Another reason for boiling the water- You have to remember that people were getting their water from wells, ponds, rivers and streams. There's lots of other microbes other than yeast that will spoil the yeast starter/mother. So it helps to remove all the bad microbes, and then dope your concoction with the good ones (yeast).
Was going to comment something similar. There's also the question of the microbes/fungi that may be in the flour itself. Flour milling back in the day would not have met modern food safety standards, and an illness-inducing bacteria or fungus might start growing first from the flour. I remember hearing one of the theories for the level of paranoia in Salem was an especially damp year that may have tainted grain stores with a fungus that in sufficient quantities would have induced hallucinations. At the end of the day, yeast for bread is a 'good' microbe that we're trying to make sure outcompetes microbes we wouldn't want in our food.
This was my thought as well. I've seen people (Cody's Lab) trying to grow food mushrooms and when he didn't sterilize the media, the mushroom spores would get out competed by unwanted mold. Starting with a sterile mixture would likely be more consistent back then.
it also sounds like they had figured out that the rye flour needed to be added after the boiled bran cooled. So why not before? Because the culture they wanted was on the rye.
@@jrturner7707 as thinking the same, the fungi your talking about is Ergot which grew on grain that was stored with too much moisture. Thinking about a flour mill you often have a large wooden building covered in flour dust...that would be a haven for fungi so spores were probably high in there.
When my mother was a child, she lived in a tiny village in pre-WWII Poland. She remembers her mother would bake bread once a week - about a dozen loaves. No one had yeast. She remembered her mother removing part of the dough for the next baking day, and stored it buried in the flour, not in salt - they rarely had salt even for the bread dough. The old dough would dry in the flour, and her mother would take it out the day before bread baking day, break it up and soak it in water. I've experimented with making bread as she described it to me from memory. It was basically the old dough, flour and water. If they had salt, they would include a bit. What I couldn't recreate was the flour. They grew their own wheat, then took it to a mill to be ground into their year's supply of flour. It may even have been rye instead of wheat - they grew both. I can't say the bread tasted all that good, but the experiment did work.
Add things like a bit of flax seed, a bit of sunflower seeds, a bit of rolled oats, dried cranberries, raisins, walnut pieces. Or make another batch with kitchen herbs, granulated garlic, granulated onion, some parmesan cheese. 🧀 🍞🍞🍞
@@heidimisfeldt5685 I was recreating my mother's bread. The only thing on that list my mother would have had is the sunflowers; they grew enough to take it in and get pressed for their year's oil. I certainly did experiment with it more, after the first few recreations. Simply adding some salt made a huge difference.
Burying it in flour gives the same result as you would get by eg. spreading it on parchment and letting it dry into flakes. That's what my husband does, when he wants to share the starter with someone, or wants to store it when we are absent for a while and don't want to rely on it surviving in the fridge. It needs a bit more time to rehydrate & start when you want to bake, but it is, in fact, a perfectly usable solution to lack of cold storage.
To add: A dough made out of pure rye flour will not properly rise if you use yeast as leavening. It NEEDS the lactic acid from sourdough. That's why in regions where rye was THE grain used for bread (like northern Germany, where i'm from) sourdough was pretty much the norm for your everyday bread. Only the much more expensive white bread that was made with wheat would be made with yeast.
That is so interesting. I made my first sourdough pumpernickel bread last week but it tasted to chocolatey for my liking so going to try another recipe. But it's interesting seeing the variety of sourdough pumpernickel recipes out there.
thats actually not correct, at least not anymore, modern rye flour will work just fine with bakers yeast. doesnt taste nearly as good though. with older strains (like Waldstaudenroggen) you should use sourdough though cause otherwise the enzyme activity is too high and it will probably turn out gummy/dense.
@@slwrabbits from Wikipedia: "Bread made from 100% rye flour... is usually leavened with sourdough. Baker's yeast is not useful as a leavening agent for rye bread, as rye does not contain enough gluten. The structure of rye bread is based primarily on the starch in the flour as well as other carbohydrates... however, rye amylase is active at substantially higher temperatures than wheat amylase, causing the structure of the bread to disintegrate as the starches are broken down during baking. The lowered pH of a sourdough starter, therefore, inactivates the amylases when heat cannot, allowing the carbohydrates in the bread to gel and set properly." Amylase is the enzyme that breaks starches down into simpler sugar molecules. From my understanding, lactic acid acts as a sort of "emergency brake" so the long starch chains have a chance to build the bread's structure before the heat of an oven sets everything in place.
Our best friend's sister just passed along a TWO HUNDRED YEAR OLD sour dough starter from Italy that she received from the descendents of the family that brought it from Italy, and made it's way to the Chicago area. Delicious!
Old sourdough starters are cool, but ultimately gimmicks and not any different from a starter you make at home. The starter's bacteria will adapt to your kitchen's ecosystem and through feedings and use, will become basically the same as your neighbor's starter that he made himself using King Arthur flour and water and letting it sit on the counter. Research shows that maturity and flavor of starter has a "cap" so whether it's a few months or 200+ years old, it doesn't make a difference. Also, the microbes on the baker's hands affect the outcome too, so unless you're 200 years old, using the exact same flour, in the exact same kitchen, your starter isn't 200 years old; it's uniquely yours and adapted to you and your environment. If you want it, go for it! But if you think it's going to give your baking an edge or make more delicious bread, you're wasting your money.
My favorite kind of killjoy is the kind that reminds people that they’re not really the same person they were 7 years ago on account of how their atoms are all replaced.
@@yowayde I very much doubt that it will be "not ANY different" than just making a brand new starter at home. It's a living bacterial culture that has been through many places and eras and strains of bacteria. However, if they're charging "vintage" money for it instead of just giving it away, then I agree, "save your money".
Sourdough bread is the favorite bread of Skandinavians, Germans and the Maori, according to a pole from a few years back. And as a german myself I can only support that notion. Nothing better than a fresh sourdough bread that is half wheat, half rye, even better if it has 5% full corn. Have it fresh from the bakery, with a nice crispy crust and a warm, soft inside and spread soft butter on it. Marvelous stuff.
Sourdough is not what you think it is. Sourdough does not equal sour dough. Not even in Germany. Look up the German definition of sourdough in the "Deutsches Lebensmittelbuch". It says nothing about sourness. Instead it says sourdough is any dough that contains active living or revivable microorganisms that will cause the fermentation of the dough. No acidity required. And thus, not all sourdoughs are sour. Italian sourdough for example is specifically maintained using techniques that keep acidity out. And yet it is sourdough and Italian artisan breads are made from it. Their bread doesn't taste sour either, but it is sourdough bread. Similar with other sourdoughs in countries where wheat and not rye is the staple grain. The reason why bread in Northern European countries is traditionally sour is that the climate wasn't ideal for growing wheat and rye was the staple grain there, but rye is very enzymatic and that causes a rye dough to go overproof and collapse very quickly. Acidity throttles the enzyme activity and thereby reduces that problem. As a result, leaven in these countries has traditionally been made to be sour, but it doesn't have to be this way.
@@trijezdci4588 Thanks for the clarification. I actually wasn't entirely sure myself, so I looked it up after I watched the video and wrote the comment. I actually know what sourdough is though, I was talking about my personal favorite flour mixture and the countries that favor mixed sourdough bread over white wheat bread.
@@Yormolch The point is, sourdough bread isn't necessarily sour. And also, you can make white bread with sourdough. For example, Italian ciabatta is typically made with white flour and Italian sourdough. French baguette is typically made with Type 55 flour (white flour) and levain (French sourdough). Factory bread and supermarket bread and the like, whether white or not is generally not made with sourdough.
If I had to guess, boiling the bran turns some of the starch into simple sugars that are easier for the yeast in the air to break down and begin the fermentation process. Kind of like how adding sugar to yeast and warm water today helps speed up the "wake up" process for dried yeast.
I don’t think this is it. Starches don’t break down into simple sugars from heat alone, they need enzymatic action on them. If I were to guess, boiling the bran instead gelatinizes the starches, which makes them potentially available for bacteria to break down. From my reaserch, yeasts do not normally produce enzymes that can break down sugars any more complicated than disaccharides.
@@snosibsnob3930 Starches DO transition between sugar types due to heat. Not from starch to sugar; but from starch to resistant starch, or any other variety after it's cooled. Cooling it for a long time is the important part.
@@snosibsnob3930 The instructions said to cool it to just above room temp (the temp of milk from the cow?) which is probably enough to convert the starch to resistant starch. It's the same with baked potatoes. So, I agree the above could be true. I would also guess that the water used in those times could easily come from contaminated sources and if you didn't use boiled water you could easily start a batch with all sorts of bacteria types (e.g. E. coli) that you didn't want rather than the yeast and good bacteria that you do want.
My grandma had something called "dzieża" (dictionary translates it as "kneading trough "), which was wooden vessel for making sourdough. It was customary not to wash it ever since it was new, but only scrape it, because residue of old sourdough helped with making new bread. She made bread once for whole week, because of amount of firewood owen consumed, but bread was fresh all along because of horseradish leaves or linen rag used as cover.
Same in Finland with making rye bread. The tub or "trough" as you call it is shown right at the beginning of this video ruclips.net/video/ghRWeViG4Zg/видео.html . The tub is called "korvo" in Finnish. Its also rarely cleaned, probably only if some mice etc would get into it. At the end the presenter says also that the bread stays correct softness in the korvo covered with linen.
Maybe its better shown in the beginning of this one ruclips.net/video/AVQAD7QyPN4/видео.html . Although she is making more of western finnish style bread that is flatter/thinner and has holes for storing it on wooden racks in the ceiling of the house. The first one I posted was about eastern style, storing in a "aitta" (small storage barn) in a korvo.
Commercial yeast production was already a mature industry by the time prohibition started in 1920. By the mid 19th century, beer production was increasingly using lager yeast which isn’t good for baking. Around the same time, commercial yeast production had already begun as a separate industry from brewing.
Boiling the bran softens it to make it less likely to tear the gluten network and also extends the shelf life a little bit. It acts similar to the acids present in sourdough cultures.
You'll be ok, life is like a tough hike, all you gotta do is keep one foot in front of the other and you'll get to where you need to be, not necessarily where you want
Sourdough is popular in eastern/central Europe for centuries. And I can't even imagine to not eat bread made out of it. I just need from time to time eat that kind of bread. In Poland we also do soup made out of it, żurek for example is most famous national soup. Żurek is made out of oat sourdough mainly. And for a good one, you need also some fat pork, like becon and good smoked sausage.
Sourdough bread is the best. When he talked about how maybe the french like it but not english or americans I took that personally and wanted to make a comment about the child palate of americans in particular and the absolute car crash of a palate of the english. ;)
@@bryanleeyf87 It is not clickbait to say that Americans have mostly preferred white yeast bread to sourdough. A simple walk down the grocery store aisle shows that it's fact, not bait. This is the country that invented Wonderbread and liked it.
My wife makes sourdough bread, with intricate designs carved into them. She sells out everytime she makes them, people can't get enough of it. This is a great video, I loved seeing the differences between then and today. Thanks!
Found more pone notes for earlier post: No amounts, just have to use common sense to what is below. Add all ingredients after meal has been scalded and had time to sour. *small amount of flour, quite a bit less than normal corn bread, more like a dusting at a time, as needed, I seem to recall *sugar, or sweetener of choice, we had a small orchard, so raw honey was available, not all years was processed sugar available *yes, baking powder *buttermilk SORRY to be such a bother, yet have such little information to share at this time. I have Mother's more complete recipe packed away in my notes and memory somewhere. I tried this a few years back and worked pretty well for me! Getting too old and infirmed now days! Thank-you!!!
Fascinating! I've made sourdough bread, kept the culture alive, etc., and just keeping a piece of dough back sounds so much more manageable. Great video! Thank you. 🍞🥖🍺💖
I don't care for rye bread, but I love sourdough. The best I ever had came from a lady down on the S. Carolina coast whose house we were painting, and she made lunch for us every day. She said her batch could be traced back the the great San Francisco earthquake where her family had a bakery. When the fires raged afterward the bakery was about to be engulfed, and there was little time for anyone to do more than run for their life, but someone had the presence of mind to grab the starter on the way out. The bakery never re-opened but the batch had been kept alive in her family since then and at the time there were only three people left making the bread, which to keep it alive needed a loaf baked every few days. She was as happy to bake it as I was to eat it, and offered to share her starter with me. But alas, I was a young man not interested in baking so I never did that. Years later I found out that she'd passed away and to this day I still wonder if that batch which was 90 years old plus however long it had been around before the earthquake, was still being continued by anyone. Thank You Mrs Long!
Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing it. I'm so grateful that my young son decided to rent a room from a man who baked sourdough bread regularly. It set the example that eventually brought sourdough into my life after decades of eating store bought white bread. That college education really paid off lol!
After that amount of time, the yeasts would have mutated anyway. Microorganisms evolve fairly quickly, as the generations are so short lived. This is a huge problem in the brewing industry, as it's hard to keep a yeast strain "pure." And the yeast effects the flavor. So a very long lived sourdough starter has evolved over time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that 90 year old starter wasn't the same starter. I always wonder if that doesn't make the starter better, as i just don't know.
I love sourdough bread. Great video Ryan, you explain so well. Everyone on this channel is so good at their job. Extra special to see the town bartender discussing supply chain and dynamics of brewer's yeast. I'm excited to see how the starter will be doing in future!
Sour dough bread to me is a bit nostalgic, when I was about 10 and on a family vacation we went to a restaurant that made fresh sour dough bread every day in clay ovens like you use, it was the best bread I've ever eaten in my life, so much that I remember it over 35 years later.
I live in Germany and my Father in law is a master baker and has its own bakery. He is the fifth generation of master baker in his family and they still have the original sourdough that they started in the pre industrial era. I just love visiting him and eating his bread. His bakery is in a small mountain town that exists only because of a mine that was started there a few hundred years ago and his ancestors followed because they thought they could make good money feeding the miners with proper bread. It worked out for them and they lived a decent live until today. He is already above sixty and will close down the shop, since nobody wants to keep the store after him which is really sad to me. Unfortunately the mountain town is to far away from from big cities and there’s not enough tourism there (even if it’s super lovely with so many historical sites to view and a fairytale forest from the brothers Grimm. I really enjoy to be there and always plan my summer holidays around it. I wish that era would have lots of tourists or more modern people move there who value the traditional German bread culture. Unfortunately it’s mostly aging and somewhat poorer people living there, who prefer cheap and convenient bread from the supermarket, which is an absolute shame! It’s incredibly sad to me that globalization kills of a traditional German craftsmanship of five generations.. If the bakery would be inside or near a big city it would be flourishing, since artisanal bread is trendy again, unfortunately this trend didn’t arrive in that little mountain town. It’s very sad the people there don’t get it yet, but will cry in 30 years that this traditional bakers family went away silently..
I am interested in this, I am now living in carpathian Ukraine and the route to the ski village has lots of wealthy customers. This bread could work. Please tell me how I can get some information and I can pay for it
This was one of the best sourdough videos I have seen on the internet, and I’ve seen…umm…a lot. 😆🙈Thank you for all of your hard work and diligent research you put into each topic! ❤
From my minuscule glimpse of bread history, you nailed it well! This carried over in the times of my ancestors in the mountains of now days SW and West Virginia well into the 20th century. I know, as I have childhood recollections of such breads as West Virginia corn pone bread loaf, salt rising, winter (slow rise) bread, sponge, and other types being made. There is/was a recipe for West Virginia corn pone on the internet that is mostly forgotten, which is not a so called johnny cake, just saying to spread the word. It is not a deep south, nor a more northern version. My friend's Mom's made it, so it wasn't just a family thing. Went something like this. Pour more than you might think of scalding water over meal in a loaf pan and left to ferment behind the wood cook stove at least overnight (to sour?), then add baking soda, (baking powder?), salt, egg, bacon grease, and bake. Tthat is about all I can remember. I have a recipe somewhere? Left over and fried in butter, runny egg yolks, and perserves the following morning it is at it,s best! Thanks
My sourdough starter is approximately 35 years old and I love baking sourdough baked goods. I know it's a "modern" sourdough per se, but I still find a lot of enjoyment working with it.
Very well done, Ryan! I’m going to see if I can get my own sourdough starter going. Thank you for the time that you put into this video to bring us information of the baking in the 18th century.
The boiling of the grain serves to help convert the starches to simple sugars. Yeast can only eat simple sugars so more simple sugars mean a larger more healthy colony of yeast.
I put myself in a low-carb diet and watching this video reminds me of how much I love baking and eating bread. Kudos for the disclosing of how to make a variant to yeast. Looking forward to ep2.
When my grandma was young and still lived at home they had a wooden vat with a lid in which they made their bread dough, it was rye bread as that was a staple food source at the time. When they would start making bread again next week they'd bring the vat inside from the relatively cool storage they had, scrape the dough remnants from the side of the vat, add water and flour, mix it before leaving it in a warm place to rise. I can't imagine the process of making bread in that part of Finland had not been any different for the decades before my grandmas birth either.
Sourdough did remain quite popular from antiquity all the way to today in parts of Europe, so I would not be surprised if "levain" (as in levitate, rise; hence "leavening") was commonplace in the French strip from Louisiana to Canada.
Can confirm, here in Finland traditional rye bread is still made with sourdough and entirely from rye flour so it's dark brown, I had to do a double take when Ryan called that white bread a "rye bread"...
they did mention on another video about bread that it was the English who preferred the sweeter barm-bread, while the French preferred the older sourdough method.
Sourdough was popular on the frontier. It also doesn't need refrigeration. We never refrigerated ours. My grandfather was an old time sourdough man, and kept his on the counter in a jar, with a cloth cover. He was a camper, and would make sourdough pancakes for the camp. I personally think it helped give flavor to otherwise bland rations when on the hike or wagon train. But, when you were settled, you could get other flavorings and cultivated yeast, so the sourdough was forgotten.
I spent my youth in Alaska, and sourdough was absolutely integral to the pioneer experience in Alaska. They would keep a jar of starter inside their coat while on the trail; sourdough pancakes are easy to make with the "discard" of the starter, and would also feed their dogs.
Beer was boiled -- and yet it clearly would start to ferment not very long after it cooled (a day or two and the bubbling would start). Boiling the wheat bran was equivalent of boiling fresh wort, and while we now know that adding the rye flour was what introduced the wild yeasts into the starter, to the 18th century baker it was just a case of reproducing what the brewer had done to start the beer from which came the barm.
At that time, bread was a very important food staple. It sustained a lot of people. My maternal, great grandmother was working for a bakery, in Prague, in the late 1800s, as a teenager, before coming to North America in 1900. Bread is also connected to farming, and if there was a bad harvest, it would affect so many people. These days, many people take farmers for granted. I'm originally from a very large farm, and I know how important farming and farmers are for us all. That bread looked great. Cheers!
Thirty years ago, when I moved to California, one of the things I was looking for was San Francisco sourdough bread. When I finally found some at Trader Joe's, it was wonderful. Quite sour, but very tasty. I was hooked. That experience is hard to find here in Central Ohio, where suburban tastes prefer a less sour sourdough. So, with time on my hands during the pandemic, I decided to learn to make my own sourdough. And it was wonderful! Yes, I've always thought of sourdough as what you do when you can't get real yeast, so it really doesn't make a lot of sense in these modern days. But, oh, it tastes so good!
Some people who are "gluten-sensitive" and find bread hard to digest find they have no problem eating (real) sourdough. I mention "real" because most sourdoughs sold at regular supermarkets are NOT really sourdough but dough they have made sour in other ways.
Whenever you get back, look for either Colombo or (my FAVE) Semifreddi. I also made my own sourdough during the pandemic but I made everything *but* bread! Gotta say that sourdough crumpets and waffles are amazing though!!!
It's not just preference. The cultures composition changes when you move it to the great lakes area and always loses the punch eventually. The mild sourdough is as signature to the great lakes as the strong ones are to the west coast. I had a relative try moving the san Francisco starter multiple times before they gave up even though they had been warned.
Okay, I really like this guy's grasp of the subject matter and relaxed but engaging style. I have been following the channel for years now and apparently, it is only getting better! Nice
In the 70s we used airborne yeast that made a sweet “Herman” sourdough. I think they were boiling to just use airborne yeast, since their palates liked the sweet taste. Think I’m going to try the original recipe but with regular flour and see if it tastes like the Sweet Herman I remember so fondly.
@DrDIY1 there is yeast in the bran, and in the air. If you boil the bran, only yeast from the air that gets in after boiling will grow. This would probably change the flavor, but I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure.
I have had SD bread fed a lot of sugar that still tastes sour. Two of the biggest factors are how hydrated the starter was and how long was the fermentation time of the dough and levain. @@DrDIY1
Probably been covered on this channel, and many already know it, but measuring ingredients, as we know it today, didn't become "standardized" until 1896 in Fannie Farmer's The Boston cooking-school cookbook.
Boiling the grain makes it softer/ more easy to digest. My guess is at some point some discovered the yeast/fermentation process was shortened by boiling the grain first. I would think simply letting the grain sit in water over nite would have the same end result but it would just take longer.
I would think boiling the wheat bran would soften it and break down the plant cell walls. Rye is used because it has a lot of natural yeasts in the grain, so it is probably the warm, broken down starch giving the rye yeast a home to grow. I've made the sour loaf already described on this channel. it's a lovely personal loaf. My husband and I share one for a meal and it just uses the yeast from the air. One day, I hope to have him carve out a bread bowl for me to use. I will definitely give this a try. I actually DO love the taste of sourdough. More than sweeter bread.
Great video. I have to say that I routinely hold back about 1/4 cup of dough from the bread I bake and I bake bread at least once a week. I don't use it so much for the yeast that it contains but for the lactic bacteria that adds some souring to the next loaf. Because I tend to keep the leaven for 6 or 7 days in the fridge , it is not very sour. I would imagine that even more than barm, everyday folk who baked their own bread would have used this leaven as the source of their yeast. I cannot see a brewer simply making available to hundreds of households barm on a daily basis. And I am pretty certain that if I had the patience to allow any next batch of dough to be mixed with my leaven for a couple or three days, there would be enough active yeast cells to fully ferment my loaves. So, that Monday's leaven would be used on Friday and Friday's on Tuesday, Tuesday's on Saturday... etc
I have a theory as to why they boiled this mixture, and it ties into a video from 4 years ago. John Townsend made a video at a campfire where he was brewing beer. He said that back then, people thought that the boiling of the liquid is what gave beer its bubbles. Here, we are talking about bread, and again we have yeast and the bubbles that they make. My totally uneducated guess is that their thought process back then was something like "well, when we do yeast in beer, we gotta boil it to get bubbles. Here we got yeast and we need bubbles, so obviously we have to boil it to get it to work." edit: ok so I found the video! It's called "Colonial Army Rations: Beer Every Day! - Spruce Beer In Early America", go to 9:38.
I think the boiling of the grain might’ve been carried over from the brewing process for beer. And it also helps with providing additional nutrients for the yeast culture.
Sourdough rye bread is the staple bread in Russia and Finland and has been so for hundreds of years. I personally much prefer sourdough rye to "sweet" rye bread or tastless deep pan wheat bread, and it's also much healthier. In the old days and still at farms today, sourdough cultures were treasured family heirlooms that were maintained over generations. Before commercial yeast and baking soda were available, sourdough was the only method of leavening bread.
It took me a long time to master sourdough and there's still stuff I'm learning, but it's one of the most rewarding experiences. I even make sandwich bread with my starter and gift to to others.
Me too. In fact, these days I make my sourdough ONLY as sandwich bread (and skip all the "artisan" steps of using steam, starting with a higher-temperature oven, etc., etc.). Cooked at 350 degrees F for about an hour (until internal temp is 200-210 degrees) has been working great for us. I make a really large loaf (using a USA large-sized Pullman pan) every week and mill my own grain. We have found it to be health-giving as well...!
@@WholeBibleBelieverWoman I did my own take on the bread recipe I got. It calls for AP flour but I replace a quarter of it with whole wheat. I also do a ton of customizing with the sourdough cracker recipe I got and make them my own like adding cinnamon and sugar or parmesan and black pepper.
Incredible video. Love the history, love the script, love the presentation. My sincere congratulations and, most of all, thank you for such a great channel, ran by great people.
Please remind the "Viewers" that wheat wasn't always available for bread making. Corn (also called Maize) the hard or "Flint" varieties of course were commonly grown on American farms and homesteads. The kernels made very, very DRY, so they could be stored for a long time. And, when needed, ground into a course "Corn meal"! 🌽 this was then made into a few dozen different "bread like" products at the home kitchen! My all time favorite is baking up a square pan of "Corn Bread" to be served with my Home Baked beans! Beans actually baked in the oven overnight! Ten or twelve hours, at least! This combo is so GOOD, that both disappear almost as soon as the word gets out to family and friends that I've made a batch! Cheers 🍻
@@seanbeadles7421 That's the issue friend, we're discussing a time post-formation of Islam. The Ancient Middle East is several thousand years earlier than late Medieval / Early Enlightenment Europe (if not 10,000+) whilst being dominated primarily by cultural/ethnic groups that hadn't existed in 1000's of years by the time relevant to the video. In other words your point makes 0 logical sense to anyone with a grasp of early history. This is indeed why flatbreads are far more common after the life & death of the prophet. (Late 500's-623AD) Reading comprehension is valuable.
@@DanielWilczek-nu7ff The OP may very well have been talking about an _ancient_ culture, and that’s what I took from it. Perhaps read their comment again? Sean also was talking about an ancient culture specifically, not the time period of the video, and he believes they did have ales. You disagree? Like you said, reading comprehension is valuable. :) But you know what’s even more valuable? Kindness. Why call someone a friend and then go on to be sarcastic, rude and insulting? Could you have figured out a way to make your point with love? There’s no reason to be so rude. Let’s do better.
Great history lesson! I have loved sourdough since first learning about it in regard to the Yukon Gold Rush in my youth. There are accounts of the stampeders placing their sourdough starter in their bags of flour to keep it safe and insulated from freezing while traveling to their next camp, without much detail. The method you’ve shown makes a whole lot of sense how it was done now. We’ve kept starter for coming up on 25 years, and beyond using it at home we also use it when we overland/base camp for extended periods. Less for convenience, because honestly a package of yeast or a can of biscuits is of course easier to an extent; more because we’ve done it long enough it’s familiar and no hardship. Of course with modern coolers it’s easy to transport a pot of starter around easily, but now we’ll have to try this for fun.
There's a line in a Jack London novel (White Fang? or Call of the Wild?) that took place in the Yukon Gold Rush saying that some of the miners were called "Sourdoughs" because they had been out in remote areas for so long that they had no other leavener, so they made their bread with sourdough starter.
They might been boiling the starter to only get the yeasts out of the air and avoid the yeast from inside the water. Kinda like how it can take up to a week for the good yeast in your starter out compeats the bad yeasts.
Came here to say this. The microorganisms in the water would give an unpleasant taste and odor, without much rise, and would probably out-compete the yeast that's naturally on the flour and in the air. Also, boiling the bran releases more of the nutrients that yeast needs - specifically nitrogen, which isn't present as much in the flour.
There are many wheat (and other grains) fungus and bacteria that our modern day fungicides and pesticides farmers use to keep managable. Killing them would be a good reason to boil the bran. Boiling the water also kills pathogens in there and this allows the bran sugars to be released and available for the yeast to feed on. Adding the ginger too acts as a small sugar source and mild pesticide besides being a flavorant.
teareese I've read that good quality ginger, the kind that hasn't been treated with microbe destroying chemicals, such as organic ginger, naturally harbors wild yeasts. It's possible that it could've been a reliable way to inoculate the cooked bran, water and molasses mixture with yeast.
This is really interesting. It also at least somehow solved a mystery I have wondered about for several years, when someone posted on RUclips on a page teaching about sourdough bread that her great grandmother used to always add 1/4 tsp. ginger for each loaf of sourdough bread. The person who posted had no idea why she did it. And I still don't know -- but at least now I know this was something being done a really long time ago! It's also very interesting that they used molasses instead of honey (which I believe is typical today in some rye breads). Oh! Now I see in the post above mine that someone is saying that ginger helped to make the dough rise. Interesting! (I actually put some ginger in my sourdough bread I am making today (and baking tomorrow after leaving it in the fridge overnight.) I like to extend the proofing time as it seems to help make the bread more sour -- and by using the fridge I don't worry I will over-proof it.
Came out great, but no way to know how much a part of coming out great the ginger played, but will keep using it. You can't really tell that it is there.@@mvv700
It's a common notion that yeast and bacteria float through the air waiting for someone's would-be sourdough starter to land on and ferment. However, as you pointed out about the boiling of the bran and how counter-productive it is, most evidence indicates that the yeast and bacteria that we get in our starters come directly from the flours or grains that we use. The microorganisms grow on the grains in the fields and some cells remain in the finished flour even after the milling process (although probably not so if the flour is bleached). This is why a mixture of flour and water in an airtight container, refreshed every day or two, will eventually ferment.
Being from san francisco and growing up on that delicious chewy sourdough with the crispy crust, I miss the real thing, as i don't even think the main SF bakeries are even around anymore, and it's not easy to find good bread like it anymore.
I may not be a historian, but Polish people had many things cooked with sourdough starter, like soup żurek, that I can't think of sourdough as 'food nobody wanted'. It might have been for English or American people but for Eastern Europe I think it was more known. The same way English and American people were saying saurcraut is not edible, but Slavic people and Germans knew it is perfectly fine.
My guess on the boiling would be to eliminate molds and fungus from the fields or storage. Our grain today tends to be much higher quality and is kept very dry, that likely wouldn't have been the case for them. They might have noticed that uncooked grains would result in more unwanted molds appearing.
I'm from the Yukon and sourdough is an incredibly important part of the modern history up here. During the gold rush of 1898, sourdough was literally the difference between life and death for those coming through the chilkoot trail, etc. My current starter is about 12 years old and I can't wait for it to be passed on through our daughters.
My family’s sourdough starter is about 100 years old, and my grandparents bought it about 50 years ago from someone in Alaska. (We’re in Ohio.) It’s cool to know that our culture is most likely a branch off from a Yukon culture, and that it’s an important part of the cuisine up there!
@@vidblogger12 That's amazing! How does your starter taste? Yes, everyone who came to the Klondike gold rush landed in either Skagway, AK or Haines, AK. There were two major routes to Dawson City Yukon and all started there! So early Alaska and Yukon are definitely kinfolk in that history. So amazing you have starter from back then!
I was thinking that - like most discoveries - there was an air of accident around it. Someone boiled some bran for whatever reason, left it unattended when they were distracted and got an early form of sourdough started. They didn't know what was going on, and they found adding other ingredients improved the flavor, but the first step was the boiling of the bran, so they always did it.
It does break down some of the starch into simple sugar. It also kills mold/bacteria that it may have accumulated in the field and /or storage, so that the local yeasts in the air can get a start without that established competition.
The real value of this video is the research done. It's a fun game to figure out how to define search criteria for things that people didn't have words for. Lots of effort to find these reference materials
Another reason for boiling the water- You have to remember that people were getting their water from wells, ponds, rivers and streams. There's lots of other microbes other than yeast that will spoil the yeast starter/mother. So it helps to remove all the bad microbes, and then dope your concoction with the good ones (yeast).
Was going to comment something similar. There's also the question of the microbes/fungi that may be in the flour itself. Flour milling back in the day would not have met modern food safety standards, and an illness-inducing bacteria or fungus might start growing first from the flour. I remember hearing one of the theories for the level of paranoia in Salem was an especially damp year that may have tainted grain stores with a fungus that in sufficient quantities would have induced hallucinations. At the end of the day, yeast for bread is a 'good' microbe that we're trying to make sure outcompetes microbes we wouldn't want in our food.
The water could also be too cold
This was my thought as well. I've seen people (Cody's Lab) trying to grow food mushrooms and when he didn't sterilize the media, the mushroom spores would get out competed by unwanted mold. Starting with a sterile mixture would likely be more consistent back then.
it also sounds like they had figured out that the rye flour needed to be added after the boiled bran cooled. So why not before? Because the culture they wanted was on the rye.
@@jrturner7707 as thinking the same, the fungi your talking about is Ergot which grew on grain that was stored with too much moisture. Thinking about a flour mill you often have a large wooden building covered in flour dust...that would be a haven for fungi so spores were probably high in there.
When my mother was a child, she lived in a tiny village in pre-WWII Poland. She remembers her mother would bake bread once a week - about a dozen loaves. No one had yeast. She remembered her mother removing part of the dough for the next baking day, and stored it buried in the flour, not in salt - they rarely had salt even for the bread dough. The old dough would dry in the flour, and her mother would take it out the day before bread baking day, break it up and soak it in water.
I've experimented with making bread as she described it to me from memory. It was basically the old dough, flour and water. If they had salt, they would include a bit. What I couldn't recreate was the flour. They grew their own wheat, then took it to a mill to be ground into their year's supply of flour. It may even have been rye instead of wheat - they grew both.
I can't say the bread tasted all that good, but the experiment did work.
Add things like a bit of flax seed, a bit of sunflower seeds, a bit of rolled oats, dried cranberries, raisins, walnut pieces. Or make another batch with kitchen herbs, granulated garlic, granulated onion, some parmesan cheese. 🧀 🍞🍞🍞
@@heidimisfeldt5685 I was recreating my mother's bread. The only thing on that list my mother would have had is the sunflowers; they grew enough to take it in and get pressed for their year's oil.
I certainly did experiment with it more, after the first few recreations. Simply adding some salt made a huge difference.
@@AMKB01salt is the single BIGGEST factor in anything tasting good.
Burying it in flour gives the same result as you would get by eg. spreading it on parchment and letting it dry into flakes. That's what my husband does, when he wants to share the starter with someone, or wants to store it when we are absent for a while and don't want to rely on it surviving in the fridge. It needs a bit more time to rehydrate & start when you want to bake, but it is, in fact, a perfectly usable solution to lack of cold storage.
May have to use bread flour or something whole grain. All purpose flour isn’t the whole wheat grain ground up
To add:
A dough made out of pure rye flour will not properly rise if you use yeast as leavening.
It NEEDS the lactic acid from sourdough.
That's why in regions where rye was THE grain used for bread (like northern Germany, where i'm from) sourdough was pretty much the norm for your everyday bread.
Only the much more expensive white bread that was made with wheat would be made with yeast.
That is so interesting. I made my first sourdough pumpernickel bread last week but it tasted to chocolatey for my liking so going to try another recipe. But it's interesting seeing the variety of sourdough pumpernickel recipes out there.
Why is that? What does the acidity do to the rye flour? Curious to hear.
Ist in Franken/Bayern nicht anders. Mit Weißbrot können wir nicht viel anfangen! :D - Same in Southern Germany.
thats actually not correct, at least not anymore, modern rye flour will work just fine with bakers yeast. doesnt taste nearly as good though.
with older strains (like Waldstaudenroggen) you should use sourdough though cause otherwise the enzyme activity is too high and it will probably turn out gummy/dense.
@@slwrabbits from Wikipedia: "Bread made from 100% rye flour... is usually leavened with sourdough. Baker's yeast is not useful as a leavening agent for rye bread, as rye does not contain enough gluten. The structure of rye bread is based primarily on the starch in the flour as well as other carbohydrates... however, rye amylase is active at substantially higher temperatures than wheat amylase, causing the structure of the bread to disintegrate as the starches are broken down during baking. The lowered pH of a sourdough starter, therefore, inactivates the amylases when heat cannot, allowing the carbohydrates in the bread to gel and set properly."
Amylase is the enzyme that breaks starches down into simpler sugar molecules. From my understanding, lactic acid acts as a sort of "emergency brake" so the long starch chains have a chance to build the bread's structure before the heat of an oven sets everything in place.
Given our country's history with beer, I'd guess the brewer was EVERYONE'S best friend!
Brewing is time- and cultureless 🙂
Update: it seems that I chose an unfortunate wording. I meant that brewing is timeless and intercultural.
hell yeah 🍻🍻
INDEED!@@natviolen4021
@@natviolen4021 but yeast is a culture lol
Yeast is a culture what lives in a society.
Our best friend's sister just passed along a TWO HUNDRED YEAR OLD sour dough starter from Italy that she received from the descendents of the family that brought it from Italy, and made it's way to the Chicago area. Delicious!
Old sourdough starters are cool, but ultimately gimmicks and not any different from a starter you make at home. The starter's bacteria will adapt to your kitchen's ecosystem and through feedings and use, will become basically the same as your neighbor's starter that he made himself using King Arthur flour and water and letting it sit on the counter. Research shows that maturity and flavor of starter has a "cap" so whether it's a few months or 200+ years old, it doesn't make a difference.
Also, the microbes on the baker's hands affect the outcome too, so unless you're 200 years old, using the exact same flour, in the exact same kitchen, your starter isn't 200 years old; it's uniquely yours and adapted to you and your environment.
If you want it, go for it! But if you think it's going to give your baking an edge or make more delicious bread, you're wasting your money.
@@yowaydealso, aren’t starters only as old as the last feeding?
America has no history as usual
My favorite kind of killjoy is the kind that reminds people that they’re not really the same person they were 7 years ago on account of how their atoms are all replaced.
@@yowayde I very much doubt that it will be "not ANY different" than just making a brand new starter at home. It's a living bacterial culture that has been through many places and eras and strains of bacteria. However, if they're charging "vintage" money for it instead of just giving it away, then I agree, "save your money".
This was the best Townsends I’ve seen. Very well explained, the Ryan comes across as very enthusiastic and believes in his story. Very well done!
The Ryan, The Batman of 18th century cooking😅
This kind man reminds me of my brother. And I miss my brother. It always makes me sad yet so greatful
Gratitude is a wonderful thing. Blessings on you my brother, we all suffer loss, and can only find solace in that we had something worth our grief.
Sourdough bread is the favorite bread of Skandinavians, Germans and the Maori, according to a pole from a few years back. And as a german myself I can only support that notion. Nothing better than a fresh sourdough bread that is half wheat, half rye, even better if it has 5% full corn. Have it fresh from the bakery, with a nice crispy crust and a warm, soft inside and spread soft butter on it. Marvelous stuff.
Yeah, as a Skandi all I could think of when I saw the title was breakfast XD
@@antonakesson"The food nobody wanted". Nå, those guys were very wrong then!
Sourdough is not what you think it is. Sourdough does not equal sour dough. Not even in Germany. Look up the German definition of sourdough in the "Deutsches Lebensmittelbuch". It says nothing about sourness. Instead it says sourdough is any dough that contains active living or revivable microorganisms that will cause the fermentation of the dough. No acidity required. And thus, not all sourdoughs are sour. Italian sourdough for example is specifically maintained using techniques that keep acidity out. And yet it is sourdough and Italian artisan breads are made from it. Their bread doesn't taste sour either, but it is sourdough bread. Similar with other sourdoughs in countries where wheat and not rye is the staple grain. The reason why bread in Northern European countries is traditionally sour is that the climate wasn't ideal for growing wheat and rye was the staple grain there, but rye is very enzymatic and that causes a rye dough to go overproof and collapse very quickly. Acidity throttles the enzyme activity and thereby reduces that problem. As a result, leaven in these countries has traditionally been made to be sour, but it doesn't have to be this way.
@@trijezdci4588 Thanks for the clarification. I actually wasn't entirely sure myself, so I looked it up after I watched the video and wrote the comment. I actually know what sourdough is though, I was talking about my personal favorite flour mixture and the countries that favor mixed sourdough bread over white wheat bread.
@@Yormolch The point is, sourdough bread isn't necessarily sour. And also, you can make white bread with sourdough. For example, Italian ciabatta is typically made with white flour and Italian sourdough. French baguette is typically made with Type 55 flour (white flour) and levain (French sourdough). Factory bread and supermarket bread and the like, whether white or not is generally not made with sourdough.
If I had to guess, boiling the bran turns some of the starch into simple sugars that are easier for the yeast in the air to break down and begin the fermentation process. Kind of like how adding sugar to yeast and warm water today helps speed up the "wake up" process for dried yeast.
I don’t think this is it. Starches don’t break down into simple sugars from heat alone, they need enzymatic action on them.
If I were to guess, boiling the bran instead gelatinizes the starches, which makes them potentially available for bacteria to break down. From my reaserch, yeasts do not normally produce enzymes that can break down sugars any more complicated than disaccharides.
@@snosibsnob3930 Starches DO transition between sugar types due to heat.
Not from starch to sugar; but from starch to resistant starch, or any other variety after it's cooled. Cooling it for a long time is the important part.
@@D-Vinko Yeah but thats not being called for here, just boiling.
@@snosibsnob3930 The instructions said to cool it to just above room temp (the temp of milk from the cow?) which is probably enough to convert the starch to resistant starch. It's the same with baked potatoes. So, I agree the above could be true.
I would also guess that the water used in those times could easily come from contaminated sources and if you didn't use boiled water you could easily start a batch with all sorts of bacteria types (e.g. E. coli) that you didn't want rather than the yeast and good bacteria that you do want.
Maybe they boiled the bran to mimic what brewers did - boiling the wort.
My grandma had something called "dzieża" (dictionary translates it as "kneading trough "), which was wooden vessel for making sourdough. It was customary not to wash it ever since it was new, but only scrape it, because residue of old sourdough helped with making new bread. She made bread once for whole week, because of amount of firewood owen consumed, but bread was fresh all along because of horseradish leaves or linen rag used as cover.
Very cool, thank you for sharing. Especially I did not know about the horseradish leaves or linen.
Same in Finland with making rye bread. The tub or "trough" as you call it is shown right at the beginning of this video ruclips.net/video/ghRWeViG4Zg/видео.html . The tub is called "korvo" in Finnish. Its also rarely cleaned, probably only if some mice etc would get into it. At the end the presenter says also that the bread stays correct softness in the korvo covered with linen.
Maybe its better shown in the beginning of this one ruclips.net/video/AVQAD7QyPN4/видео.html . Although she is making more of western finnish style bread that is flatter/thinner and has holes for storing it on wooden racks in the ceiling of the house. The first one I posted was about eastern style, storing in a "aitta" (small storage barn) in a korvo.
Same with the wooden vessels in the bakeries in Denmark up to the mid 80'ies 🙂
My grandma grew up in Rural Greece, she to describes them using a trough in this way.
I wonder how the prohibition affected the baking industry.
Commercial yeast production was already a mature industry by the time prohibition started in 1920. By the mid 19th century, beer production was increasingly using lager yeast which isn’t good for baking. Around the same time, commercial yeast production had already begun as a separate industry from brewing.
Thank you, Pen Jillette, for this amazing presentation.
The warm light as Ryan mixed the dough together in the first few seconds was magic!
Boiling the bran softens it to make it less likely to tear the gluten network and also extends the shelf life a little bit. It acts similar to the acids present in sourdough cultures.
Will also help starches in the bran to gel as it cools which will improve texture.
@@clmalbful Yep! No different to modern tangzhong, yudane or scalding.
This is my favourite channel. It's getting me through very rough time right now. Thank you for making my Sunday better. I love what you do!
It’s so good isn’t it ❤
It’s so wholesome! 🍞
Perks me right up, too! Glad you are finding uplifting and hope that it continues to make your day better. Think I may make some bread today.
You'll be ok, life is like a tough hike, all you gotta do is keep one foot in front of the other and you'll get to where you need to be, not necessarily where you want
If you just keep one foot in front of the other, you are standing still my boy. Last sentence also makes no sense my philosophical friend
Sourdough is popular in eastern/central Europe for centuries. And I can't even imagine to not eat bread made out of it. I just need from time to time eat that kind of bread. In Poland we also do soup made out of it, żurek for example is most famous national soup.
Żurek is made out of oat sourdough mainly. And for a good one, you need also some fat pork, like becon and good smoked sausage.
Sourdough bread is the best. When he talked about how maybe the french like it but not english or americans I took that personally and wanted to make a comment about the child palate of americans in particular and the absolute car crash of a palate of the english. ;)
It's called clickbait.
I like Townsends, but he does not need to resort to generalization and clickbait for views. Pity he had stoop low on occasions.
@@bryanleeyf87 Well he talks about American settlers, he explains it at the beginning of video.
@@bryanleeyf87 It is not clickbait to say that Americans have mostly preferred white yeast bread to sourdough. A simple walk down the grocery store aisle shows that it's fact, not bait. This is the country that invented Wonderbread and liked it.
Isn't zakwas na żurek made from rye?
I like Ryan's delivery so much. I found this calming, which I needed.
I really enjoy watching educational and laid back videos like this. Thank you Townsends.
I like this guy, you can clearly see and hear that he is passionate about the subject. Listening to him is enjoyable.
My wife makes sourdough bread, with intricate designs carved into them. She sells out everytime she makes them, people can't get enough of it.
This is a great video, I loved seeing the differences between then and today. Thanks!
Bread Playlist ruclips.net/p/PLD1F368B5848077C3
i totally expected it to be music to bake bread to for some reason
Found more pone notes for earlier post:
No amounts, just have to use common sense to what is below. Add all ingredients after meal has been scalded and had time to sour.
*small amount of flour, quite a bit less than normal corn bread, more like a dusting at a time, as needed, I seem to recall
*sugar, or sweetener of choice, we had a small orchard, so raw honey was available, not all years was processed sugar available
*yes, baking powder
*buttermilk
SORRY to be such a bother, yet have such little information to share at this time. I have Mother's more complete recipe packed away in my notes and memory somewhere. I tried this a few years back and worked pretty well for me! Getting too old and infirmed now days!
Thank-you!!!
Fascinating! I've made sourdough bread, kept the culture alive, etc., and just keeping a piece of dough back sounds so much more manageable. Great video! Thank you. 🍞🥖🍺💖
@@ConontheBinarian there's lots of things you can make with discard. Some people love making crackers out of it.
I don't care for rye bread, but I love sourdough. The best I ever had came from a lady down on the S. Carolina coast whose house we were painting, and she made lunch for us every day. She said her batch could be traced back the the great San Francisco earthquake where her family had a bakery. When the fires raged afterward the bakery was about to be engulfed, and there was little time for anyone to do more than run for their life, but someone had the presence of mind to grab the starter on the way out. The bakery never re-opened but the batch had been kept alive in her family since then and at the time there were only three people left making the bread, which to keep it alive needed a loaf baked every few days. She was as happy to bake it as I was to eat it, and offered to share her starter with me. But alas, I was a young man not interested in baking so I never did that. Years later I found out that she'd passed away and to this day I still wonder if that batch which was 90 years old plus however long it had been around before the earthquake, was still being continued by anyone. Thank You Mrs Long!
Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing it. I'm so grateful that my young son decided to rent a room from a man who baked sourdough bread regularly. It set the example that eventually brought sourdough into my life after decades of eating store bought white bread. That college education really paid off lol!
After that amount of time, the yeasts would have mutated anyway. Microorganisms evolve fairly quickly, as the generations are so short lived. This is a huge problem in the brewing industry, as it's hard to keep a yeast strain "pure." And the yeast effects the flavor.
So a very long lived sourdough starter has evolved over time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that 90 year old starter wasn't the same starter. I always wonder if that doesn't make the starter better, as i just don't know.
@@jeromethiel4323 Indeed, the classic thought experiment: Theseus's Sourdough Starter.
I love sourdough bread. Great video Ryan, you explain so well. Everyone on this channel is so good at their job. Extra special to see the town bartender discussing supply chain and dynamics of brewer's yeast. I'm excited to see how the starter will be doing in future!
Love your clear calm explanations!
Sour dough bread to me is a bit nostalgic, when I was about 10 and on a family vacation we went to a restaurant that made fresh sour dough bread every day in clay ovens like you use, it was the best bread I've ever eaten in my life, so much that I remember it over 35 years later.
I live in Germany and my Father in law is a master baker and has its own bakery.
He is the fifth generation of master baker in his family and they still have the original sourdough that they started in the pre industrial era.
I just love visiting him and eating his bread.
His bakery is in a small mountain town that exists only because of a mine that was started there a few hundred years ago and his ancestors followed because they thought they could make good money feeding the miners with proper bread.
It worked out for them and they lived a decent live until today.
He is already above sixty and will close down the shop, since nobody wants to keep the store after him which is really sad to me.
Unfortunately the mountain town is to far away from from big cities and there’s not enough tourism there (even if it’s super lovely with so many historical sites to view and a fairytale forest from the brothers Grimm.
I really enjoy to be there and always plan my summer holidays around it.
I wish that era would have lots of tourists or more modern people move there who value the traditional German bread culture.
Unfortunately it’s mostly aging and somewhat poorer people living there, who prefer cheap and convenient bread from the supermarket, which is an absolute shame!
It’s incredibly sad to me that globalization kills of a traditional German craftsmanship of five generations..
If the bakery would be inside or near a big city it would be flourishing, since artisanal bread is trendy again, unfortunately this trend didn’t arrive in that little mountain town.
It’s very sad the people there don’t get it yet, but will cry in 30 years that this traditional bakers family went away silently..
I am interested in this, I am now living in carpathian Ukraine and the route to the ski village has lots of wealthy customers. This bread could work. Please tell me how I can get some information and I can pay for it
You need to get proactive to help save the shop
How tf is globalisation to blame for skimpy locals who don't get what they're losing??
Where is the village and how is the bakery called? Would love to visit - i'm from northern Italy
This was one of the best sourdough videos I have seen on the internet, and I’ve seen…umm…a lot. 😆🙈Thank you for all of your hard work and diligent research you put into each topic! ❤
From my minuscule glimpse of bread history, you nailed it well! This carried over in the times of my ancestors in the mountains of now days SW and West Virginia well into the 20th century. I know, as I have childhood recollections of such breads as West Virginia corn pone bread loaf, salt rising, winter (slow rise) bread, sponge, and other types being made.
There is/was a recipe for West Virginia corn pone on the internet that is mostly forgotten, which is not a so called johnny cake, just saying to spread the word. It is not a deep south, nor a more northern version. My friend's Mom's made it, so it wasn't just a family thing.
Went something like this. Pour more than you might think of scalding water over meal in a loaf pan and left to ferment behind the wood cook stove at least overnight (to sour?), then add baking soda, (baking powder?), salt, egg, bacon grease, and bake. Tthat is about all I can remember. I have a recipe somewhere?
Left over and fried in butter, runny egg yolks, and perserves the following morning it is at it,s best! Thanks
My sourdough starter is approximately 35 years old and I love baking sourdough baked goods. I know it's a "modern" sourdough per se, but I still find a lot of enjoyment working with it.
Very well done, Ryan! I’m going to see if I can get my own sourdough starter going. Thank you for the time that you put into this video to bring us information of the baking in the 18th century.
The boiling of the grain serves to help convert the starches to simple sugars. Yeast can only eat simple sugars so more simple sugars mean a larger more healthy colony of yeast.
An excellent video , so professionally done! So informative, I learned so much. Thank you
I put myself in a low-carb diet and watching this video reminds me of how much I love baking and eating bread. Kudos for the disclosing of how to make a variant to yeast. Looking forward to ep2.
When my grandma was young and still lived at home they had a wooden vat with a lid in which they made their bread dough, it was rye bread as that was a staple food source at the time. When they would start making bread again next week they'd bring the vat inside from the relatively cool storage they had, scrape the dough remnants from the side of the vat, add water and flour, mix it before leaving it in a warm place to rise. I can't imagine the process of making bread in that part of Finland had not been any different for the decades before my grandmas birth either.
Sourdough did remain quite popular from antiquity all the way to today in parts of Europe, so I would not be surprised if "levain" (as in levitate, rise; hence "leavening") was commonplace in the French strip from Louisiana to Canada.
Can confirm, here in Finland traditional rye bread is still made with sourdough and entirely from rye flour so it's dark brown, I had to do a double take when Ryan called that white bread a "rye bread"...
they did mention on another video about bread that it was the English who preferred the sweeter barm-bread, while the French preferred the older sourdough method.
@@IamOutOfNames Same! Swedish here, but that white bread is *not* rye bread
Whole Eastern Europe loves sourdough bread.
why, sourdough is disgusting
Sourdough was popular on the frontier. It also doesn't need refrigeration. We never refrigerated ours. My grandfather was an old time sourdough man, and kept his on the counter in a jar, with a cloth cover.
He was a camper, and would make sourdough pancakes for the camp.
I personally think it helped give flavor to otherwise bland rations when on the hike or wagon train. But, when you were settled, you could get other flavorings and cultivated yeast, so the sourdough was forgotten.
I spent my youth in Alaska, and sourdough was absolutely integral to the pioneer experience in Alaska. They would keep a jar of starter inside their coat while on the trail; sourdough pancakes are easy to make with the "discard" of the starter, and would also feed their dogs.
His enthusiasm is infectious. :)
Beer was boiled -- and yet it clearly would start to ferment not very long after it cooled (a day or two and the bubbling would start). Boiling the wheat bran was equivalent of boiling fresh wort, and while we now know that adding the rye flour was what introduced the wild yeasts into the starter, to the 18th century baker it was just a case of reproducing what the brewer had done to start the beer from which came the barm.
At that time, bread was a very important food staple. It sustained a lot of people. My maternal, great grandmother was working for a bakery, in Prague, in the late 1800s, as a teenager, before coming to North America in 1900. Bread is also connected to farming, and if there was a bad harvest, it would affect so many people. These days, many people take farmers for granted. I'm originally from a very large farm, and I know how important farming and farmers are for us all. That bread looked great. Cheers!
Thirty years ago, when I moved to California, one of the things I was looking for was San Francisco sourdough bread.
When I finally found some at Trader Joe's, it was wonderful. Quite sour, but very tasty. I was hooked.
That experience is hard to find here in Central Ohio, where suburban tastes prefer a less sour sourdough.
So, with time on my hands during the pandemic, I decided to learn to make my own sourdough. And it was wonderful!
Yes, I've always thought of sourdough as what you do when you can't get real yeast, so it really doesn't make a lot of sense in these modern days. But, oh, it tastes so good!
Some people who are "gluten-sensitive" and find bread hard to digest find they have no problem eating (real) sourdough. I mention "real" because most sourdoughs sold at regular supermarkets are NOT really sourdough but dough they have made sour in other ways.
Whenever you get back, look for either Colombo or (my FAVE) Semifreddi.
I also made my own sourdough during the pandemic but I made everything *but* bread! Gotta say that sourdough crumpets and waffles are amazing though!!!
It's not just preference. The cultures composition changes when you move it to the great lakes area and always loses the punch eventually. The mild sourdough is as signature to the great lakes as the strong ones are to the west coast. I had a relative try moving the san Francisco starter multiple times before they gave up even though they had been warned.
I started making sourdough the first of the year and it's been incredibly rewarding.
You guys are just killing it with these videos. Your channel and Max Miller's are my favorite history channels.
Good job, Ryan. Really interesting how they "preserved" that for the next batch.
Okay, I really like this guy's grasp of the subject matter and relaxed but engaging style. I have been following the channel for years now and apparently, it is only getting better! Nice
Ginger was used to help with rising the dough. I've made sourdough bread with it, and it seems to work.
This guy is great, more videos with him please!
I really loved this video! Thank you very much for your work and research!
I've recently started baking, so I love these episodes you guys do about bread. Your videos help me ease my anxiety and relax. Great work guys.
In the 70s we used airborne yeast that made a sweet “Herman” sourdough. I think they were boiling to just use airborne yeast, since their palates liked the sweet taste. Think I’m going to try the original recipe but with regular flour and see if it tastes like the Sweet Herman I remember so fondly.
Boiling kills yeast. It wouldn't introduce more yeast
@DrDIY1 there is yeast in the bran, and in the air. If you boil the bran, only yeast from the air that gets in after boiling will grow. This would probably change the flavor, but I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure.
Well airborne yeast is not what makes one SD more "sour" than another.
U want sweet SD? Add sugar
I have had SD bread fed a lot of sugar that still tastes sour. Two of the biggest factors are how hydrated the starter was and how long was the fermentation time of the dough and levain. @@DrDIY1
Excellent video!! 130 year old spurdough starter, that is amazing!! I would love to buy an old starter and keep it like a pet!
Nothing better than a pure rye sourdough bread. Cheers from Germany, where we're having more than 3,000 different types of bread. 🧡
I love this channel. I am a bit of a history buff and I am fascinated by the way people lived way back in the day.
Probably been covered on this channel, and many already know it, but measuring ingredients, as we know it today, didn't become "standardized" until 1896 in Fannie Farmer's The Boston cooking-school cookbook.
Awesome video and equally awesome comments by all the smart, knowledgeable, and helpful people here willing to share!!! So impressed!!! 🙌🏻 🎉❤
Boiling the grain makes it softer/ more easy to digest. My guess is at some point some discovered the yeast/fermentation process was shortened by boiling the grain first. I would think simply letting the grain sit in water over nite would have the same end result but it would just take longer.
I really enjoy the live stream but my favorites are the ones where you guys are all doing something from back in the day thanks
I would think boiling the wheat bran would soften it and break down the plant cell walls. Rye is used because it has a lot of natural yeasts in the grain, so it is probably the warm, broken down starch giving the rye yeast a home to grow. I've made the sour loaf already described on this channel. it's a lovely personal loaf. My husband and I share one for a meal and it just uses the yeast from the air. One day, I hope to have him carve out a bread bowl for me to use. I will definitely give this a try. I actually DO love the taste of sourdough. More than sweeter bread.
This was just so great and informative! I love these videos where history and cooking intertwine!
My favorite sandwich is sourdough bread with beef, sourkraut, and German mustard.
Great video. I have to say that I routinely hold back about 1/4 cup of dough from the bread I bake and I bake bread at least once a week. I don't use it so much for the yeast that it contains but for the lactic bacteria that adds some souring to the next loaf. Because I tend to keep the leaven for 6 or 7 days in the fridge , it is not very sour. I would imagine that even more than barm, everyday folk who baked their own bread would have used this leaven as the source of their yeast. I cannot see a brewer simply making available to hundreds of households barm on a daily basis. And I am pretty certain that if I had the patience to allow any next batch of dough to be mixed with my leaven for a couple or three days, there would be enough active yeast cells to fully ferment my loaves. So, that Monday's leaven would be used on Friday and Friday's on Tuesday, Tuesday's on Saturday... etc
Thank you for this informative video. You explained it the best way possible!
Out here in California the 49ers brought the sourdough and its been here ever since.
I have a theory as to why they boiled this mixture, and it ties into a video from 4 years ago.
John Townsend made a video at a campfire where he was brewing beer. He said that back then, people thought that the boiling of the liquid is what gave beer its bubbles. Here, we are talking about bread, and again we have yeast and the bubbles that they make.
My totally uneducated guess is that their thought process back then was something like "well, when we do yeast in beer, we gotta boil it to get bubbles. Here we got yeast and we need bubbles, so obviously we have to boil it to get it to work."
edit: ok so I found the video! It's called "Colonial Army Rations: Beer Every Day! - Spruce Beer In Early America", go to 9:38.
That's fascinating. Thanks for the video recommendation. I'll have to check that out.
Funny, I just watched that vid and thought the same thing!
This was an awesome video i absolutely love sourdough bread! Love the little bit of history that came with it! Keep up the great work guys!!!
I think the boiling of the grain might’ve been carried over from the brewing process for beer. And it also helps with providing additional nutrients for the yeast culture.
This is exactly the content I watch youtube for. Amazing to be able to experience how life looked like long ago 🥰
Sourdough rye bread is the staple bread in Russia and Finland and has been so for hundreds of years. I personally much prefer sourdough rye to "sweet" rye bread or tastless deep pan wheat bread, and it's also much healthier. In the old days and still at farms today, sourdough cultures were treasured family heirlooms that were maintained over generations. Before commercial yeast and baking soda were available, sourdough was the only method of leavening bread.
You guys should make a playlist with all of your bread videos!
It took me a long time to master sourdough and there's still stuff I'm learning, but it's one of the most rewarding experiences. I even make sandwich bread with my starter and gift to to others.
Me too. In fact, these days I make my sourdough ONLY as sandwich bread (and skip all the "artisan" steps of using steam, starting with a higher-temperature oven, etc., etc.). Cooked at 350 degrees F for about an hour (until internal temp is 200-210 degrees) has been working great for us. I make a really large loaf (using a USA large-sized Pullman pan) every week and mill my own grain. We have found it to be health-giving as well...!
@@WholeBibleBelieverWoman I did my own take on the bread recipe I got. It calls for AP flour but I replace a quarter of it with whole wheat. I also do a ton of customizing with the sourdough cracker recipe I got and make them my own like adding cinnamon and sugar or parmesan and black pepper.
Incredible video. Love the history, love the script, love the presentation. My sincere congratulations and, most of all, thank you for such a great channel, ran by great people.
Quite interesting. In Brazil (I think it’s colonial times inherited too), it was called “rotten dough”. They use to use in the same fashion.
Please remind the "Viewers" that wheat wasn't always available for bread making. Corn (also called Maize) the hard or "Flint" varieties of course were commonly grown on American farms and homesteads. The kernels made very, very DRY, so they could be stored for a long time.
And, when needed, ground into a course "Corn meal"! 🌽 this was then made into a few dozen different "bread like" products at the home kitchen!
My all time favorite is baking up a square pan of "Corn Bread" to be served with my Home Baked beans! Beans actually baked in the oven overnight! Ten or twelve hours, at least! This combo is so GOOD, that both disappear almost as soon as the word gets out to family and friends that I've made a batch!
Cheers 🍻
I just realized the reason so much bread from the middle east is flatbread is because they didnt brew beer and had no/less access to yeast. Wow
They definitely brewed ales in the ancient Middle East
It’s just really easy/quick to bake a flatbread (on a simple griddle) in primitive contexts. It’s why kids do it for school projects.
@@seanbeadles7421 That's the issue friend, we're discussing a time post-formation of Islam. The Ancient Middle East is several thousand years earlier than late Medieval / Early Enlightenment Europe (if not 10,000+) whilst being dominated primarily by cultural/ethnic groups that hadn't existed in 1000's of years by the time relevant to the video. In other words your point makes 0 logical sense to anyone with a grasp of early history. This is indeed why flatbreads are far more common after the life & death of the prophet. (Late 500's-623AD)
Reading comprehension is valuable.
Egyptians did. Sumerians INVENTED beer.
@@DanielWilczek-nu7ff
The OP may very well have been talking about an _ancient_ culture, and that’s what I took from it. Perhaps read their comment again? Sean also was talking about an ancient culture specifically, not the time period of the video, and he believes they did have ales. You disagree?
Like you said, reading comprehension is valuable. :) But you know what’s even more valuable? Kindness. Why call someone a friend and then go on to be sarcastic, rude and insulting? Could you have figured out a way to make your point with love? There’s no reason to be so rude. Let’s do better.
Great history lesson! I have loved sourdough since first learning about it in regard to the Yukon Gold Rush in my youth. There are accounts of the stampeders placing their sourdough starter in their bags of flour to keep it safe and insulated from freezing while traveling to their next camp, without much detail. The method you’ve shown makes a whole lot of sense how it was done now. We’ve kept starter for coming up on 25 years, and beyond using it at home we also use it when we overland/base camp for extended periods. Less for convenience, because honestly a package of yeast or a can of biscuits is of course easier to an extent; more because we’ve done it long enough it’s familiar and no hardship. Of course with modern coolers it’s easy to transport a pot of starter around easily, but now we’ll have to try this for fun.
There's a line in a Jack London novel (White Fang? or Call of the Wild?) that took place in the Yukon Gold Rush saying that some of the miners were called "Sourdoughs" because they had been out in remote areas for so long that they had no other leavener, so they made their bread with sourdough starter.
Hello, Ryan! I look forward to seeing how your starter turns out. I'm intrigued!
Great video! Thank you!
They might been boiling the starter to only get the yeasts out of the air and avoid the yeast from inside the water.
Kinda like how it can take up to a week for the good yeast in your starter out compeats the bad yeasts.
Came here to say this. The microorganisms in the water would give an unpleasant taste and odor, without much rise, and would probably out-compete the yeast that's naturally on the flour and in the air. Also, boiling the bran releases more of the nutrients that yeast needs - specifically nitrogen, which isn't present as much in the flour.
There are many wheat (and other grains) fungus and bacteria that our modern day fungicides and pesticides farmers use to keep managable. Killing them would be a good reason to boil the bran. Boiling the water also kills pathogens in there and this allows the bran sugars to be released and available for the yeast to feed on. Adding the ginger too acts as a small sugar source and mild pesticide besides being a flavorant.
teareese I've read that good quality ginger, the kind that hasn't been treated with microbe destroying chemicals, such as organic ginger, naturally harbors wild yeasts. It's possible that it could've been a reliable way to inoculate the cooked bran, water and molasses mixture with yeast.
This is a really great explanation video of sourdough bread and its history! Excellent work!
0:44 That Baker looks like an Angel from a classic Michelangelo painting.
That was so relaxing to listen to his story telling. Great video! It took me over 3 years, but I can finally make sour that my family enjoys.
Love this channel so much 😻
I always enjoy seeing this man on your channel. He's a very good speaker.
This is really interesting. It also at least somehow solved a mystery I have wondered about for several years, when someone posted on RUclips on a page teaching about sourdough bread that her great grandmother used to always add 1/4 tsp. ginger for each loaf of sourdough bread. The person who posted had no idea why she did it. And I still don't know -- but at least now I know this was something being done a really long time ago! It's also very interesting that they used molasses instead of honey (which I believe is typical today in some rye breads). Oh! Now I see in the post above mine that someone is saying that ginger helped to make the dough rise. Interesting! (I actually put some ginger in my sourdough bread I am making today (and baking tomorrow after leaving it in the fridge overnight.) I like to extend the proofing time as it seems to help make the bread more sour -- and by using the fridge I don't worry I will over-proof it.
Ohh! Let us know how it turned out with the ginger! :)
Came out great, but no way to know how much a part of coming out great the ginger played, but will keep using it. You can't really tell that it is there.@@mvv700
It came out great -- but darn it, I made another loaf today and FORGOT the ginger!@@mvv700
Watching this while having home made modern sourdough for breakfast. Will have to try this one out.
It's a common notion that yeast and bacteria float through the air waiting for someone's would-be sourdough starter to land on and ferment. However, as you pointed out about the boiling of the bran and how counter-productive it is, most evidence indicates that the yeast and bacteria that we get in our starters come directly from the flours or grains that we use. The microorganisms grow on the grains in the fields and some cells remain in the finished flour even after the milling process (although probably not so if the flour is bleached). This is why a mixture of flour and water in an airtight container, refreshed every day or two, will eventually ferment.
Being from san francisco and growing up on that delicious chewy sourdough with the crispy crust, I miss the real thing, as i don't even think the main SF bakeries are even around anymore, and it's not easy to find good bread like it anymore.
I may not be a historian, but Polish people had many things cooked with sourdough starter, like soup żurek, that I can't think of sourdough as 'food nobody wanted'. It might have been for English or American people but for Eastern Europe I think it was more known. The same way English and American people were saying saurcraut is not edible, but Slavic people and Germans knew it is perfectly fine.
My guess on the boiling would be to eliminate molds and fungus from the fields or storage. Our grain today tends to be much higher quality and is kept very dry, that likely wouldn't have been the case for them.
They might have noticed that uncooked grains would result in more unwanted molds appearing.
That was one of your best videos! Everything about it was perfect! Perfect subject! Perfect performance! Perfect editing! Well done! 👍😀😎
Not sure if this is already planned, but it'd be interesting to follow the journey of the starter that Ryan separated and see new loaves over time.
I'm from the Yukon and sourdough is an incredibly important part of the modern history up here. During the gold rush of 1898, sourdough was literally the difference between life and death for those coming through the chilkoot trail, etc. My current starter is about 12 years old and I can't wait for it to be passed on through our daughters.
My family’s sourdough starter is about 100 years old, and my grandparents bought it about 50 years ago from someone in Alaska. (We’re in Ohio.) It’s cool to know that our culture is most likely a branch off from a Yukon culture, and that it’s an important part of the cuisine up there!
@@vidblogger12 That's amazing! How does your starter taste? Yes, everyone who came to the Klondike gold rush landed in either Skagway, AK or Haines, AK. There were two major routes to Dawson City Yukon and all started there! So early Alaska and Yukon are definitely kinfolk in that history. So amazing you have starter from back then!
Beautifully made video with a lot of personality! I love sourdough; I will try this method! Thank you!
I’ve turned to sourdough because it’s lower glycemic and being prediabetic.
Very well presented. Id take a class in eighteenth century cooking from you anytime!
I wonder if the boiling was an early stage in learning about malting? Maybe it releases some of the sugars for the yeast?
I was thinking that - like most discoveries - there was an air of accident around it. Someone boiled some bran for whatever reason, left it unattended when they were distracted and got an early form of sourdough started. They didn't know what was going on, and they found adding other ingredients improved the flavor, but the first step was the boiling of the bran, so they always did it.
It does break down some of the starch into simple sugar. It also kills mold/bacteria that it may have accumulated in the field and /or storage, so that the local yeasts in the air can get a start without that established competition.
The bran, an agriculture byproduct, was probably funky and full of bugs. The Miller was usually a shifty guy, so boil that bran to be safe.
The real value of this video is the research done. It's a fun game to figure out how to define search criteria for things that people didn't have words for. Lots of effort to find these reference materials
I loved listening to the history of sourdough….the whole video was fantastic.
The history of sour dough is 6000 years old.
Thank you for the contribution.