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| As I remember - and again, it's been a long time ago - I liked it "thin" milkshake. Too thick and even if the big glass crock was only half full, it would go over the top. Of course, feeding it every day made this inevitably happen too, as it would get too active. I'm guessing those glass crocks I used were something over a gallon volume. If it is fed every day, the way to think about it is that the "livestock" are waiting there at the trough for you to feed them. As soon as you put the fresh flour/water in the trough, they eat it up as rapidly as they can. Then if you do not feed them for 2 or 3 days, they have gotten much slower and weaker, and it takes more time for the population to grow back. If fed often, the curve is steep, but if fed less often - or kept cooler - the activity curve is longer and less steep. Personally, I prefer the latter, as that is what seems to give the sourdough the great flavor. I really don't know how you combine getting that robust flavor with making light, fluffy loaves of bread. I always chose flavor over texture - but again, I was mainly interested in making pancakes.
You might enjoy a story about when my wife and i were dropped in near the headwaters of a river in the Brooks Range. We would float north toward the ocean and stop and go backpacking into the mountains. I had made a couple of loaves of sourdough bread - using only flour and water. No spoilage problems. Good very dense bread, so great for the trip - and we were always hungry when we ate. The second loaf we ate got too dry, so I threw half of it into the river. We watched it bob like a cork all the way down the river until it went out of sight. I told my wife that it was like a closed-cell foam - you would not call it fluffy.
When I think about your question about consistency, I would have to guess that you should want it on the "thin" side. I would not thicken it when I mixed up the pancake batter - just add the eggs, oil, and sugar. The pancakes will be thin - but if you like the sourdough taste as much as I did, you'll get to really prefer the pancakes that way.
I used to often think back to the gold rush in Alaska. Those guys must have really known how to take care of sourdough. I believe that they would roll it into a ball in the flour for transport.
Thanks for the update on the oil patch. Brings back memories - I had a front row seat for the boom/bust in the 60s & 70s. That's just the way the oil business always has been, it seems. In retrospect, it taught me a lot about markets in general. | |
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Sourdough question
