Welcome everyone to the first blog post for my cucumber sourdough starter experiment!
What a crazy week it has been with the huge transitions being made at North Carolina State University from moving all classes completely online to being sent home due to the COVID-19 situation on campus. I hope that everyone is doing well and is healthy and excited to be here experiencing science with me!!!
So lets get started . . .
What exactly is sourdough? And what do I mea
Sourdough, very straightforwardly, is a scrumptious and spectacular type of bread! What makes sourdough different from other types of breads is that while many other breads require you to add yeast to the batter during the making and baking process, sourdough does not require you to use yeast. Well, let me rephrase that last remark; sourdough does use yeast, however rather than using yeast that you bought from the store and add to the batter, you can make what we call a sourdough starter, a mixture of only flour and water, which collects yeast that is naturally occurring in our environment to use in the bread and replaces the need to add yeast to the batter. ( https://www.thekitchn.com/sourdough-beginners-guide-23004397 can provide more information on sourdough starters)
So basically, you end up growing your own yeast!
After only a few days of tending to and feeding your starter, it becomes a an ecosystem home to lactic acid and also strains of wild yeast, most commonly a bacterial organism part of the lactobacillus family or yeast that holds the big scary names of saccharomyces diarensis, s. exiguus, or candida milleri. However, these are not the only strains of bacteria or yeast that have been found to grow within sourdough starters. But moving on from the rather intimidating names of the yeast and bacteria, the reason that this ecosystem within the starter is important is as it aids to the bread in many ways by creating that beloved sourdough flavor, that crunchy outside and soft inside, keeping the bread from staling and spoiling as quickly, as well as making the bread a healthier option for us people to eat! (http://blogs.britannica.com/2010/01/sourdough-bread-a-delicious-mix-of-harmonious-microbes/ can provide more information on the microbes found in the starters and links to more detailed descriptions of the bacteria)
Alrighty, so now lets dive into my starter experiment!
I made two starters, one is a control, meaning that it has only water and flour in it, while the other one is the experimental starter, meaning that it has the cucumber in it. As I just had to move home from Raleigh, I started my starters yesterday, August 26th, at 10:45 am, after leaving filtered water out on the counter overnight (for around 23 hours) to ensure that most of the chlorine had left the water. The flour that I used was from the La Farm Bakery and lucky for me, I have cucumbers growing in my very own garden found in my backyard and thus, along with that cucumber comes a humble jumble of naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria to test in our sourdough starter!
Below is an image showing my materials for the experiment, a sharpie, water, flour, cups and their prospective covers, and the scoop that I used to measure the two scoops of water and flour that went into each starter as well as to eyeball the amount of cucumber that went into the experimental starter.
Below is a picture of my starters, one during their creation and one after the mixtures had been stirred and sealed, ready to do their thing for the next 24 hours! (the cup on the left is the control and the one on the right is the experimental cup in both images)
So what did the starters look like after 24 hours?
As life has been crazy this past week, and with me having to move and thus start my starters on Wednesday, I have only one day of discoveries to share with you but I hope that you are as excited as I am!
After about 24 hours into the lives of my starters some interesting things had happened! Today, August 27th, at about 10:30am, I checked on my starters as it was time to feed them (at this point in the experiment, I only have to feed them one time every 24 hours and they are not yet rising and falling as starters eventually do). Both starters had a layer of liquid, which is called ‘hooch,’ across their surfaces as well as many bubbles or holes/divots of differing sizes throughout their surface and even along the sides of the starters! The cucumber chunk itself had its own little bubble colonies of its own all around it in the experimental starter. When stirring the starters in preparation to feed them, they stuck together some, resembling that of, of course, bread batter. And we all know what that means, that at this moment, the starters are functioning as starters! Lucky for me, the starters did not smell weird or gross, the control smelt like mild bread as it is a bread starter, and the experimental one smelt like bread and well, CUCUMBER!
(P.S. To feed my starters, I used a clean scoop every time to remove a full scoop of the starter from each cup, discard it, then add back one cup of flour and water to each starter.)
So as far as starters go, they are still little babies, and not to much of anything visibly for us to see or smell is happening . . . yet!
Below is a photo of the starters after 24 hours (control on the left and the experimental on the right) are a couple video links showing you a more detailed look at what the starters looked like after 24 hours.
Thank you for joining me for the first update on my cucumber sourdough starter experiment! I hope for you to join me for more exciting discoveries and updates next week! Lets science!