods.

An idea that just popped into my head, how whey would work with making risotto. I know that I’ve made it with wine and also with chicken broth. So it makes me curious. I may have to try this out for dinner later on this week!

If you’re interested in making a Ricotta spread (which I use for my bagels), cut up some fresh herbs and mix it in with your cheese. I used the leaves from two sprigs of Italian Oregeno, from my garden, and used enough Ricotta for two bagels.

Use your imagination with the herbs that you have on hand.

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Something New To Stretch

For about a year and a half now, I have wanted to make cheese at home.

What kept me from doing it for so long?

I lied to myself stating that it was just the fact that my days are busy with three young kiddos in the house. It’s a convenient enough excuse. But deep down these were the core issues that I was dealing with. Maybe you’re familiar with these fears.

It’s too difficult.
What am I going to do to keep from burning my hands?

If you had a childhood like mine, and you pulled homemade taffy, you know what I mean about burning your hands. At least with taffy you could coat your hands with as much butter (or other fat product) to protect your flesh from the hot candy. And if you’ve read about Mozzarella making, you know you have to pull cheese. Buuuuut, you can’t put butter on your hands.

Let me tell you something. I am so glad that I set my fears aside and dove in to make my first Mozzarella!!!

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First let me assure you that I did NOT burn my hands. So you can rest assured that you can also keep your hands safe.

Second, Mozzarella cheese making is so much easier than I made it out to be in my head. In fact, the next time that I make more cheese, I’m going to have my 6 year old help me. With the exception of handling the warmish hot cheese for the stretching and shaping, I know he can do this with me verbally walking him through the steps. So if you think cheese making is too difficult, I think you’ll also be surprised with how easy it is.

I used this beginner cheese making kit from Standing Stone Farms. Their recipe comes in the kit, which is included here with their permission. Thank you Paula Butler for allowing me to share this recipe! Here is another link for their products, and the link for this beginner cheese making kit on Amazon.

If you want to branch out on your own with a different recipe, I know there were a couple that I specifically or indirectly linked to throughout the post.

Before I get in the flow of my first time experience, I want to mention now another fear I had. It didn’t rear its ugly head until I had my pot on the stove and the milk already on heat. Let’s just say I’ve scorched many pans cooking milk based soups and chowders. If you cook with milk, you know what I mean. There comes a point where you just accept it as normal.

So now you understand what I mean when I say, I had a legitimate fear of scalding my milk because I’ve been told in the directions, that with Mozzarella cheese you have to be gentle when you infrequently “stir” the milk and you can’t circular stir your milk. Maybe some Italian Mama will comment and say, “Pssht, stir the milk.” Or maybe they’ll agree. So please Italian Mama’s comment and put some minds to rest!

Here is an after the cheese making shot of my pot. My pan didn’t scorch. This is cooked over medium low heat and this was the damage done. So if one of your fears is burning the milk, as long as you keep your temp low and slow you won’t burn your milk.

Making the Cheese

I know another real fear in cooking is not having pictures of what is normal so you have something to compare to. In what I’ve read in my own research, I haven’t seen any pictures like this. I want to set you up for success!

These are all in stage order so you can compare your own journey as you go.

What I didn’t anticipate was how quickly the Acidic Acid works in curding the milk. That gets added to the milk before you turn heat on the burner. And almost right away curds started forming. Obviously the acid and the milk are going to react. So don’t freak out if you turn on your burner, look at your milk and suddenly think, “OMG did I just put in expired milk?!” No you didn’t. The process is already under way.

At 88°F I added the Calcium Chloride and Liquid Rennet.

After all this instant gratification of seeing curd growth, I have to admit it was hard to have the patience for curd temperature to reach 104°F.

Again, as a first time cheese maker, I assumed that whey was going to be milky white. So you can guess how it felt when I saw the whey was yellow and I asked, “What did I do wrong?”

Nothing. I did nothing wrong. Whey is going to be yellow. The pictures below do no justice to it. It kind of reminds me of neon yellow lemonade. So if you have yellow liquid with your curds, you’re doing great!

Once your curds come to temp, remove them from heat and let them sit for 2 minutes. Once the time is up it’s straining time!

I was super excited for this part! Looking down from the top of my pot, I thought I was going to pull out something like large squeaky cheese curds. I tried to be gently lifting the curds out of the pot with a slotted serving spoon. Low and behold, I was pulling out Titanic Iceberg cheese curds. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but there were a good dozen chunks that stretched over the edges of my slotted spoon. I felt like a rock star.

Once the cheese is all strained out there’s one of two methods you can go; stovetop or microwave heating of the cheese. Normally, I avoid using my microwave. I think it best serves me as a bread/cookie box. However, I undertook this new venture during nap time and the kiddos would be waking up any time. So I opted for the microwave. This method works, but I have the feeling I can get better results with the stove top next time. Again, I just don’t cook using my microwave unless I’m cooking popcorn or quickly heating leftovers.

If you’re interested making Mozzarella without using a microwave during the stretching process, here’s one resource I found.

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Back to the show.

The heating of the cheese is to help release the whey from the curds. And the light addition of salt before each 60 session of warming is to help extract the liquid from the curd. Once you have about a Tbsp of whey left you’re good to move on to the stretching and forming of the Mozzarella.

In the directions I was using, I was told I could use a metal spoon to fold over the cheese while it was hot. And you better believe I took advantage of that tip. (I still cringe at childhood taffy pulling. That candy was hot!)

By the time that I got to the point of this first picture, the spoon lost its effectiveness and I was ready to bite the bullet and go to town using my hands. It was still hot (something similar to a hot spa towel, hot but not flesh burning) but quickly cooled down as I stretched it a couple of times.

For shaping, I decided to go the method that bread makers use when folding the dough under to build up surface tension for boule bread.

Tip: This method of folding the cheese under did two things. One, when the cheese cooled to hold its shape, there’s a canyon like crevice on the center bottom. Two, when I cut a test slice for my mom today that surface tension made a dense slice. If you want a solid slice of goodness, this shaping method might work for you.

Tip 2: I suspect that if you’re looking for more of a string cheese pull apart texture, the method that you’re probably looking for is to keep with a taffy pulling method. Keep going with a pull and fold until you start to feel the cooling of the cheese tightening it up. Then I would focus smoothing the surface for that finished look.

Tip 3: If you’re looking for that soft, squishy ball of mozzarella, I’m pretty sure you’re looking to just stretch it a couple of times, smooth the exterior and then let it cool in your brining liquid or whey.

Once the cheese is shaped, it’s time to put it in liquid to cool and store. I should have just put the cheese back into some of its whey. Or even just water, because I had seasoned it to my liking before I stretched and shaped. The brine I had made was 1 Tbsp of kosher salt in 4 cups of water. It’s too salty for my liking.

If you are sodium sensitive or limit the amount of salt you use, I recommend skipping the storage in brine.

As you can see here, I have a bit more whey then I thought I would. And I looked at my table wondering what I’m going to do with all this whey. But I think I’m going to be okay. The day of and the day after I made the cheese, I used all the whey in the bowl on the top left.

What I’ve Used Whey For

The first thing I made with the whey is my bread recipe that I posted a few weeks ago, found here. The full volume of milk that I use for my bread, I completely replaced with equal volume of whey.

There were a couple of differences that I found with using whey in my bread recipe. One, the dough was much wetter than I’ve ever seen my dough, even on high humidity days. (Picture below) I’m the only person in my family who doesn’t eat raw bread dough, but I have nibbled before just to know what everyone feels so appealing about stealing my dough during proofing. With the whey, the dough feels smoother in my mouth and has a more sweet and bread like flavor than just the overpowering flour flavor that my dough has with milk.

I accidently forgot my dough (thank you children who pushed all my buttons that evening) and my dough over proofed. Because it over proofed I can’t tell you an accurate description of how the whey proofed with the bread. Nor can I tell you how the flavor was different with the whey vs. milk. If you’ve over proofed your bread before, you’ve probably noticed that not only do you have flat tire bread, but there’s also a kind of funk to it. When I over proof bread, the only good thing it’s really good for is grilled cheese sandwiches. My boys won’t really touch it. However comparing over proofed bread flavor, I can tell you this. My boys at 3/4 of a loaf for their PB& J (asking me to make extra sandwiches–this only happens on fresh from the oven days of properly cooked bread). Flavor wise, the only difference from properly cooked and this over proofed was that the natural sourness of the bread was neutralized. And I was about ready to bust out my oil and vinegar and have that for lunch. So I’m excited to try again and do a properly proofed baking of bread with whey!

For Taco Night I decided to take advantage of whey’s natural probiotics, as well as solve my problem with homemade ranch dressing separating after a week.

Ranch Dressing with whey really surprised me! I used a premixed packet, added the store bought real mayo, and for the cup of milk that I normally use I substituted out 3/4 C of whey. I have never tasted ranch dressing that was so good! It had a citrus lemon flavor to it that just lifted it from normal hum drum standard condiment to I think I have a cooking secret ingredient. I had my mom taste it (and she doesn’t do ranch dressing) and she immediately said that she was so glad that she tried it. To her she picked out a cucumber like sub-note, which makes sense with my husband’s reaction that you can taste the herbs in the dressing instead of being overpowered by the mayo.

With the Refried Black Beans that I plopped out of the can into my little sauce pan, I added whey instead of water to get that smooth spreadable consistency. If you think that canned beans are heavy, you most certainly won’t think so after adding whey to it. Again, there was a citrus note that just lifted it into something lighter and much more pleasing to eat.

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Let’s just say that those two changes were enough to transform Taco Night into a let’s stay home and skip eating out. I have had some amazing authentic Mexican Food from Chefs who used family recipes. And the only restaurant I would now take over my family Taco Night is Los Cubanos in San Jose, where the Chef has cooked for Presidents and A-Listers.

I am amazed at how much whey can improve the flavor of run of the mill, standard recipes.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m writing this post as a first time cheese maker, so you can have an idea what to expect from a first timer and not someone who has been making cheese over and over and perfected their skills before sharing with the world. I want you to know what you can expect when you first try your hand at cheese making.

Please Try! I want to know what results you find.

As you can see I’ve only tried the whey in three things. But I did pull a search of different ways that whey can be used. I’m going to forewarn you that the list that follows is extensive, but don’t let it intimidate you. I’m looking at this list with Christmas Morning excitement, because the quantity of whey in my fridge is going to get used up AND there are so many different things that I get to try! And let’s face it, I am definitely going to be making more cheese in the future.

Other Uses For Leftover Whey

Ferment Foods “such as sauerkraut, ginger ale, ketchup, and pickles.” Almanac.com
Ginger Ale or Lacto-fermented Root Beer (I’m going to have to do a project with the kiddos making the root beer)
Fruit Kvass
Fermented Mayonnaise (extends homemade mayo from a week shelf life to a month)
Kimchee
Freeze for future use
Add as acidic note to smoothies, slushies, or milkshakes
Pour on top of dog dry food
Feed to Livestock (chickens & pigs)
Whey Lemonade (this is definitely a recipe I WANT to try)
Sauces
Soups
Pizza Dough
Mashed Potatoes
Frosting
Fruit Salad
Add to Pesto
Use as a substitute for Buttermilk
Use when stir frying Vegetables
Spray on the leaves of peas, cucumbers and squash that has powdery mildew (Ratio 1:1 with water)
Toner for Skin and Hair
Lemon Whey Pie
Make Gjetost Cheese (sweet cheese)–traditionally made from Goat Milk Whey BUT can use Cow Milk Whey
Fermented Bean Dip
Lacto-Fermented Apple Sauce–This is another Must-Make for me
Lacto-Fermented Horseradish

Baking recipe replacement for water or milk
Truffles
theprairiehomestead.com has used whey in cornbread, pancakes, waffles, muffins, homemade biscuits and homemade tortillas.
Use for lacto-fermentation (pickling) in vegetables, condiments, chutneys, and jams.
Soak legumes–one site said NOT to do this because it made their dry beans tougher (so a judgment call)
Dilute down and water your garden (acid and Calcium loving veg and flowers)
Make Ricotta Cheese (traditionally made from whey)
Whey marinade (add your herbs and seasonings of choice) for your meats
Use for your mozzarella storing brine
Soak your oatmeal overnight in whey
Cook your grits, rice, grains and pasta in whey
Cocktail alternative for raw egg whites
Add to Fire Cider
Added to your stock of choice (replacing a cup or two of water)
Use when making Risotto
Substitute for Orange Juice in smoothies and baking.
Substitute for Lemon Juice in recipes, vinaigrette, and cocktails
Make Fermented Salsas, Dips, & Spreads (more recipes on this one link than I can state. Looks like it covers just about everyone’s flavor profile. So you should be able to find at least one to excitedly work with)

Expectations for Best Use Dates

From the Cheese Making directions I used, the Mozzarella is good for 2 week when stored in bring or water. It can be frozen for up to 3 months.

From what I’ve read, frozen whey is good for 3-6 months. (But you will not be able to make any cheese products from frozen whey.) People have made Ricotta cheese with whey that’s been in the fridge for 4 days. One source says that it’s good for 5-6 days. Another says no longer than a week. If you dehydrate it into a powder, you have 6 months refrigerated or 6 days at room temperature on the counter.

If you are looking for a more professional answer, instead of experiential hearsay, the USDA liquid milk products are good in refrigerators for 1 week. Cheeses are good frozen for 3 months. This doesn’t answer precisely for liquid whey, but it appears to fit with circumstantial evidence.

So if you don’t think you’ll get to all your whey right away, be sure to freeze it.

Your whey has gone bad when it has a rancid smell and/or bitter taste.

Pulling from being a breast feeding mom “rancid” and “bitter” may not be what you think. It’s more of an “off” sent/flavor. Yes I tasted my fresh breast milk and warmed frozen breast milk. When the milk was within the 6 month recommended frozen window, it warmed with not much flavor difference. Older freezer milk, when warmed did not have the same flavor. It had more of a sour instead of sweet taste.

In the same manner I recommend that you take a little taste of the liquid whey that you produce and focus on remembering the smell. That way when you ever have a question if the fresh or frozen liquid whey is still good you have a working knowledge to pull from instead of the random descriptors that writers use to convey a thought. After all your taste buds are going to pick up something different than mine, and the milk we could be using could be different in base flavors. (Ask a picky child what this means LOL.)

I know this is a lot of information, but I hope it empowers you into making some cheese and using the whey for other uses. Be sure to leave a comment below about what cheese you make and what you’ve made with the whey.

I know that I will never look at a gallon of milk the same!

Check out what’s new in my store for Cut Files that you can use on your favorite crafting machine. New Releases go live every Monday!

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One response to “Something New To Stretch”

Easy Cheesy – How I Can Do That

July 2, 2022

[…] last week I continued my experimenting with whey and I wanted to do a follow up post on what I learned. And […]

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Meet Frankenstein

Honestly, I should know better! Names have power. And the last time anything was very aptly named in my family was when my sister named her goldfish Sushi. It ate all the other fish in the tank.

I should have known that naming a starter Frankenstein was going to be a wild ride. But I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Today is the last day of this miniseries talking about yeast and bread making. I wanted to finish with my experience in making a Gluten Free alternative for in those who cannot keep a starter with flour, because of dietary restrictions. Because everyone should have the opportunity to keep a starter that meets their needs.

When I told my Mother in Law my plans for making a starter (my original flour starter), she was so excited and told me that I had to make a potato starter. She remembers having one from when she was a girl, but couldn’t find her recipe. And her memory was very limited in that process. She heard me out with my flour starter and insisted that it was just as simple and the same to make it from potato.

Of course I tried to verify everything she described with what everyone else has posted on Pinterest. And no, what my Mother in Law told me was different from what everyone else is doing. I’ll save you the search, unless you want to go down that rabbit hole. The rest of the world is making their potato starter using instant potatoes.

If you have a potato starter and use instant potatoes can you humor me and check the ingredients on the side of your box?

If you are comfortable with everything you see there, then I won’t say another word on that subject. Keep your starter healthy and keep making that glorious bread in your kitchen!

If you see anything there that you might not have been aware of or want to move toward a starter with fewer ingredients, you can transition your feed to using just a potato. I’ll show you how.

The Set Up

The little bit of information that I did receive from my Mother in Law was that the potato start from her childhood was just a boiled potato mixed with water.

Believe me I know exactly what you’re thinking! I thought the same thing.

There was not enough information to start with. What do you do with the potato? …I won’t bog you down with the list of questions that I had. Even with a degree in history, and having professors who assigned me to make food from out of circulation recipes, I had high hopes of finding some old recipe to work with. And all I had in the end was boiled potato and water.

BUT I wanted to make this experiment, with the thought in mind: How do you make yeast start with just what you can find in your pantry or garden?

It was a what-the-heck moment. Let’s do this thing!

I grabbed a potato, peeled and cubed it. Put it in a sauce pan with water and cooked that potato like I would mash potatoes. Only this time the seasoning, butter, and milk stayed where they were. Once the potatoes were soft, I removed them from the heat and reserved the water I boiled with. We all know that when you cook, all vitamins and nutrience end up in the cooking water. And I had no idea if the potato or the water has the stuff I want. (Also there’s the side objective of trying not to waste resources.)

And here is where I ended up with two potato starters. I didn’t have faith in my Mother in Law’s lack of directions. (To be fair, she hadn’t used this method in many decades and probably thought she never would.) So I chickened out and took Method Two. But the next day I decided I was doing myself a disservice by not attempting my Mother in Law’s way. If it failed, at least I had the other starter to fall back on.

METHOD ONE

Mash the potatoes. In hind sight I didn’t mash them as smoothly as I wanted. The chunks are very obvious. But rest assured, even if your potatoes are chunky, you will still get healthy and viable starter.
Mix in some of the cooking water. This is going to be a wet starter. So think between toothpaste and stew consistency.

I named this starter Carolyn.

METHOD TWO

Mash the potatoes. In hind sight I didn’t mash them as smoothly as I wanted. The chunks are very obvious. But rest assured, even if your potatoes are chunky, you will still get healthy and viable starter.
Mix in some of the cooking water. This is going to be a wet starter. So think between toothpaste and stew consistency.
Add a couple Tbsp of starter from an established yeast.

I named this starter Frankenstein.

Why would Method Two work?

When researching about starters, you learn that you can turn a gluten based starter into a gluten free starter by slowly changing its food source away from being wheat based to your GF flour of choice.

I didn’t do the gradual change, because the food source and environment was completely different. So I just jumped all in and went at it from a science lab experiment of inoculating yeast into a new medium.

What if I’m transitioning my existing potato starter from potato flakes to potato?

The standard method of transitioning starters to a new food source is to feed on the following schedule:

Transition Day 1: Use 75% old food source + 25% new food source.

Transition Day 2: Use 50% old food source + 50% new food source.

Transition Day 3: Use 25% old food source + 75% new food source.

Transition Day 4: Use 100% new food source.

All the transitioning experts assure their audience that even with a gluten starter transitioning to gluten free, the more you feed the starter without the gluten food source, the more your starter transforms into gluten free. If you are GF by choice, you are good to start using your transitioned starter after day 3. If you are GF for medical reasons, then there comes an educated decision based off of your sensitivity. If you are very sensitive, and know your levels, you can do the math to determine what an acceptable amount for consumption is. Your bread recipe is going to have a yeast to flour ration, giving you an overall percentage. On Day 4, there is potentially a 62.5% gluten level in the yeast. Day 5, that drops down to 31.25%. Day 6, 15.63%. And so on. Now if your bread recipe keeps the baker’s ratio for bread making (2% of flour weight), Day 4 has a potential gluten amount of 1.25%. Day 5 has a potential amount of 0.63% in the bread. So you can see how this is an educated based decision of what is acceptable for your body.

Please note: I have not transitioned a yeast to a new food source other than what I did to Frankenstein. So I have no idea if Frankenstein is what’s normally expected, or just some fluke that succeeded. And Frankenstein I didn’t transitioned at all. I just dropped flour based yeast in a room temperature environment of potato and water.

Picture 1 is Frankenstein. Picture 2 is Carolyn. These are just my starting point, pictorial references. So at least you have something to compare your potato starter with.

As a time saver for feeding, I boiled a couple of potatoes at the same time. I saved the left over mash and cooking water, and kept them in the fridge. When I was prepping for a feeding (twice a day) I took the mash and water out about an hour ahead of feeding time, so it could come to room temperature.

Day Two

I continued with a 2 time a day feeding of potato mash and the cooking water.

What I did not count on was Frankenstein (picture 2)!

Let me give you a close up on two of pictures in the set. In the above picture (picture two, top row, second from the left) you will notice that Frankenstein had clear striation between solid and liquid. When I placed a scraper in and gave to couple mixes to reincorporate the components for a feeding, I got Picture 1 (below). Frankenstein was alive!

I have never seen this kind of reaction in my life, especially in the world of yeast. This yeast, I called Frankenstein, was going crazy! In fact, Picture 2 (above) is the still of what I saw. There was movement in the jar that was very reminiscent of a lava lamp.

I mention all of this because if you decide to inoculate you potato start with another start, just to get active yeast from the get go, and you see foaming activity like this know that you are not alone. It happened to me and I have the photographic proof to prove it. The smell is standard for starter. It’s just the yeast activity that is the only difference.

What I fed Frankenstein and Carolyn were the same potato and cooking water. The only difference between the two starters is the origin of yeast. And that yeast came from my AP flour based starter, which never acted this way either.

Day 3

Continue with the 2 times a day feeding of potato mash and cooking water.

The activity with Frankenstein was still happening, but to a lesser level. Here are some pictures to show you where that starter was. I don’t seem to still have pictures for Carolyn.

I stopped taking pictures of Carolyn on Day 3 because I had some research to do.

If you remember from Valuable Resources, I mentioned things to look out for when keeping a starter. Your starter should never have mold, spores, or color on top. Neither should it have an acetone smell. On Day 5/6, I posted on Facebook, how Carolyn started smelling like butter.

I’m going to pause here and just let my post communicate what happened to my 100% potato start.

Here’s what happened, Carolyn was well on the path of turning herself into vodka. This will be a common problem, correcting Diacetyl, when you have a potato starter. This is because its potato based, not wheat based.

What I learned from Carolyn, and making a starter with next to no knowledge with what you’re doing, is that you HAVE to go back to a source that you know. Yes, I was making a starter. But this problem was not covered in anything written about sour dough starter for bread. It didn’t make much sense to look into the world of vodka making other than the fact that vodka making starts with a potato mash, which is exactly how Carolyn started. And within minutes of looking at sources in the vodka world, I found my answer.

For those curious, what caused the Diacetyl? It could have been a bacterial contamination. Or it could have been that this starter had oxidized. (Remember that yeast has anaerobic respiration.) I happen to believe that this time it was oxidation, because it happened on Day 3 which is when Diacetyl enters production of beer brewing. And all your alcohols have tools to keep oxygen out of your cultivation.

How did I heal Carolyn from Diacetyl?

There were a few options from the brewing and Vodka world. I started with adding salt into my starter (probably about 1 1/2 tsp worth. I guessed the measurement, and added a little bit more than what I thought I needed). This time, all I needed was the salt. The next day the butter smell was gone.

I cannot stress this enough. No matter what medium you use to feed your starter, yeast is a living organism. Every time you open your container to use or feed your starter, always visually check its health and smell it. Your yeast will tell you when something is wrong. And when you catch it quickly, you can tend to your yeast and keep it from going bad on you. It can turn around and come back into health.

Here is a picture of how Carolyn started showing evidence of being healthy and active.

And the Pay Out

Nothing shows the yeast is active and healthy until you produce bread from your starter. This was the potato bread that I made from Frankenstein while I was tending to Carolyn.

Is there a flavor difference between bread baked from Carolyn (100% potato start) vs. Frankenstein (potato started with flour fed yeast)?

I preferred the flavor from Frankenstein. Even though I followed a potato bread recipe, Frankenstein had a blend of flavor between store bought potato bread and homemade sour dough bread. Carolyn produced bread that didn’t taste anything like potato bread. The loaves turned out like they should, the flavor was just off.

To be honest, it’s hard to say if there was something deficient with Carolyn or if the difference I tasted was the true difference between the two different methods of potato starter. This was also the point in time where my life got super busy and I could not keep up with keeping 3 starters. So shortly after baking with Carolyn, I let go of the two potato starters and kept feeding my flour starter.

Final Thoughts

There are several different reasons why making a starter from potatoes is a great idea. For example, I grow potatoes in my garden but not wheat. If I ever came to a place where I could not source the amount of flour that I use (to keep my boys in bread) than a potato starter would be amazing to conserve flour and use up the potatoes I grow.

You can make potato starter from potato and water.

In fact a starter from potato and water can serve double duty by providing the yeast for bread making and for distilling vodka (for all you home brewers and wine makers looking to branch out).

Last week, in Bread Recipe that Hasn’t Failed Me, I mentioned the science behind bread making. In the case of this week’s example, caring for Carolyn required a different science. Sometimes you have to look outside the normal beaten path of bread making, to find your answers. Bakers don’t have all the answers. They are gifted with their knowledge that they’ve cultivated. But there will be times in life where bread making takes you into another field of study to find the answers to the problem(s) you are solving. So be flexible. Don’t get frustrated if you’re searching turns up as a dead end. It takes a moment to stop, breath, and take your thinking down the path that runs parallel to the one you’re on.

Thank you for going down this detour in the creative world.

Conserving resources, making something out of the barest of materials, and using what you have on hand is an art form that needs to be resuscitated in the world that we live in right now. There are options that are still at all of our finger tips.

If there is a method of making something that you want help finding a method of creation (Just like my Mother in Law’s information of taking potato and water to make potato starter) and don’t know where to start, reach out to me or leave a comment below. I want to be creative with you!

As a special bonus, here is a sneak peek to this Monday’s release, 2022 Graduate

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One response to “Meet Frankenstein”

A Yeasty Fix – How I Can Do That

January 13, 2024

[…] Meet Frankenstein I talked about the gluten free starter I made and how I had to bring that one back to health. That […]

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Bread Recipe That Hasn’t Failed Me

Last week I shared with you my process for making no waste yeast starter. And I promised you that this week I would share with you my bread recipe that hasn’t failed me and how to make tear apart rolls that are better than the ones you buy at the grocery store and bake at home.

First I want to take a moment to touch back on the subject of yeast. This last baking session I had was a perfect example of how life happens and sometimes your starter has a personality all of its own. I think mine was having a little temper tantrum for some reason.

Picture 1 (below) was the moment I pulled it out of the fridge. That sucker refused to double! I left it out over night (much longer than it’s doubling time) and all I got was Picture 2. You can see the bubbles clearly, so my yeast is present and doing its job. It was just temperamental. I added 2 Tablespoons of flour, no water). 3 hours later I had picture 3.

(Side note: I keep my yeast in a quart sized mason jar because my 400 g of starter fills the jar halfway. I don’t need a marker to mark my doubling volume. I know it’s ready to go when my starter reaches the top of the jar.)

SANDWICH BREAD (2 LOAVES)

Milk 2c 480ml Butter 4 Tbsp 56g Sugar 2 Tbsp 32g Salt 3 tsp 22g Flour 5c 700g Starter 1c 224g

Warm Milk and Butter to about 110°F
In a stand mixer bowl, with paddle attachment, add salt, sugar, and about a cup of flour (mixer speed 3)
Add warm Milk and Butter to mixer bowl
Add Starter
Add Half of remaining flour
Once everything is well incorporated, change paddle attachment to bread hook attachment and add the remaining flour.
Once everything is well incorporated, and you want to build up the gluten levels, let the stand mixer knead your dough (speed 3) for 20 minutes.
Divide dough into 2 standard bread pans
Proof dough until it doubles
Heat oven to 350°F
Bake bread for about 30 minutes (Bread’s Internal Temperature is 200°F)

*I did not create this recipe and didn’t make notes on who or where I got this recipe from. I have tested several dozen bread recipe over the last two years. So if this is your recipe please let me know and I will give you credit here*

Please note that depending on your country of origin, this recipe may or may not fall under the category of bread. For example, Ireland defines bread containing sugar less than 2% the content weight of flour. So by Irish standards, this recipe does not meet its standard. I have reduced the amount of sugar, to Irish standards, and still baked beautiful loaves of bread. So please do not feel like you have to use this much sugar. By all means, reduce the sugar content to meet your dietary needs. It does not change the bread.

I happen to use this amount of sugar because my house is cool and my starter requires a little helping hand to proof. And the function of sugar in a bread recipe is to facilitate the speed at which your yeast works. So if you reduce your sugar content, please allow a little extra patience for your dough to proof.

The great news about making bread from starter, there is no real time limit for you to reaching full proofing. Starter proofing can be dragged out to 48 hours in your refrigerator. This extended period of proofing builds up the sour profile of your dough.

On average, I proof my dough anywhere from 9-12 hours. In fact, I make my dough at night and proof it over night. Then when I wake up in the morning I bake my bread and it’s cooled in enough time for lunch. In this proofing window my yeast produces a very mild sour note. My mom has always hated sourdough bread, and yet she loves my sandwich bread. I know this doesn’t adequately convey a universal comparison. But it gives a general reference point based off of your preference level of sour dough bread. I would love to make mine more sour, but being a busy mom, I usually don’t make it enough time to properly prepare. It’s more of an oh-crap-I’m-out-of-sandwich-bread scenario.

Which reminds me, I need to make more bread!!!

Here are a couple pictures of the last baking session. As you can see in Picture 1, my yeast looks like it’s on the weak side. Normally it’s a thick sheet of starter that once I start pouring, it pulls itself out of my jar into my weighing bowl. I have made bread from weaker yeast than this. In fact there have been a couple of times where my starter looked like a soft milk shake. It still made bread. It took a little longer to proof (about 3 hours longer than normal), but it still proofed.

Picture 2 is my no fuss method of splitting my dough directly in my silicone bread molds. I don’t shape it. And often times the pours are uneven. (The larger weight loaf will take additional time to reach 200°F.)

Picture 3 is finished bread. And Picture 4 is sliced so you can see how this batch turned out.

On the subject of slicing bread… Whether you are making a loaf like this, or if you make a boule loaf, if you ever find that your bread doesn’t bake as tall as you like there is a trick where you can make it look like your bread was taller. Instead of cutting your bread perpendicular to your cutting board, cut at a 45° angle. By angling your knife inward, the slice of your bread naturally looks taller. The two heels of the loaf are not usable for sandwiches, but it’s perfect for other uses; dipping in soups and stews, snacking on with some oil and vinegar, cubing for making croutons, or crumbing to make a crumb topping for a different recipe. There are plenty of other uses for these ends.

On To Making Rolls

For my rolls, I use the exact same recipe as I use for making sandwich bread. The only difference is how I form the dough.

There is another method that I’ve made pull apart rolls, but this method (which you see in the picture below) is my way of making rolls that have been a hit at family holiday. In fact, these ones are eaten before the store bought rolls.

While my stand mixer is kneading my dough, I start folding foil dividers. These are just a strip of foil that I fold in half. I have long ones that fit the full length of my pans. And then I also make strips that are about 2 1/2 inches wide. If you find that the mini dividers are not wide enough, don’t worry. You will just place them in the middle and the rolls will still separate perfectly.

For portioning out the rolls, I start on one side of my pan. I make a dollop with two Tbsp worth of dough in a corner, place a mini divider up next to the dough. Then I portion out the next roll and place the next divider. I keep this pattern of dough and dividers until I complete a row. Then I place a long divider next to the row and then start the next row. I continue in this manner until the pan is filled. Then I move to the next pan.

If you finish a pan and see that you do not have enough for another pan, don’t worry. In the bottom of the picture you will notice that I kept my pattern of portioning and dividing. When I ran out of dough, I placed a long strip divider and then I put oven safe containers in the pan to hold up the divider.

Once my dough is all portioned out for rolls, I set my pans aside and proof. (The picture above was taken after the rolls had proofed and right before I put them in the oven.)

Baking temperature is the same as the sandwich bread. The cook time is less. I start checking the internal temperature at about 20 minutes. The internal temperature remains 200°F.

Once the bread is done, you can take the foil dividers out right away or wait until they cool. The effect is the same and it’s easy to pull the rolls apart either way. I have noticed that I pull the dividers out right away, they slide right out. When the rolls are cooled down, the bread tends to stick to the foil. If you find that the bread is sticking, just fold the rolls along the dividers and they will release.

Why do you check the internal temperature?

There are so many variables when it comes to baking. What is your altitude? What is your humidity level? Does your oven run hotter or cooler than the person who gives you a recipe? These three things alone will change how your bread will bake for you. A constant is the internal temperature. Bread is universally done at 200°F. If the internal temperature is less, the bread is still wet in the middle. If the temperature is higher, the bread is over cooked, dry, and crumbles. So all my baked goods, I cook to an internal temperature instead of a baking time.

Does it matter if I use a metal bread pan or a silicone mold?

I’ve baked bread for a far longer time with metal bread pans. I grew up baking before silicone baking dishes were even an idea in an inventor’s mind. Metal pans have their drawback, but I don’t even flinch when I see them or need to use them. All that I do is cut a sling out of parchment paper. That way I can pick up the sling and remove my bread from the pan the moment I take it out of the oven, and put it on a cooking rack.

For the last two years that I’ve used nothing but my silicone molds, I absolutely adore them! I don’t need to use parchment paper. Nor do I need to grease the pan to get a loaf to release. My silicone molds are a luxury, but it makes my life much easier.

So feel free to use metal pans or silicone molds. Use what you have available to you and your budget.

What is a sling?

A sling is just a strip of parchment paper that covers the entire bottom of your bread pan, comes up two opposite sides, and over hangs enough where you can grasp both ends and pull the loaf of bread out of the pan.

Be advised that parchment paper is different than wax paper. Wax paper should not be used in the oven when baking, especially when there is exposed wax paper. I know several people who will disagree with me, stating that wax paper is okay if it is completely covered. I don’t even use up my time in these discussions. Parchment paper is oven safe and has no draw backs in your baking.

Does baking bread really vary like you say?

YES! When I first immersed myself into the science of bread making, I studied a few different things. In fact, here is a picture of one of my charts that I still have in my recipe notebook.

Humidity levels were directly related to whether my dough was wet or dry. Did it matter if my dough was wet or dry? Not really. But I was able to understand why using the exact same measurements of ingredients gave me different textures on different days.

I played around with measurements of yeast, kneading times…. Everyone always says that baking is a science. That everything has to be precise. My bread has always turned out and I’ve played with measurements of flour, yeast, salt, sugar, liquid and the one constant is that my bread has NEVER failed me. If you’re heavy on yeast, you double your proof quicker than if you cut your yeast to a lower level.

In fact, IF YOU NEED TO USE LESS YEAST go with a wetter dough and knead in more flour. There’s so many tutorials out there for making bread with kneading by hand. Go that route with less yeast. The reason why is because flour is the actual food for yeast. When you knead by hand, you add more a little more flour with each time you knead. You continue to grow more yeast the longer you go with this method. Your dough is done and ready to cook when it no longer sticks to your hands when you knead it after a rest.

What is Baker’s Percentage?

This is where people say that baking is a science, you HAVE to keep everything in proportion.

BAKER’S PERCENTAGE

Flour 100%

Water 66% (of flour weight)

Salt 2% (of flour weight)

Yeast 1.2% (of flour weight)

Even if you didn’t want to use my recipe above, this Baker’s Percentage is all that you need to make bread. Everything outside of flour, water, salt, and yeast is just fluff ingredients that will change the flavor profile.

While I will play around with measurements, the Baker’s Percentage is the baseline that we measure everything against. If you do not have enough of any of these 4 mandatory ingredients, this is the method by which you change a recipe to make bread.

By all means, play with a recipe. Change it. Make bread with what you have available. Your bread can succeed when you make alterations. Just know that to make bread, you need flour, water, salt, yeast. But you can even leave yeast out if resources are that short for you. Flour, water, and salt will make flat bread for you.

If you remember from last week, I fried up my starter. That was only flour and water OR just yeast starter from your jar. Know that no matter what circumstance you find yourself in, there remains a way to provide for yourself. Do not lose hope!

This has been a full week. There are no new cut files that I made to go with this post. However, For a special surprise you have a sneak peak for what will be released on Monday!!! Click here to be the first to get Hardware Labels or Hardware before everyone else. Have a great weekend!

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