re: Making Artisanal Bread

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Tall narrow container let’s you easily and accurately determine when the mixture has doubled in size. This is hard to judge in a low, wide bowl. Doubling in size is one standard way of knowing if the culture is sufficiently active to raise a loaf of bread. Pay attention/record how much water and flour you feed it.

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So according to the directions for the sour dough starter, i'm supposed to remove half the starter regardless of signs of fermentation or not, and add more flour and water. Could i do so, and move teh mixture to a large mason jar? Or do i need to wait to see some sort of sign of fermentation.

Also, i'm using the red mill whole grain stone ground dark rye flour in the sourdough starter. Is there any reason this flour would not be a good contender for making a sourdough starter?

As somebody who has recently started going down the rabbit hole of bread making as well, I would like to nominate this thread as the official breadthread of the F&D board.

OK, i'm going to restart the sourdough starter after watching this video from Alex French.

LINK

First off, he uses bottled water because it doesn't have chlorine. I was using tap water. Is this a big concern in practicality?

This article explains the starter process much better than say the simple recipe from King Arthur. I'll be going this route.

LINK

Yes, the article is a good one; Maurizio writes clearly and accurately. So much BS surrounds sourdough. Much of it is folklore and not remotely scientific or factual.

You don't need an app. This is not complicated stuff. In fact, it is the simplest and most primitive way of making bread. The Egyptians made enough sourdough bread daily to feed the thousands of enslaved people & artisans who built the pyramids....you can certainly keep a starter alive without an app.

I keep a small quantity mother stater, because I hate waste. There is zero reason to be mixing 1 cup of water and 1 cup of flour, only to discard it the next day. I find that 1-2 tablespoons of old starter mixed with 1/3 cup water and 1/3 cup flour (wheat, white, rye, or a mix) works just fine. Yeast's reproduction at warm room temp (75ish degrees) is about four hours...so if you want to get a starter moving quickly, feed it every 4 hours and keep it in a warmer place.

On the other hand, if you aren't using metric tons of starter day in and day out, keep it cool. I routinely store my starter in the fridge for weeks and weeks (okay, really months). I will pull it out and feed it 2x daily for a few days to "wake" it up before using.

All of the poured-off discard can go into sourdough waffles, pancakes, or be mixed into commercially leavened loaves for flavor.

Finally, I keep my starter at 100% hydration: equal parts flour and water, simply because it makes the baker's math simple and easy. Should I want to make a wetter or drier build of the starter for a particular style of bread, I know what my starting point is.

I'll throw this one in there.. LaFarm's artisanal breads are great

Yep, pineapple juice will get ya over the hump if you're having trouble getting a starter going.

More good books for the list:
Eric Kayser's The Larousse of Bread: LINK
Carol Field's The Italian Baker, Revised: LINK

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I wish I had a mixer.

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80% of the loaves I bake are made without a mixer, even for big, 6-loaf batches. The high-hydration, long slow rise, and stretch-and-fold technique promoted by Robertson in Tartine, Forkish in FWSY, will convince you that you can make excellent bread sans mixer.

About the only thing I use a mixer for these days is 1)brioche, as mixing in beaucoup butter by hand is nearly impossible and 2)large batches of challah, because I don't like kneading really eggy doughs by hand.

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seems to me that the initial mix would be easier with a mixer

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I use a danish dough whisk, like this: LINK
Easy to clean, mixes more efficiently than a spoon, doesn't get clogged up like a balloon whisk.