rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

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BernardSmith
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rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

Post: # 291328Post BernardSmith »

Has anyone on this forum made a sourdough starter with rejuvelac? Rejuvelac is the name associated with the liquid that comes from the water used to cover sprouting grains (say, wheat berries or quinoa) for two or three days. The water is said to be full of lactic bacteria. Does this in fact work? I am asking because I have just started to sprout some wheat (1 cup) with the hope of making some rejuvelac that I can then use to make a sourdough starter. Thoughts? Thanks.

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Re: rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

Post: # 291329Post Green Aura »

No. It should make a perfectly good starter (I've made one from the water used for soaking rice and it works really well - see my article "Foment in the ferments" on the blog site) but I'm not sure that it would have any advantage over any other method.
If you were to start your sourdough starter at the same time as soaking the grains for the rejuvelac it would probably be usable within a day or two of the rejuvelac finishing. If you wait and use the rejuvelac water to start it, it will take a couple of days at least to be a usable starter, so no time advantage and the lactobacilli would be pretty much the same, coming from the same wheat and your household airborne lb.
Maggie

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BernardSmith
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Re: rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

Post: # 291330Post BernardSmith »

Thanks Maggie. Will check out your blog.
Curiously, while I make my own cheese, my own bread and my own wines I have never been able to capture free floating bacteria or yeast in any numbers that have effectively created a starter. I guess, then, I am not looking for a quick start with this merely a rich source of bacteria to which I can add to some yeasted dough (not a purist: happy to make a starter with this lacto bacterial colony and then add some commercial bread yeast - my thinking being that true sour dough is not simply indigenous yeast working on the dough but is different L-B creating lactic acid and a variety of by-products all of which sour and flavor the dough.

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Re: rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

Post: # 291331Post BernardSmith »

Three lovely blogs although my interest was really only in the first one.

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Re: rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

Post: # 291334Post Green Aura »

Thank you. I was really only suggesting the first one but I'm guessing that once you've got a lovely, active starter you won't stop at bread. I wholeheartedly recommend either of the oatcake recipes though.

You'll not need your yeasted dough. Sourdough bread is amazing, a far cry from the supermarket version which is yeasted bread with a bit of added sourdough for the flavour.
Maggie

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Re: rejuvelac and sour dough starters?

Post: # 291335Post BernardSmith »

Truth be told I am more interested in using the lacto bacilli in my mead making to "sour" the meads a little and so provide additional complexity to my session meads (low alcohol meads - that use about 1 - 1.5 lbs of honey (about .5 kg) in every 4 liters (1 US gallon) than baking anything other than bread. These are meads that "compete" with beers (about 5-7% ABV). In other words, you can drink them by the pint and they are not sweet and are sometimes (by desire, not accident) carbonated.

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