September 11, 2023 • 50 mins
Jim Serpico speaks with Tom Cucuzza about sourdough, acid, PH, sourdough starter, temperature, a new rock band of Sourdough Bakers called Protease Enzymes, cold fermentation, rye flour, chasing sour, high protein flour, open crumb, Tartine style, sourdough for busy people, food trucks, focaccia, Italian flatbread sandwiches, baguettes, sourdough baking book reviews, Gozney Dome pizza oven, optimal temperature, chlorine, selling bread by the slice and more!
Follow Jim Serpico on Instagram at @jimserpico and @sidehustlebread. Follow Tom Cucuzza on his website https://thesourdoughjounrney.com and Instagram @the_sourdough_journey.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
Follow Jim Serpico on Instagram at @jimserpico and @sidehustlebread. Follow Tom Cucuzza on his website https://thesourdoughjounrney.com and Instagram @the_sourdough_journey.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
The following episode of Bread for thePeople is brought to you by Side Hustle
Bread, Long Island's handcrafted, artisanalbread company. Side Hustle Bread is a
family run virtual bakery that's bringing theneighborhood feel back to Long Island, one
loaf at a time. Head onover to side Hustle Bread dot com for
more information, upcoming appearances and merchandise. My name's Jim Serpico. And this
(00:22):
should I start with? My name? What should I start with? This
is Bread for the People? Doyou like it like this? Welcome to
Bread? What do you like itlike this? Welcome Retty, Welcome to
Bread for the People. Mine isthere a script? Welcome to Bread for
(00:49):
the People. I'm Jim Serpico,streaming in from the International Institute for the
Advancement of Sour Dough Science and Researchof Cleveland, Ohio. I'd like to
say I now officially, whether Tomconsiders me a friend or not, I
consider Tom a friend. Tom isand I'm talking about Tom Cakuza, the
professor of sour Dough. He isthe first person in the history of Bread
(01:14):
for the People to appear twice.Tom, thank you for joining me for
a second time on bread for thepeople. Thank you for having me.
It's an honor and a privilege tobe your first repeat guest. I am
not just blowing smoke up your ass. You You really do have the greatest
sour dough channel on all social media. You're providing so much information for the
(01:40):
public for free. If there's anythingI need to look up, I'll go
right to your page and search iton your YouTube page. I've learned so
much from you since I started bakingsour dough. I want to thank you
for that. If you guys haven'tchecked out, Tom's page is the sour
Dough Journey on Instagram, especially onYouTube, He's got lengthy, detailed videos,
(02:05):
instructional videos, and he deals alot with the science of sour dough
baking, which really helps me becauseI don't deal with the science. I
rely on Tom to deal with thescience for me. How you doing today,
I'm good and I really appreciate thatfeedback. I also have the surado
Journey website, which has the SourdoughEncyclopedia, which has another three hundred or
(02:30):
so frequently asked questions additional videos.There's a lot more contents out there now
as well, so between the YouTubechannel, the website, and my Instagram
posts, you can pretty much catchme those three ways. Yeah, yeah,
and it is incredible. I've beenespecially preparing for this interview, going
through a number of the videos,most recently getting involved and studying what you
(02:57):
had to say on pH Yeah,and I would love to dive into that.
I do have some questions. Okay, so you get into the you
review a bunch of pH meters andtesters, and there's a giant range of
prices, you know, everything foras little as fifteen dollars up to two
to three hundred dollars. And Igather it's very important. I understand that
(03:23):
water starts at about a seven onthe scale, right, and then your
sour dough starter is about three,and once you start adding flower you get
to the mid range of five.But here's what I don't understand yet.
Yeah what And I know there's ananswer, I really don't know it.
(03:44):
What is the danger of having adough mixture that's too acidic? Acidic or
if you let your bulk ferment goon too long it becomes too acidic.
What is the problem? Basically twothings. The way I think about it
is almost everything bad that can happenwith sour dough is caused by acidity,
and there are two main things.If your starter is too acidic to begin
(04:08):
with and you mix that into yourdough, when your dough starts fermenting,
two things are happening. The yeastis trying to create carbon dioxide to rise
the loaf, and the lactic acidbacteria which comes with that in the starter.
You can't separate the two. Thelactic acid bacteria creates acid, and
those two things happen in parallel.The acid will always outrun the yeast.
(04:30):
There are a hundred more cells oflactic acid bacteria than there are yeast cells,
and if the acid grows faster thanthe yeast, it chokes off the
east. The yeast can't create carbondioxide. It literally it's like if you're
climbing Mount Everest, like every stepyou take there's less and less oxygen as
you get higher. That's kind ofwhat happens with the yeast. The yeast
(04:53):
can still be the same number ofcells, and it can be, you
know, a really strong starter,but as the acid builds up, you're
just you're you're choking it off andyou lose the ability to rise the loaf,
you say, really strong starter.And I'm also getting confused here because
and let me let me ask youthis. So I do my bakings,
my big bakes on Fridays and Saturdays. Yeah, and uh, and then
(05:15):
I'm out there selling and the lastthing I want to do after a long
days come home and feed my starter. Ye. And I usually don't feed
it on Sunday. And so ifI'm having a good week, I get
in there on Monday and I startworking it because I know I'm going to
be mixing with it on Wednesday.Yeah. But there are times I missed
the Monday. Yeah, And Icould tell that what's usually a thick starter
(05:39):
yep. When I use it,which I consider and I could be wrong
about this, my strong starter,it starts to get a little more liquidy
ye. And as I feed it, it's starting to thicken up and get
to where I need it to be. And if I missed the Monday,
I'm gonna feed it twice on Tuesday. I'm gonna feed it in the morning
and at night, so that Wednesdaymorning it's there. Now if it's watery,
(06:00):
is it acidic? Yes, becausethat's the second thing that happens with
an acidic starter. First is itchokes off the east. The second thing
that it does is an acidic starterreleases something called the protease enzyme. The
protease enzyme is in here, it'sin your flour. And when the acidity
(06:21):
and or the temperature rise, it'slike pac man comes out and starts eating
eating the gluten. It's stimulated byacid. Like if you just poured acid
into it, it wakes up allthese little pac men. They eat the
gluten. And that's what causes yourstarter to get watery, and it's what
causes your loves to overproof. Andwhen you get the flat, overproof disaster
(06:42):
loaves. That's all triggered by theacidity out running the east. And there's
several different ways it could get tothat point. You could start with the
perfect strong starter, yeah, butit could just bulk from it for too
long exactly right, If you justlet it go too long, you know,
time is the enemy. Eventually,the acid will always produce, you
(07:04):
know, more quickly than the east, and you'll get the overproofed loaf.
That's where you turn the corner andthe dough starts to collapse. And the
other thing that can cause it isthe temperature, because the acidity likes a
warm temperature and that protease enzyme thatbreaks down the gluten that likes a warm
temperature as well. So a lotof times when people bake in the summer,
(07:25):
it's really difficult. If you're bakingin a warm kitchen, your dough
can go sideways in a hurry,especially if you start with an acidic starter,
because you're starting with more acid tobegin with, Like you're you're already
you're not even putting the east andthe lactic acid bacteria on the same starting
line. You're given the acid ahead start, right. What about if
(07:46):
you do a cold froment I youknow, my typical cold froment is twenty
four to fourty eight hours. Yeah, and I've done the longer, and
I hear lots of people love tobrag out the seventy two hour called ferment.
Yeah, but I wondered, youneed to race, take shape and
bake that and not let a seventytwo hour sit on the pan too long.
(08:11):
It's a good question. There's acouple of things kind of wrapped up
in there. The long cool fermentationsslow down the acidity and they slow down
the proteus enzyme. So that's kindof the that's the mitigating factor that you
have. If you have a realwarm kitchen, your doughs starting to get
out of control, get it inthe refrigerator and that will hit the brakes
on that acidity building up. Sothat's a great way to slow things down
(08:35):
and kind of save a runaway abatch of dough when it sits in the
refrigerator. Like I said, timeis the enemy. You can never actually
stop time, and the starter willcontinue generating the acid, the enzymes will
continue breaking down the gluten. Soat some point, like you just you
can't leave it in there forever,like twenty four hours. Like easily you
(08:58):
can leave a loaf in the refrigeratorfor twenty four hours the dough before you
bake it get up to maybe fortyeight hours, you're kind of cross that
optimal point. And then from fortyeight hours up to seventy two hours you're
starting to get a little bit ofdeterioration in the loaf. It tastes great
because all the acidity is building upand you get these real super sour,
(09:18):
real complex flavored loaves with the superlong fermentation. That's why some people like
that, but you're always risking deterioratingthe dough the longer it's in there.
Got it? Now, I'm thinking, I know you sing, and I
for some reason I thought you playedthe french horn. Is that not true?
No, I played. I playedthe piano and guitar, not french
horn. And I'm a singrios.Yeah, and I played the trumpet.
(09:41):
And maybe we could get a coupleof the sour dough bakers and start Proteus
Enzymes the band name. It's agreat name. So for you people who
don't bake bread, you should tuneout. Now we are getting into the
weeds here with the Professor Tom Cakuza. Right off the bat, that's my
(10:01):
specialty. Right off the bat,we covered proteus enzymes. We just scratched
the service. We're gonna go deeper. So the sour, well, the
sour flavor, which you know I'malways struggling with. Yeah, I don't
know why. And again, peoplelike my bread and they buy it,
and no one's saying occasionally somebody hassaid it, but I wish I did
(10:24):
have control of it and I canmake it. What do they say?
Is it to sour? And nowsour enough, What are you trying to
accomplish? My bread is not sour. It is definitely a little more.
It's got a tinge of sour.Now that I am pretty much exclusively baking
my country loafs with cold fermentation.Yeah, but yeah, I mean people
(10:48):
say there's a lot of different waysto make it more sour, but the
best way is the long, longcold fermentation. That's where you get the
real sour flavor from. Now youcan you can boost that a little bit.
Some people add rye flower to theirI do, okay, so so
that helps. I mean that thatActually, I think that tang that people
(11:09):
associate with the sourness of sour doughactually is very similar to the taste of
ryor It accentuates it somehow. Andthen different flowers just to have have a
different flavor, I mean, youcan only change the flavors so much,
kind of within the window of whatthe bag of flower gives you. So,
(11:30):
so are you still using King Arthurflower for yours? I am.
I use King Arthur bread flower.However, I just got a bunch of
Sir lance a lot flower, whichis a higher protein yea, and that
King Arthur makes. Yeah, forthis for the scutchhott of bread that I'm
(11:52):
making, and I tried it withthe sour dough, very different in a
great way. Yeah. It madeit lighter, Yeah, right, it
creates a more open architecture in thechrumb because of the higher protein. That's
what kind of creates that's that's whatgives you the ability to taller. And
with the higher protein flour, youcan leave it in the refrigerator longer because
(12:16):
the protease enzyme has more lluten tochew on before it'll start to deteriorate the
loaf. So so I'd really pushedthe cold fermentation with that and see how
long you can go before you startto lose the shape of the loaf.
Yeah. So I've only been playingthat for two weeks and I was really
excited about the results. And actuallyfor the scotch Otto, which is very
(12:39):
similar to ficaccia, it's really surprisedabout how different the texture in that bread
became by using star lance a lotyeah over bread flour. Yeah, and
it's probably like one percent different proteincontent. I think the the King Arthur
(13:00):
bread flowers twelve point seven percent inthis, or lancelots maybe thirteen point five
or thirteen point seven makes a hugedifference. I mean those numbers seem really
close, but yeah, one percentdifference in the protein content can materially change
the shape of the loaf and thefield of the crumb and the mouth feel
and all that, you know.And then my so, I do a
(13:20):
lot of sour dough baking, andthen I this bread, the scotch Atta
facaccia yea is instant yeast, okay, And that I bake pretty much all
my bread two different ways. Mysour dough is either gonna and I was
actually training some people this morning onthis. You know, it's either a
(13:41):
mix and an eleven to twelve hourovernight bulk fermentation in a bucket at room
temperature, which is about seventy degreesyep, or a six hour bulk for
men twenty four to forty eight hourcalled for men. That's fore your sour
dough, that's my sour dough,your methods. And then for the instant
(14:01):
yeast, it's either ninety minutes inthe bucket and then about an hour on
a pane or an hour or halfhour. Let's say it's a half hour
to forty minutes before I do astretch and fold and then put it in
the refrigerator for twenty four hours.Now that that method is so completely different
(14:22):
in the instant yeast than just goingstraight from a bucket to a pan.
I couldn't believe the difference your bread. Yeah, doing cold the cold for
men, it just made it somuch better and change the texture so much
that I now can only make thatbread exclusively by doing the cold for men.
So what is the scotch out isthat you said it's like a for
(14:45):
cashious So it's a flat bread.What else do you add to it?
Oil and herbs and stuff? There'snothing. It's very it is oil olive
oil. But otherwise it's just saltwaterflour. And it's really open and airy,
okay, yeah, like really openan airy. And that's for your
Italian sandwiches. That's what my Italiansandwiches. I bake it in a full
(15:07):
sheet pan. Yeah, and itmakes a great theater because when you bring
it out, you're literally cutting itoff. Yeah, the giant square,
yeah, opening up right there,and you slice it, you slice it
down the middle and open it upto make you don't use a full pet
I see yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, those sandwiches look great.
I've seen those on Instagram. Ilove sandwiches, and I'm like, wow,
(15:28):
that's a great looking sandwich. Theother thing we did today I have
a little demonstration. Wow, youbrought props. This is a live prop.
Yeah, so this one is KingAuthor Bread Flour. I got the
Gosny Dome for this food trailer Ihave and I'm trying to figure out I
(15:52):
don't want to actually use it tomake pizzas because I don't want the workflow
in the process of pizza making.And also there's a million pizza makers now.
Yeah, so what we did hereand I got this from the Gosney
website. Actually, although I bakedthis longer. I baked this till it
was one hundred degrees internal What areyou hold for the people on the radio.
(16:15):
On the radio, this is aDEMI beguett yes for nice one hundred
eighty degree internal temperature. Yea.And it was just pure white but fully
cooked through. And then we putit in the gaze need to finish it
a couple of hours later and itwas unbelievable. Yeah, sixty seconds.
(16:36):
Yeah, that's amazing. What temperaturedoes the guys need to get up to
like eight or nine hundred degrees orsomething. Yeah, but we we Today's
experiment was actually on the Gosney rockbox because the domes in my truck which
is being retrofitted and finished. ButI have the rock box at home,
which is the smaller version, andI turned it down to the lowest temperature
(16:56):
I could, which probably is aboutfive hundred fifty right, Yeah for bread,
Yeah, that sounds about right forespecially for finishing like that. Yeah.
And the other thing I did withthis is, uh, I put
about four percent instant yeast into themixture of sour dough Storter. So are
you gonna sell those baguettes? Iam? I am trying to be the
(17:19):
rolling tartin Nice. I want.I'm selling bread and butter, yep,
along with the sandwiches. I mean, I am anchoring, you know,
our brand on the fact that it'sall our bread, it's not just the
sandwich place. So yeah, I'mdoing the bread and butter. Yeah.
(17:40):
And I think there's and are youdoing slices of bread if people just want
a slice or what it? What'sthe not initially? But I'm sure that
this whole thing's gonna six months fromnow, YEA once it's been out on
the street, I think it mightbe a whole different thing. Yeah,
well, think about how much moneyyou can make selling it by the slice.
I mean, people will pay dollarsfor a loaf, and you can
(18:02):
get twelve slices out of a loafand sell them for two or three bucks
a slice. If somebody's just standingon the street and they want to a
slice of bread and butter, I'dpay a couple of dollars for that.
I think. Well that's why I'mthat's why I'm making these demis. Yeah,
because this will probably sell for threedollars. Yeah, right, And
it's tough to make money just sellingclean loabs. I mean you probably know
(18:23):
that. You know, you gotto either add stuff to them or do
something different, which is why we'redoing this cafe on wheels and yeah,
trying to design. But I understandit's not really a food truck. I
saw the picture of it on Instagram. It's a food trailer, right,
It's a trailer and you sew thatbehind I've got a GMC Sierra nice that.
(18:47):
I guess part of me always knewI wanted to move into this and
got the truck before I had anythingto tell. But in talking to a
lot of friends that are in thefood trucks slash trailer business, they all
tell me that you really do wantto go trailer? Yeah, because there's
a lot of problems when you're themechanical stuff breaks down, you know,
(19:12):
yea the engine or whatever you're you'reout of your kitchen and you can't afford
that. Yeah, I preap calleda food wagon instead of a trailer.
I think that's a that's idea.Yeah, I think it's Jim Serpent goes
food wagon. There you go.I have very various names. I have
(19:33):
probably on the back. I havethese fantasies of painting the Scotch shot or
unit and having like an FBI jacketthat says uh TSU on it. Than
I've got the commercial campaign we're gonnashoot where I'm dressed up like an FBI
guy in the jacket and we showup to a house and the woman's crying,
Our husbands and Betty can't get up, and we have the thing that
he needs and we bring him ascot shot a sandwich. He just jumps
(19:56):
to life. So we'll see whathappens. Well, I gotta ask you
the question that I can't believe nobodyelse has asked you. But are you
related to the cop Frank Serpaco?Great question. I am not related to
the cop. My uncle's who.I have one uncle who's ninety two and
another who's about eighty, Little Ovaeighty. They were cops at the same
(20:21):
exact time, all with the lastname Serpaco, and they had a very
rough professional life around that time.Because of that, yeah, I could
see it. Yeah, yeah,But because you're not related, you could
use that as as kind of akitchy marketing idea. You know, I'd
(20:41):
put your face on the food wagonlike the posters of Alpaccino on the Serpaco
post on glass Time. One ofthe taglines I have, I don't know
if you remember the movies tagline wasan honest cop I have. The one
of the taglines I use is anhonest sandwich. I like it. I
liked it. I've got all kindsof marketing things going off of this,
(21:04):
and you know, honestly, I'mso excited to be able to shoot content
from there. Oh yeah, becauseI'm not. I don't have a good
set up to shoot content right now. Yeah, even though I put out
a lot of content I am notin places that are filmed friendly. Yeah,
(21:25):
kind of a man on the streetguy right now. I think that
suits your your style also, yeah, definitely, But I'm going to have
some cameras in there and have funwith it. Just really have fun with
it and maybe even take it outto do the podcast. That could be
fun. So all right, wecovered a little bit on the pH Yeah,
(21:47):
just to wrap up. You know, what do you use the pH
meters for? Basically, it's likea thermometer. You stick it in the
dough and you can tell much howmuch. You can tell how much acidity
there is in the dough. Sowhen I said all the bad stuff happens
either in your or your dough becauseof the acidity, the pH meter tells
you where it is. I mean, it's as simple as that. It
just keeps you out of trouble.If you've got dough that's really running away
from you, what do you doabout it? When you find out though?
(22:11):
Move quickly, you know, likeyou can you can test it as
you go so you can see howrapidly the dough is fermenting. So,
like you said, you know itstarts out at a pH of five,
and then during the bulk fermentation processas the starters creating the acidity. Higher
acidity is a lower pH. Soyou'll see it just like clockwork. It
starts dropping the four point five,four point two, five four point one,
(22:33):
and you pretty much got to shapethe dough and get it into the
refrigerator before it gets to four pointzero. So you know, it's just
it's another tool if you're running abakery or for some you know, kind
of beginning bakers who don't have theintuition and they want to spend the little
money on a piece of technology.It's not fool proof. I wish I
could say you just stick it inyour dough and it tells you exactly when
(22:55):
it's done. But it it's directionallycorrect, and you know, like I
said, it keeps you out oftrouble when you have kind of a runaway
loaf that's really getting ahead of itself. See it is you mentioned intuition like
so much like I know without knowingthat my pH it's it's too acidic.
(23:18):
Like the other day when I wasmaking these, I had missed that one
day of feeding and when I putmy starter in the water, it's it
sank. And that's when I saidto myself, I just watched this guy
on Gosney's website making these bighets andhe always puts in instant yeast of small
percentage with his sour dough. Yeah, so I was like, I'm definitely
(23:41):
doing it because I don't know what'sgoing on my starter here. I don't
like when it sinks. Yeah,what does it mean when it sinks?
You know? That's what people callthe float test, where if you take
your starter, you take a spoonfulof starter and you drop a spoonful of
it into a cup of water.If it floats, that generally means that
the starter is ready to use inyour baking. Why. Well, because
(24:06):
it's basically showing you the relationship betweenthe carbon dioxide that it's creating and the
point in time where that starter isbefore it starts to break down, meaning
it's past its peak. So it'sa kind of a cool test that tells
you the yeast is strong enough torise the dough and the proteas enzyme hasn't
(24:26):
done enough damage yet to sink thedough, so it catches it right around
that peak time. A lot ofpeople there's like a religious argument around whether
the flow tests really works or not, because you can just stir up your
starter real aggressively and make it sink, you know, because you knock the
air bubbles out of it. Sothen people say, well, you can't
(24:47):
rely on it, because I canmake a really strong starter sink if I
want to. It takes a littlebit of technique to use it. I
use it and it's very accurate.I mean, I do it all the
time. But it depends on yourspecific starter, how good you are it
kind of scooping it out and notnot blowing up all the bubbles in it.
But if it floats, it generallymeans it's ready. It's like a
it's like a one way test.If it floats, it's ready. But
(25:11):
if it doesn't float, it mightstill be ready because you can make a
strong starter sink by by kind ofmishandling it. But if it floats,
good to go. That's my opinion. Are you not supposed to whip up
years starter when you put it inthe water, because I do. Oh
no, when you put it inthe water, No, it doesn't damage
the starter at all. It justimpacts whether it'll float or not in it
(25:33):
when you're doing the test. No, you can. You can mix it
with a power mixer. I meanyou can do anything. Actually stirring your
starter actually helps it, you knowwhen, thank god, because I've been
doing it roll otherwise. I wasdoing it roll for three years. No.
No, because it aerates that itmoves the east around, because the
east grows in clusters, so thatso when you when you move it around
a little bit, it actually helps. It helps it thrive a little bit.
(25:55):
The proteus enzymes thrive on that.Yeah, there as enzyme is back.
Yes, all right, very veryinteresting stuff. Yeah, but more
on that. Check out Tom's videowhere he I think you have about five
different pH testers four pH testers orcool. Now, I know you've been
(26:17):
spending a lot of time reading andreviewing books on your channels. I have.
Yeah, I got into this lastyear. Some people started, you
know, writing sourdough books, andI started buying them because I was interested,
and I started writing short book reviewson my website and on Instagram,
and then people saw my reviews andthey just started sending me books. So
now I have a you know,a large stack of books to review.
(26:40):
But there are four fantastic books thatI've read recently two of them. Interestingly,
are the authors were both on yourshow. Yeah, Elaine Body of
the Sourdough Whisperer fantastic book and Mariecio Leo The Perfect Loaf. You had
both of them on. Those areabsolutely two of the best sour baking books
(27:00):
ever written. And the interesting thingabout them is, and this is maybe
because of the pandemic, maybe not, is that all the sarado books written
prior to that. I would sayall all the popular ones were written by
bakers. She had Robertson, RichardBurtinet, Ken Furkish, Jeffrey Hamilman.
(27:21):
These were all like pro bakers whotook their bakery experience and they basically turned
that into you know, home bakingmethod for saradough. Maurizio and Elaine were
home bakers. They learned at home, and they taught thousands of people home
bakers how to bake. Because they'reboth active on social media, so they
(27:44):
wrote these books from a totally differentperspective of the home baker who's not a
professional baker working in a bakery.I mean literally, people who don't know
anything. They buy a book andit's it's more about you know, troubleshooting
and all the things that happened withhome bakers and really trying to accelerate that
learning curve of being a home bakerwhere you're only baking one or two loaves
(28:06):
a week and you know, areless. You don't get the experience like
a you know, a professional bakerwere, you know, baking a couple
hundred loaves a day. So theywrote these books from a different, you
know, point of view, andit works because you know, I participate
in social media a lot as well, and I've seen this nude kind of
influx of home bakers who started inthe last six months making sour dough and
(28:30):
they're using Elanes and Maurizio's books andthey're baking better sour dough. I mean,
they're just coming right out of theblocks baking fantastic loaves. I can
see it. It's it's incredible.I see it too. They I'm in
a bunch of the Facebook groups andyou'll see people say, oh, this
is my first hour to loaf andthey post the picture and it looks like
(28:52):
they've been doing it for ten yearstotally, and that that did not happen
a year ago or two years ago. I'm telling you they they've made a
material difference in that learning curve forhome bakers. And the other thing I
love about Elaine and Marizio is,you know, because you interviewed them,
they have two totally different styles.I mean, you couldn't find two more
(29:12):
different approaches to sourdo' baking. IMean, Elaine is like, she's just
like the most pragmatic, straight talkinglike she's she took all these complicated sourdough
methods and just stripped them down tothe bare bones essential method. It's like
straight down the middle, fellow,these steps, don't worry about all this
(29:33):
stuff around the edges, and shegets people to make consistently good loaves just
by sticking to an incredibly simple process. Marizio is kind of the other other
end of the spectrum, where heyou know, he's a software engineer,
so his book is you know,written from kind of an engineer's perspective,
where he's he's really into the detailsof dough temperature and and starter maintenance.
(29:56):
And I mean, I'm probably Igravitate more towards Marizio's method, but really
into the details of the steps andthe troubleshooting. But you need two books
like that because there are different peoplehave different personalities. I mean I gravitate
towards Elaine's method. Yeah, youknow, it's I think I've talked about
(30:19):
this a little bit before I stumbleinto the science. Yeah. I don't
have the patience for the science.Yeah, but intuitively, I know how
it's supposed to feel. I knowhow it's supposed to smell at this point
by doing all the steps. Yeah, and I am getting the right I
(30:41):
am getting the proteus enzymes to theright place without knowing all the science behind
it. And Elaine has helped me. Yeah, because you know, after
talking to Elane and really focusing onthe one main plain sour though. Yeah,
(31:03):
and then from there, once youget that down, creating variations on
that or adding inclusions. Yeah.I used to have all these for every
different bread. I would have drasticallydifferent recipes because I researched them from different
places. Yeah. And then Irealized, let's take my rustic sour though,
and then replace it with some ryeflowers, some hole we throws of
(31:26):
cranberries, or the way Elaine says, chuck some cranberries, chuck some you
know, walnuts in there and seewhat you get, you know, and
play and just make variations on youryour hero. Yea, we yeah,
she's the master of that. Imean all her recipes are all based off
that master recipe that she that shecame up with, and then you just
(31:47):
add this stuff in. I meanit's it's it's it's it's great. I
mean, yeah, she's she's sotalented at that. And Marizio's recipes are
interesting. In his book, hehas sixty recipes and what he's done is
he's created the recipe for the sourdough version of everything you could imagine you'd
want to make sour dough make outof sour dough. He has sourdough,
(32:07):
doughnuts, sourdough, pretzel's, flatbread, non tortillas, and then a
hundred, you know, or dozensof types of bread where his is like
the encyclopedia of you know, possibleuses of sour dough to make bread.
So I like that as kind ofthe reference manual if I'm trying to make
something a little out of the ordinary, I go I go there to get
(32:29):
kind of the starting point recipe foryou know, a sour dough hot pretzel
or something like that, something outof the ordinary. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's interesting. I couldmake bread out of sour dough or instant
yeast, and I've done it.I know the conversion in my head.
(32:52):
It's just a rising agent and ityou can make anything either way. You're
just choosing to use a different risingagent because it's accessible to you or for
whatever reason. Yeah, you know. And then there's the debates on whether
or not, especially in pizza,sour dough is better or you know,
instant yeast is just as good.You're you know, getting into poolish,
(33:16):
Yeah, with instant yeast, whichproduces very much the same results and the
same smells and the preferment they startto smell, the acidity. It's interesting
stuff. I know, you makea lot of pizzas in your home home
pizza oven. What what do youuse for your dough Saura dough or yeast?
(33:37):
Mostly yeast out of convenience. Yeah, And when we make the pizza
on the truck, I think we'regonna do it with with the yeast.
Yeah, but you know, thereI try to do twenty four to seventy
two hour cold ferments on them.M Yeah, and with that long of
(33:58):
a ferment. Even with the commercial, ye, you start to get some
of the flavor profile of sourdough andnot not quite exactly the same, but
it heads in that direction. Butyou know, there's a guy, Dan
Richard who owns her pizza riha calledRaza in Jersey City. He's he's won
Best Pizza in America by New YorkTimes, very well known. He choosing.
(34:21):
He's not doing sour though, buthe's doing poolish. He's letting that.
I think it's a one to one. No, that would be on
sour though. Well the pool that'sthat's like half and half right where you
get so you get the flavor ofthe sourdough, but you let the commercially
used do the work. Correct.Yeah, it actually, yeah, that's
what it is. It's one toone with a dash of of instant east
(34:43):
in there. Yeah. And youlet that sit overnight and then you almost
use it as a starter, right, and it really makes it nice.
Yeah, yep. I've tried thata few times, not with pizza,
but I've made a couple other loaveslike that. A couple other books I
wanted to touch on that are reallyexceptional. One is out of France,
(35:04):
There's an author named Thomas Teffrey Shambland. He's like the top sarato' baker in
France, and he wrote this bookcalled Sarato Baking a Treatise, and this
is the book. I mean,just the title got my attention and when
I read this thing, I'm like, this thing was right up my alley
because it's all science. I mean, it's like he's the master saradough bread
baker in France and he wrote thisbook, and everybody else who writes a
(35:28):
book says, you know, thisis my opinion on how you should feed
your starter. He says, thisis the science of how you should feed
your starter. Any questions you know, and then you go to the next
thing, like people talk about howto shape the loaf. He's like,
this is the science of how youshape a loaf, and this is the
result that you get. So it'sjust like it takes all the mystery out
of all these different methods that areout there, and it gives you kind
(35:50):
of one provable starting point where youcan say, Okay, this isn't like
you know, an old wives talepassed down through generations. This is like
actually starting with the science. BecauseI mean, my style is I'm definitely
I definitely start with the science,but I want to get to the art.
Like I use the science to getthrough the all the possible variations so
(36:15):
that you can do something special atthe end. I don't want to waste
my time, you know, screwingaround with things that don't work. So
I'm trying to find the best wayto, you know, get a shot
at a perfect loaf. You know. Maurizio calls his book The Perfect Loaf
Elaine, you know, says,if you think your loaf is perfect,
(36:35):
it's perfect. I believe that there'slike this unattainable perfection of like the perfect
shape and the perfect crumb and theperfect flavor. And I want to get
there quicker. And for me,science is the path that gets two shots
at that more quickly. Sure.Now, what does he say in his
book about how to feed your start? He basically uses this. It's something
(37:00):
I did in one of my earlyvideos, just you know. I did
it through intuition. It's called peakto peak feeding, where if you're trying
to deacidify your starter, if yourstarter becomes acidic, you feed it and
let it peek and then as soonas it peaks, you, you discard
most of You wouldn't do this withyour large quantity of starter. You'd start
with a small quantity. You discardmost of it, feed it again,
(37:23):
wait for it to peek, knockit down again, feed it again.
You do that three or four times, and basically it rebounces. It lets
the yeast catch up to the lacticacid bacteria. And I've even tested this
with the pH meters and show shownhow you can do that. And you
can like massively knock down the acidityof your starter with three or four kind
(37:43):
of rapid feedings. So you saidyou feed yours a few, you know,
for a few days before you're goingto use it, but you don't
do big discarding. I do.I discard about twenty five percent on Monday
or Tuesday. Yeah, it shouldbe mondays. I discard twenty Yeah,
and then I if I have thebig bakes coming up, I add a
(38:06):
third giant canister to start building upenough starter, yeah, to use for
my weekend bake. Yes, you'redoing a type of that. He would
he would do more aggressive discarding really, yeah, And I do that as
well. Like if my starter isacidic, I'll discard ninety percent. I
mean, I'll get it down toalmost nothing. My my starter like right
(38:30):
now. It is because, tobe honest with you, I'm a very
slow because I'm in between things.Yeah, but if I'm bake in every
week, it doesn't I don't thinkit has that much of an opportunity to
get Yeah, and you acidic becauseyou keep yourself the refrigerator. Oh yeah,
yeah so so yeah that so immediatelyafter feeding I put it in.
I don't even wait an hour.So so for me, where I keep
(38:52):
it on my countertop, like oneday in my kitchen is like one week
in your kitchen. Yeah. Soyeah, refrigerator for duration helps everything.
Yeah. Yeah, my wife doesn'tlike it. She keeps wanting I wanted
in the main area. Yeah,so I don't have to go far okay.
(39:14):
And then one last book which whichI wanted to bring up, which
is related to something you told meon the last time we talked. Is
this other book I recently read isfrom an author Michael Collante. He's a
he's a baker and a teacher anda bakery consultant in San Francisco, and
he wrote a book called How toBake More Bread in twenty sixteen. It's
(39:35):
relatively old book, but nobody neverheard anybody talk about this book. I
mean, at least among the bakersthat I kind of run with. And
this book is spectacular because when youthink back to, uh, you know,
Chad Robertson wrote Tartine in twenty ten, and that kind of just everybody,
all the home bakers like gravitated towardsTartein, myself included. I mean,
(39:58):
I love that book. It's spectacular. But every other book that's been
written since then, it's kind ofa derivation of Tartein. I mean it's
the stretching folds and the shaping methods. I mean, some of them are
just like a total rip off ofChad Robinson's techniques, but almost every book
is related to that. Then Ifind this book in twenty sixteen from Michael
(40:21):
Callanti. It's like he lived ina universe where Tartein didn't exist. He
studied read baking in France, andthen he took kind of the French techniques
to commercial bakeries and he just hasa very different way of making sour dough,
which is very similar to what you'redoing. Keep your starter in the
refrigerator but the real breakthrough things.He does this thing called two stage bulk
(40:43):
fermentation, which I think is whatyou do. He mixes the dough at
a warm temperature for like three hours, lets it start to ferment, then
puts it in the refrigerator for twentyfour hours, and you finish bulk fermentation
in the fridge twenty four hours later. And this is what a lot of
commercial bakeries do, but but nohome bakers used that method. It is
what I do. Yeah, Andwhen you told me you did that a
(41:04):
year ago, I'm like, that'scrazy that work. And then I tried
it, and I'm like, ohmy god, this is fantastic. Not
only because it makes great tasting breadbecause of the long the longer cold fermentation
time, but it just frees upyour schedule. I mean, it just
gives you unbelievable schedule flexibility because you'renot standing around watching the dough rise.
I mean, you just get itstarted and put it in the fridge.
(41:25):
And if he says take it outin twenty four hours, once it's in
the refrigerator, there's not a bigdifference between twelve hours, eighteen hours,
twenty four hours, maybe thirty twohours. I mean, you got a
huge window. So for busy peoplewho are working, you know, busy
jobs, and they're trying to makesour dough. This has just opened up
a huge opportunity for people because youcan do it at night after work.
(41:50):
You can get home from work,you know, mix the dough, get
it into the refrigerator by say tenand ten eleven o'clock at night. Then
you forget about it till the nextnight. You get back home the next
night eight o'clock the next night,take it out, you shape it,
put it back in the fridge.Then you bake it any time in the
next day or two. I don'tknow. I don't even do it that
way. I should write a bookon my method, which is similar but
different and I think even easier forthe home baker. But before I get
(42:13):
to that, let me ask you, because I seem to remember you telling
me that his initial three hour bulkfor men is at eighty degrees. It
is very warm. Yeah, ifyou want to do it in three hours,
you have to have to be warm. I'd say seventy eight to eighty
two degrees. I usually do itat eighty. But how does an average
(42:34):
person without a lot of equipment havea facility to bulk for men. See
that's why I do it at seventydegrees for six hours. Yeah, well,
most home bakers are doing you know, one to four loaves at a
time, and that's where you canuse these countertop warm proofers, like there's
that broad and tailor proofer. That'swhat I use. Or you can use
(42:54):
your oven with the light on.That's what I did for years. Just
turn on the light and your oven. They will throw off the feet.
It'll get up to eighty five degreesin there. So there are some people
or you could you could do whatI do, which is just double the
time. Yeah it goes six hours. Yeah, but but I can't do
that after work. You know.That's that's the difference where I look at
(43:15):
it as a scheduling thing, whereit's like I want that initial time before
I get the dough into bulk fermentationto be as short as possible. So
you know that it just to mea lot of these different techniques that I
look at now are not so muchabout what's the best way to make sour
dough. It's how do you makemore sour tough when when you're busy,
(43:37):
you know, figure out the timingaspect of it. It's funny because I
work the other things I do tomake money. I work out of home
right now, and I've recently beenasked if I was interested in going back
on sets, and I said no, And it could be because, like
(43:58):
I kind of don't want to giveup the control all over the bread stuff,
and I want to be able todo the bread stuff during the day
and bounce around to phone calls yep, and not be absent for long periods
of time. Yeah, yeah,And that's you know. I think I
talked about this on the last podcast. Was the thing that I'm really focused
on now is trying to get allthe millions of people who learned how to
(44:22):
bake sour dough during the pandemic toget them back into making sour dough because
they all quit when they had togo back to work. And I mean,
just so many people who I knew, who all loved making sour dough,
they just put it away and theydon't do it anymore, and it
makes, you know, makes themsad, It makes me sad. I
mean, there's millions of people outthere. So I've over the last year
(44:45):
I've been working on this thing calledthe post Pandemic Sourdough Method, which I
mean I've I've done hundreds of testson this thing. We're basically and I
published it a couple of months ago. I have a video on it,
and I have a fifty page paperon it. If you want to read
about how to do it, youdon't have to read all fifty pages.
But basically, I looked at sourdough baking like as if I was an
(45:08):
industrial engineer doing like a time andmotion study, and said, like,
how can I take as much wastedtime out of the process. So I
have this method down where let's sayyou you make dinner, you clean your
kitchen, your kitchen's completely clean.You go in the living room, and
you know, at seven o'clock andwheel of Fortunes on, and I say,
(45:30):
I'm gonna go make sour dough.I go in the kitchen and I
have the steps down. Take outthe flour, measure the ingredients, mix
it in a bowl. I usethe slap and fold method, which I
know you use as well. Youdo it to James Brown, and I
do it to Janet Jackson. It'slike twelve minutes of mixing. But then
(45:51):
you gotta wash the dishes, yougotta put everything away, and I prepare
all the materials for the next day. What am I going to need for
shaping, What am I going toneed for baking. I do that whole
thing in five minutes. So I'mback in the living room for the jeopardy
for the final quiz on Wheel ofFortune. And I'm ready for Jeopardy at
seven thirty and my wife's like,I thought you were making sour dough.
I'm like, I just did.I mean, it's twenty five minutes,
(46:13):
literally, So that process is partof the method. But then the other
thing I did was I ran onehundred experiments last summer and fall where I
tested the rising time using different amountsof starter and different temperatures. And I
created these bulk fermentation timetables. Sonow I can say I mixed my dough
(46:37):
at seven o'clock. I gotta leavefor work the next morning by eight o'clock,
so I need a thirteen hour orlet's say, a twelve and a
half hour rise time. You goto these fermentation tables, I haven't broken
down to half hour increments, andit says to get a twelve and a
half hour rise. You got tobe at seventy one degrees and use twenty
percent starter. You mix that up. And then what I use is we
(47:00):
talked about these warmproofers. I havethese little warm and cold proofers. Now
it's like a little mini fridge whereyou can dial in the thermometer the temperature,
and I say, I set itto seventy one degrees. I mixed
the dough, I put it inthe little mini fridge. I go to
sleep. I wake up the nextmorning. It's perfectly bulk fermented. At
seven thirty, I shape it,appreciate benchrest, final shape, put it
(47:22):
in the fridge. I'm out thedoor at eight o'clock. It works every
time. So then then I bakeit anytime, bake it twelve hours later,
twenty four hours later, thirty sixhours later. Once it's in the
fridge, I'm mean I've left himin there for three days. But the
breakthrough is that time control the timing. Because when you control the time by
(47:43):
controlling the temperature, it makes hourto fit into your schedule, and you
can you can fit any schedule.You can do it on a twenty four
hour schedule, eighteen hour schedule,eight hours, twelve hours, I mean,
and it's all it's all math andscience. You just look it up
on the table the dough. Butyou have to have the ability to control
the temperature. But these these littleminiproofers are so inexpensive. Now I think
(48:07):
it's it's the biggest thing. It'sit's a revolution in home soured o' baking
in my opinion, to get theselittle miniproofers that are warm and cool with
the fermentation tables, because then youcontrol time. So where do we get
access to this table? It's onmy website. It's it's under the tools
section. It's called bulk fermentation timetables. And right now I have them set
(48:31):
up between sixty four degrees and seventyfour degrees with all the increments in between,
and then I'm running the test nowto get it up to probably eighty
degrees and then down to as lowas fifty degrees, so it'll you'll have
it a complete, you know window. Either if you say I want to
do it at my room temperature,what's the percentage of starter that I need
(48:52):
to use? You could look itup that way, or you could say
if I mixed twenty percent of mystarter and I want it done the next
number of hours? What temperature doI need to set it to? So
let's control either of those variables.That's amazing, that's really helpful. I'm
going to go check that out.I think I could use that if you
know, it does all come downto science. Some of us like and
(49:15):
I'm being serious, I'm not tryingto make a joke. Some of us
just don't have the aptitude to sitthere and figure out the science. And
you've figured it out for us exactly, you know, trying to do Yep.
I love I love doing the research. I love doing the experiments,
and then I like teaching people.You know, so it's it's a great,
(49:35):
great fit for me. Well listen, it's been a pleasure hanging out
with you. I learned a lottoday and I look forward to having you
on for a third time. Butmore importantly, I look forward to creating
this band. If there are otherSour doughe Bakers that thing will play an
instrument and want to join the ProteusEnzymes, please reach out to Tom or
(49:59):
myself and we can start over.Zoom. Okay, all right, Tom,
good to hang Thanks Jim. Thisepisode of Bread for the People was
brought to you by Side Hustle Bread, Long Island's handcrafted, artisanal bread company.
Side Hustle Bread is a family runbusiness that's bringing the neighborhood field back
(50:20):
to Long Island, one loaf ata time. If you like what you're
hearing, don't forget to head onover tie iTunes and rate and review this
episode. Reviewing and rating is themost effective way to help us grow our
audience. This episode was produced byMilestone TV and Film. I'm your host
Jim Serpico. Less it be thebread, Everyone,
The following episode of Bread for thePeople is brought to you by Side Hustle
Bread, Long Island's handcrafted, artisanalbread company. Side Hustle Bread is a
family run virtual bakery that's bringing theneighborhood feel back to Long Island, one
loaf at a time. Head onover to side Hustle Bread dot com for
more information, upcoming appearances and merchandise. My name's Jim Serpico. And this
(00:22):
should I start with? My name? What should I start with? This
is Bread for the People? Doyou like it like this? Welcome to
Bread? What do you like itlike this? Welcome Retty, Welcome to
Bread for the People. Mine isthere a script? Welcome to Bread for
(00:49):
the People. I'm Jim Serpico,streaming in from the International Institute for the
Advancement of Sour Dough Science and Researchof Cleveland, Ohio. I'd like to
say I now officially, whether Tomconsiders me a friend or not, I
consider Tom a friend. Tom isand I'm talking about Tom Cakuza, the
professor of sour Dough. He isthe first person in the history of Bread
(01:14):
for the People to appear twice.Tom, thank you for joining me for
a second time on bread for thepeople. Thank you for having me.
It's an honor and a privilege tobe your first repeat guest. I am
not just blowing smoke up your ass. You You really do have the greatest
sour dough channel on all social media. You're providing so much information for the
(01:40):
public for free. If there's anythingI need to look up, I'll go
right to your page and search iton your YouTube page. I've learned so
much from you since I started bakingsour dough. I want to thank you
for that. If you guys haven'tchecked out, Tom's page is the sour
Dough Journey on Instagram, especially onYouTube, He's got lengthy, detailed videos,
(02:05):
instructional videos, and he deals alot with the science of sour dough
baking, which really helps me becauseI don't deal with the science. I
rely on Tom to deal with thescience for me. How you doing today,
I'm good and I really appreciate thatfeedback. I also have the surado
Journey website, which has the SourdoughEncyclopedia, which has another three hundred or
(02:30):
so frequently asked questions additional videos.There's a lot more contents out there now
as well, so between the YouTubechannel, the website, and my Instagram
posts, you can pretty much catchme those three ways. Yeah, yeah,
and it is incredible. I've beenespecially preparing for this interview, going
through a number of the videos,most recently getting involved and studying what you
(02:57):
had to say on pH Yeah,and I would love to dive into that.
I do have some questions. Okay, so you get into the you
review a bunch of pH meters andtesters, and there's a giant range of
prices, you know, everything foras little as fifteen dollars up to two
to three hundred dollars. And Igather it's very important. I understand that
(03:23):
water starts at about a seven onthe scale, right, and then your
sour dough starter is about three,and once you start adding flower you get
to the mid range of five.But here's what I don't understand yet.
Yeah what And I know there's ananswer, I really don't know it.
(03:44):
What is the danger of having adough mixture that's too acidic? Acidic or
if you let your bulk ferment goon too long it becomes too acidic.
What is the problem? Basically twothings. The way I think about it
is almost everything bad that can happenwith sour dough is caused by acidity,
and there are two main things.If your starter is too acidic to begin
(04:08):
with and you mix that into yourdough, when your dough starts fermenting,
two things are happening. The yeastis trying to create carbon dioxide to rise
the loaf, and the lactic acidbacteria which comes with that in the starter.
You can't separate the two. Thelactic acid bacteria creates acid, and
those two things happen in parallel.The acid will always outrun the yeast.
(04:30):
There are a hundred more cells oflactic acid bacteria than there are yeast cells,
and if the acid grows faster thanthe yeast, it chokes off the
east. The yeast can't create carbondioxide. It literally it's like if you're
climbing Mount Everest, like every stepyou take there's less and less oxygen as
you get higher. That's kind ofwhat happens with the yeast. The yeast
(04:53):
can still be the same number ofcells, and it can be, you
know, a really strong starter,but as the acid builds up, you're
just you're you're choking it off andyou lose the ability to rise the loaf,
you say, really strong starter.And I'm also getting confused here because
and let me let me ask youthis. So I do my bakings,
my big bakes on Fridays and Saturdays. Yeah, and uh, and then
(05:15):
I'm out there selling and the lastthing I want to do after a long
days come home and feed my starter. Ye. And I usually don't feed
it on Sunday. And so ifI'm having a good week, I get
in there on Monday and I startworking it because I know I'm going to
be mixing with it on Wednesday.Yeah. But there are times I missed
the Monday. Yeah, And Icould tell that what's usually a thick starter
(05:39):
yep. When I use it,which I consider and I could be wrong
about this, my strong starter,it starts to get a little more liquidy
ye. And as I feed it, it's starting to thicken up and get
to where I need it to be. And if I missed the Monday,
I'm gonna feed it twice on Tuesday. I'm gonna feed it in the morning
and at night, so that Wednesdaymorning it's there. Now if it's watery,
(06:00):
is it acidic? Yes, becausethat's the second thing that happens with
an acidic starter. First is itchokes off the east. The second thing
that it does is an acidic starterreleases something called the protease enzyme. The
protease enzyme is in here, it'sin your flour. And when the acidity
(06:21):
and or the temperature rise, it'slike pac man comes out and starts eating
eating the gluten. It's stimulated byacid. Like if you just poured acid
into it, it wakes up allthese little pac men. They eat the
gluten. And that's what causes yourstarter to get watery, and it's what
causes your loves to overproof. Andwhen you get the flat, overproof disaster
(06:42):
loaves. That's all triggered by theacidity out running the east. And there's
several different ways it could get tothat point. You could start with the
perfect strong starter, yeah, butit could just bulk from it for too
long exactly right, If you justlet it go too long, you know,
time is the enemy. Eventually,the acid will always produce, you
(07:04):
know, more quickly than the east, and you'll get the overproofed loaf.
That's where you turn the corner andthe dough starts to collapse. And the
other thing that can cause it isthe temperature, because the acidity likes a
warm temperature and that protease enzyme thatbreaks down the gluten that likes a warm
temperature as well. So a lotof times when people bake in the summer,
(07:25):
it's really difficult. If you're bakingin a warm kitchen, your dough
can go sideways in a hurry,especially if you start with an acidic starter,
because you're starting with more acid tobegin with, Like you're you're already
you're not even putting the east andthe lactic acid bacteria on the same starting
line. You're given the acid ahead start, right. What about if
(07:46):
you do a cold froment I youknow, my typical cold froment is twenty
four to fourty eight hours. Yeah, and I've done the longer, and
I hear lots of people love tobrag out the seventy two hour called ferment.
Yeah, but I wondered, youneed to race, take shape and
bake that and not let a seventytwo hour sit on the pan too long.
(08:11):
It's a good question. There's acouple of things kind of wrapped up
in there. The long cool fermentationsslow down the acidity and they slow down
the proteus enzyme. So that's kindof the that's the mitigating factor that you
have. If you have a realwarm kitchen, your doughs starting to get
out of control, get it inthe refrigerator and that will hit the brakes
on that acidity building up. Sothat's a great way to slow things down
(08:35):
and kind of save a runaway abatch of dough when it sits in the
refrigerator. Like I said, timeis the enemy. You can never actually
stop time, and the starter willcontinue generating the acid, the enzymes will
continue breaking down the gluten. Soat some point, like you just you
can't leave it in there forever,like twenty four hours. Like easily you
(08:58):
can leave a loaf in the refrigeratorfor twenty four hours the dough before you
bake it get up to maybe fortyeight hours, you're kind of cross that
optimal point. And then from fortyeight hours up to seventy two hours you're
starting to get a little bit ofdeterioration in the loaf. It tastes great
because all the acidity is building upand you get these real super sour,
(09:18):
real complex flavored loaves with the superlong fermentation. That's why some people like
that, but you're always risking deterioratingthe dough the longer it's in there.
Got it? Now, I'm thinking, I know you sing, and I
for some reason I thought you playedthe french horn. Is that not true?
No, I played. I playedthe piano and guitar, not french
horn. And I'm a singrios.Yeah, and I played the trumpet.
(09:41):
And maybe we could get a coupleof the sour dough bakers and start Proteus
Enzymes the band name. It's agreat name. So for you people who
don't bake bread, you should tuneout. Now we are getting into the
weeds here with the Professor Tom Cakuza. Right off the bat, that's my
(10:01):
specialty. Right off the bat,we covered proteus enzymes. We just scratched
the service. We're gonna go deeper. So the sour, well, the
sour flavor, which you know I'malways struggling with. Yeah, I don't
know why. And again, peoplelike my bread and they buy it,
and no one's saying occasionally somebody hassaid it, but I wish I did
(10:24):
have control of it and I canmake it. What do they say?
Is it to sour? And nowsour enough, What are you trying to
accomplish? My bread is not sour. It is definitely a little more.
It's got a tinge of sour.Now that I am pretty much exclusively baking
my country loafs with cold fermentation.Yeah, but yeah, I mean people
(10:48):
say there's a lot of different waysto make it more sour, but the
best way is the long, longcold fermentation. That's where you get the
real sour flavor from. Now youcan you can boost that a little bit.
Some people add rye flower to theirI do, okay, so so
that helps. I mean that thatActually, I think that tang that people
(11:09):
associate with the sourness of sour doughactually is very similar to the taste of
ryor It accentuates it somehow. Andthen different flowers just to have have a
different flavor, I mean, youcan only change the flavors so much,
kind of within the window of whatthe bag of flower gives you. So,
(11:30):
so are you still using King Arthurflower for yours? I am.
I use King Arthur bread flower.However, I just got a bunch of
Sir lance a lot flower, whichis a higher protein yea, and that
King Arthur makes. Yeah, forthis for the scutchhott of bread that I'm
(11:52):
making, and I tried it withthe sour dough, very different in a
great way. Yeah. It madeit lighter, Yeah, right, it
creates a more open architecture in thechrumb because of the higher protein. That's
what kind of creates that's that's whatgives you the ability to taller. And
with the higher protein flour, youcan leave it in the refrigerator longer because
(12:16):
the protease enzyme has more lluten tochew on before it'll start to deteriorate the
loaf. So so I'd really pushedthe cold fermentation with that and see how
long you can go before you startto lose the shape of the loaf.
Yeah. So I've only been playingthat for two weeks and I was really
excited about the results. And actuallyfor the scotch Otto, which is very
(12:39):
similar to ficaccia, it's really surprisedabout how different the texture in that bread
became by using star lance a lotyeah over bread flour. Yeah, and
it's probably like one percent different proteincontent. I think the the King Arthur
(13:00):
bread flowers twelve point seven percent inthis, or lancelots maybe thirteen point five
or thirteen point seven makes a hugedifference. I mean those numbers seem really
close, but yeah, one percentdifference in the protein content can materially change
the shape of the loaf and thefield of the crumb and the mouth feel
and all that, you know.And then my so, I do a
(13:20):
lot of sour dough baking, andthen I this bread, the scotch Atta
facaccia yea is instant yeast, okay, And that I bake pretty much all
my bread two different ways. Mysour dough is either gonna and I was
actually training some people this morning onthis. You know, it's either a
(13:41):
mix and an eleven to twelve hourovernight bulk fermentation in a bucket at room
temperature, which is about seventy degreesyep, or a six hour bulk for
men twenty four to forty eight hourcalled for men. That's fore your sour
dough, that's my sour dough,your methods. And then for the instant
(14:01):
yeast, it's either ninety minutes inthe bucket and then about an hour on
a pane or an hour or halfhour. Let's say it's a half hour
to forty minutes before I do astretch and fold and then put it in
the refrigerator for twenty four hours.Now that that method is so completely different
(14:22):
in the instant yeast than just goingstraight from a bucket to a pan.
I couldn't believe the difference your bread. Yeah, doing cold the cold for
men, it just made it somuch better and change the texture so much
that I now can only make thatbread exclusively by doing the cold for men.
So what is the scotch out isthat you said it's like a for
(14:45):
cashious So it's a flat bread.What else do you add to it?
Oil and herbs and stuff? There'snothing. It's very it is oil olive
oil. But otherwise it's just saltwaterflour. And it's really open and airy,
okay, yeah, like really openan airy. And that's for your
Italian sandwiches. That's what my Italiansandwiches. I bake it in a full
(15:07):
sheet pan. Yeah, and itmakes a great theater because when you bring
it out, you're literally cutting itoff. Yeah, the giant square,
yeah, opening up right there,and you slice it, you slice it
down the middle and open it upto make you don't use a full pet
I see yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, those sandwiches look great.
I've seen those on Instagram. Ilove sandwiches, and I'm like, wow,
(15:28):
that's a great looking sandwich. Theother thing we did today I have
a little demonstration. Wow, youbrought props. This is a live prop.
Yeah, so this one is KingAuthor Bread Flour. I got the
Gosny Dome for this food trailer Ihave and I'm trying to figure out I
(15:52):
don't want to actually use it tomake pizzas because I don't want the workflow
in the process of pizza making.And also there's a million pizza makers now.
Yeah, so what we did hereand I got this from the Gosney
website. Actually, although I bakedthis longer. I baked this till it
was one hundred degrees internal What areyou hold for the people on the radio.
(16:15):
On the radio, this is aDEMI beguett yes for nice one hundred
eighty degree internal temperature. Yea.And it was just pure white but fully
cooked through. And then we putit in the gaze need to finish it
a couple of hours later and itwas unbelievable. Yeah, sixty seconds.
(16:36):
Yeah, that's amazing. What temperaturedoes the guys need to get up to
like eight or nine hundred degrees orsomething. Yeah, but we we Today's
experiment was actually on the Gosney rockbox because the domes in my truck which
is being retrofitted and finished. ButI have the rock box at home,
which is the smaller version, andI turned it down to the lowest temperature
(16:56):
I could, which probably is aboutfive hundred fifty right, Yeah for bread,
Yeah, that sounds about right forespecially for finishing like that. Yeah.
And the other thing I did withthis is, uh, I put
about four percent instant yeast into themixture of sour dough Storter. So are
you gonna sell those baguettes? Iam? I am trying to be the
(17:19):
rolling tartin Nice. I want.I'm selling bread and butter, yep,
along with the sandwiches. I mean, I am anchoring, you know,
our brand on the fact that it'sall our bread, it's not just the
sandwich place. So yeah, I'mdoing the bread and butter. Yeah.
(17:40):
And I think there's and are youdoing slices of bread if people just want
a slice or what it? What'sthe not initially? But I'm sure that
this whole thing's gonna six months fromnow, YEA once it's been out on
the street, I think it mightbe a whole different thing. Yeah,
well, think about how much moneyyou can make selling it by the slice.
I mean, people will pay dollarsfor a loaf, and you can
(18:02):
get twelve slices out of a loafand sell them for two or three bucks
a slice. If somebody's just standingon the street and they want to a
slice of bread and butter, I'dpay a couple of dollars for that.
I think. Well that's why I'mthat's why I'm making these demis. Yeah,
because this will probably sell for threedollars. Yeah, right, And
it's tough to make money just sellingclean loabs. I mean you probably know
(18:23):
that. You know, you gotto either add stuff to them or do
something different, which is why we'redoing this cafe on wheels and yeah,
trying to design. But I understandit's not really a food truck. I
saw the picture of it on Instagram. It's a food trailer, right,
It's a trailer and you sew thatbehind I've got a GMC Sierra nice that.
(18:47):
I guess part of me always knewI wanted to move into this and
got the truck before I had anythingto tell. But in talking to a
lot of friends that are in thefood trucks slash trailer business, they all
tell me that you really do wantto go trailer? Yeah, because there's
a lot of problems when you're themechanical stuff breaks down, you know,
(19:12):
yea the engine or whatever you're you'reout of your kitchen and you can't afford
that. Yeah, I preap calleda food wagon instead of a trailer.
I think that's a that's idea.Yeah, I think it's Jim Serpent goes
food wagon. There you go.I have very various names. I have
(19:33):
probably on the back. I havethese fantasies of painting the Scotch shot or
unit and having like an FBI jacketthat says uh TSU on it. Than
I've got the commercial campaign we're gonnashoot where I'm dressed up like an FBI
guy in the jacket and we showup to a house and the woman's crying,
Our husbands and Betty can't get up, and we have the thing that
he needs and we bring him ascot shot a sandwich. He just jumps
(19:56):
to life. So we'll see whathappens. Well, I gotta ask you
the question that I can't believe nobodyelse has asked you. But are you
related to the cop Frank Serpaco?Great question. I am not related to
the cop. My uncle's who.I have one uncle who's ninety two and
another who's about eighty, Little Ovaeighty. They were cops at the same
(20:21):
exact time, all with the lastname Serpaco, and they had a very
rough professional life around that time.Because of that, yeah, I could
see it. Yeah, yeah,But because you're not related, you could
use that as as kind of akitchy marketing idea. You know, I'd
(20:41):
put your face on the food wagonlike the posters of Alpaccino on the Serpaco
post on glass Time. One ofthe taglines I have, I don't know
if you remember the movies tagline wasan honest cop I have. The one
of the taglines I use is anhonest sandwich. I like it. I
liked it. I've got all kindsof marketing things going off of this,
(21:04):
and you know, honestly, I'mso excited to be able to shoot content
from there. Oh yeah, becauseI'm not. I don't have a good
set up to shoot content right now. Yeah, even though I put out
a lot of content I am notin places that are filmed friendly. Yeah,
(21:25):
kind of a man on the streetguy right now. I think that
suits your your style also, yeah, definitely, But I'm going to have
some cameras in there and have funwith it. Just really have fun with
it and maybe even take it outto do the podcast. That could be
fun. So all right, wecovered a little bit on the pH Yeah,
(21:47):
just to wrap up. You know, what do you use the pH
meters for? Basically, it's likea thermometer. You stick it in the
dough and you can tell much howmuch. You can tell how much acidity
there is in the dough. Sowhen I said all the bad stuff happens
either in your or your dough becauseof the acidity, the pH meter tells
you where it is. I mean, it's as simple as that. It
just keeps you out of trouble.If you've got dough that's really running away
from you, what do you doabout it? When you find out though?
(22:11):
Move quickly, you know, likeyou can you can test it as
you go so you can see howrapidly the dough is fermenting. So,
like you said, you know itstarts out at a pH of five,
and then during the bulk fermentation processas the starters creating the acidity. Higher
acidity is a lower pH. Soyou'll see it just like clockwork. It
starts dropping the four point five,four point two, five four point one,
(22:33):
and you pretty much got to shapethe dough and get it into the
refrigerator before it gets to four pointzero. So you know, it's just
it's another tool if you're running abakery or for some you know, kind
of beginning bakers who don't have theintuition and they want to spend the little
money on a piece of technology.It's not fool proof. I wish I
could say you just stick it inyour dough and it tells you exactly when
(22:55):
it's done. But it it's directionallycorrect, and you know, like I
said, it keeps you out oftrouble when you have kind of a runaway
loaf that's really getting ahead of itself. See it is you mentioned intuition like
so much like I know without knowingthat my pH it's it's too acidic.
(23:18):
Like the other day when I wasmaking these, I had missed that one
day of feeding and when I putmy starter in the water, it's it
sank. And that's when I saidto myself, I just watched this guy
on Gosney's website making these bighets andhe always puts in instant yeast of small
percentage with his sour dough. Yeah, so I was like, I'm definitely
(23:41):
doing it because I don't know what'sgoing on my starter here. I don't
like when it sinks. Yeah,what does it mean when it sinks?
You know? That's what people callthe float test, where if you take
your starter, you take a spoonfulof starter and you drop a spoonful of
it into a cup of water.If it floats, that generally means that
the starter is ready to use inyour baking. Why. Well, because
(24:06):
it's basically showing you the relationship betweenthe carbon dioxide that it's creating and the
point in time where that starter isbefore it starts to break down, meaning
it's past its peak. So it'sa kind of a cool test that tells
you the yeast is strong enough torise the dough and the proteas enzyme hasn't
(24:26):
done enough damage yet to sink thedough, so it catches it right around
that peak time. A lot ofpeople there's like a religious argument around whether
the flow tests really works or not, because you can just stir up your
starter real aggressively and make it sink, you know, because you knock the
air bubbles out of it. Sothen people say, well, you can't
(24:47):
rely on it, because I canmake a really strong starter sink if I
want to. It takes a littlebit of technique to use it. I
use it and it's very accurate.I mean, I do it all the
time. But it depends on yourspecific starter, how good you are it
kind of scooping it out and notnot blowing up all the bubbles in it.
But if it floats, it generallymeans it's ready. It's like a
it's like a one way test.If it floats, it's ready. But
(25:11):
if it doesn't float, it mightstill be ready because you can make a
strong starter sink by by kind ofmishandling it. But if it floats,
good to go. That's my opinion. Are you not supposed to whip up
years starter when you put it inthe water, because I do. Oh
no, when you put it inthe water, No, it doesn't damage
the starter at all. It justimpacts whether it'll float or not in it
(25:33):
when you're doing the test. No, you can. You can mix it
with a power mixer. I meanyou can do anything. Actually stirring your
starter actually helps it, you knowwhen, thank god, because I've been
doing it roll otherwise. I wasdoing it roll for three years. No.
No, because it aerates that itmoves the east around, because the
east grows in clusters, so thatso when you when you move it around
a little bit, it actually helps. It helps it thrive a little bit.
(25:55):
The proteus enzymes thrive on that.Yeah, there as enzyme is back.
Yes, all right, very veryinteresting stuff. Yeah, but more
on that. Check out Tom's videowhere he I think you have about five
different pH testers four pH testers orcool. Now, I know you've been
(26:17):
spending a lot of time reading andreviewing books on your channels. I have.
Yeah, I got into this lastyear. Some people started, you
know, writing sourdough books, andI started buying them because I was interested,
and I started writing short book reviewson my website and on Instagram,
and then people saw my reviews andthey just started sending me books. So
now I have a you know,a large stack of books to review.
(26:40):
But there are four fantastic books thatI've read recently two of them. Interestingly,
are the authors were both on yourshow. Yeah, Elaine Body of
the Sourdough Whisperer fantastic book and Mariecio Leo The Perfect Loaf. You had
both of them on. Those areabsolutely two of the best sour baking books
(27:00):
ever written. And the interesting thingabout them is, and this is maybe
because of the pandemic, maybe not, is that all the sarado books written
prior to that. I would sayall all the popular ones were written by
bakers. She had Robertson, RichardBurtinet, Ken Furkish, Jeffrey Hamilman.
(27:21):
These were all like pro bakers whotook their bakery experience and they basically turned
that into you know, home bakingmethod for saradough. Maurizio and Elaine were
home bakers. They learned at home, and they taught thousands of people home
bakers how to bake. Because they'reboth active on social media, so they
(27:44):
wrote these books from a totally differentperspective of the home baker who's not a
professional baker working in a bakery.I mean literally, people who don't know
anything. They buy a book andit's it's more about you know, troubleshooting
and all the things that happened withhome bakers and really trying to accelerate that
learning curve of being a home bakerwhere you're only baking one or two loaves
(28:06):
a week and you know, areless. You don't get the experience like
a you know, a professional bakerwere, you know, baking a couple
hundred loaves a day. So theywrote these books from a different, you
know, point of view, andit works because you know, I participate
in social media a lot as well, and I've seen this nude kind of
influx of home bakers who started inthe last six months making sour dough and
(28:30):
they're using Elanes and Maurizio's books andthey're baking better sour dough. I mean,
they're just coming right out of theblocks baking fantastic loaves. I can
see it. It's it's incredible.I see it too. They I'm in
a bunch of the Facebook groups andyou'll see people say, oh, this
is my first hour to loaf andthey post the picture and it looks like
(28:52):
they've been doing it for ten yearstotally, and that that did not happen
a year ago or two years ago. I'm telling you they they've made a
material difference in that learning curve forhome bakers. And the other thing I
love about Elaine and Marizio is,you know, because you interviewed them,
they have two totally different styles.I mean, you couldn't find two more
(29:12):
different approaches to sourdo' baking. IMean, Elaine is like, she's just
like the most pragmatic, straight talkinglike she's she took all these complicated sourdough
methods and just stripped them down tothe bare bones essential method. It's like
straight down the middle, fellow,these steps, don't worry about all this
(29:33):
stuff around the edges, and shegets people to make consistently good loaves just
by sticking to an incredibly simple process. Marizio is kind of the other other
end of the spectrum, where heyou know, he's a software engineer,
so his book is you know,written from kind of an engineer's perspective,
where he's he's really into the detailsof dough temperature and and starter maintenance.
(29:56):
And I mean, I'm probably Igravitate more towards Marizio's method, but really
into the details of the steps andthe troubleshooting. But you need two books
like that because there are different peoplehave different personalities. I mean I gravitate
towards Elaine's method. Yeah, youknow, it's I think I've talked about
(30:19):
this a little bit before I stumbleinto the science. Yeah. I don't
have the patience for the science.Yeah, but intuitively, I know how
it's supposed to feel. I knowhow it's supposed to smell at this point
by doing all the steps. Yeah, and I am getting the right I
(30:41):
am getting the proteus enzymes to theright place without knowing all the science behind
it. And Elaine has helped me. Yeah, because you know, after
talking to Elane and really focusing onthe one main plain sour though. Yeah,
(31:03):
and then from there, once youget that down, creating variations on
that or adding inclusions. Yeah.I used to have all these for every
different bread. I would have drasticallydifferent recipes because I researched them from different
places. Yeah. And then Irealized, let's take my rustic sour though,
and then replace it with some ryeflowers, some hole we throws of
(31:26):
cranberries, or the way Elaine says, chuck some cranberries, chuck some you
know, walnuts in there and seewhat you get, you know, and
play and just make variations on youryour hero. Yea, we yeah,
she's the master of that. Imean all her recipes are all based off
that master recipe that she that shecame up with, and then you just
(31:47):
add this stuff in. I meanit's it's it's it's it's great. I
mean, yeah, she's she's sotalented at that. And Marizio's recipes are
interesting. In his book, hehas sixty recipes and what he's done is
he's created the recipe for the sourdough version of everything you could imagine you'd
want to make sour dough make outof sour dough. He has sourdough,
(32:07):
doughnuts, sourdough, pretzel's, flatbread, non tortillas, and then a
hundred, you know, or dozensof types of bread where his is like
the encyclopedia of you know, possibleuses of sour dough to make bread.
So I like that as kind ofthe reference manual if I'm trying to make
something a little out of the ordinary, I go I go there to get
(32:29):
kind of the starting point recipe foryou know, a sour dough hot pretzel
or something like that, something outof the ordinary. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's interesting. I couldmake bread out of sour dough or instant
yeast, and I've done it.I know the conversion in my head.
(32:52):
It's just a rising agent and ityou can make anything either way. You're
just choosing to use a different risingagent because it's accessible to you or for
whatever reason. Yeah, you know. And then there's the debates on whether
or not, especially in pizza,sour dough is better or you know,
instant yeast is just as good.You're you know, getting into poolish,
(33:16):
Yeah, with instant yeast, whichproduces very much the same results and the
same smells and the preferment they startto smell, the acidity. It's interesting
stuff. I know, you makea lot of pizzas in your home home
pizza oven. What what do youuse for your dough Saura dough or yeast?
(33:37):
Mostly yeast out of convenience. Yeah, And when we make the pizza
on the truck, I think we'regonna do it with with the yeast.
Yeah, but you know, thereI try to do twenty four to seventy
two hour cold ferments on them.M Yeah, and with that long of
(33:58):
a ferment. Even with the commercial, ye, you start to get some
of the flavor profile of sourdough andnot not quite exactly the same, but
it heads in that direction. Butyou know, there's a guy, Dan
Richard who owns her pizza riha calledRaza in Jersey City. He's he's won
Best Pizza in America by New YorkTimes, very well known. He choosing.
(34:21):
He's not doing sour though, buthe's doing poolish. He's letting that.
I think it's a one to one. No, that would be on
sour though. Well the pool that'sthat's like half and half right where you
get so you get the flavor ofthe sourdough, but you let the commercially
used do the work. Correct.Yeah, it actually, yeah, that's
what it is. It's one toone with a dash of of instant east
(34:43):
in there. Yeah. And youlet that sit overnight and then you almost
use it as a starter, right, and it really makes it nice.
Yeah, yep. I've tried thata few times, not with pizza,
but I've made a couple other loaveslike that. A couple other books I
wanted to touch on that are reallyexceptional. One is out of France,
(35:04):
There's an author named Thomas Teffrey Shambland. He's like the top sarato' baker in
France, and he wrote this bookcalled Sarato Baking a Treatise, and this
is the book. I mean,just the title got my attention and when
I read this thing, I'm like, this thing was right up my alley
because it's all science. I mean, it's like he's the master saradough bread
baker in France and he wrote thisbook, and everybody else who writes a
(35:28):
book says, you know, thisis my opinion on how you should feed
your starter. He says, thisis the science of how you should feed
your starter. Any questions you know, and then you go to the next
thing, like people talk about howto shape the loaf. He's like,
this is the science of how youshape a loaf, and this is the
result that you get. So it'sjust like it takes all the mystery out
of all these different methods that areout there, and it gives you kind
(35:50):
of one provable starting point where youcan say, Okay, this isn't like
you know, an old wives talepassed down through generations. This is like
actually starting with the science. BecauseI mean, my style is I'm definitely
I definitely start with the science,but I want to get to the art.
Like I use the science to getthrough the all the possible variations so
(36:15):
that you can do something special atthe end. I don't want to waste
my time, you know, screwingaround with things that don't work. So
I'm trying to find the best wayto, you know, get a shot
at a perfect loaf. You know. Maurizio calls his book The Perfect Loaf
Elaine, you know, says,if you think your loaf is perfect,
(36:35):
it's perfect. I believe that there'slike this unattainable perfection of like the perfect
shape and the perfect crumb and theperfect flavor. And I want to get
there quicker. And for me,science is the path that gets two shots
at that more quickly. Sure.Now, what does he say in his
book about how to feed your start? He basically uses this. It's something
(37:00):
I did in one of my earlyvideos, just you know. I did
it through intuition. It's called peakto peak feeding, where if you're trying
to deacidify your starter, if yourstarter becomes acidic, you feed it and
let it peek and then as soonas it peaks, you, you discard
most of You wouldn't do this withyour large quantity of starter. You'd start
with a small quantity. You discardmost of it, feed it again,
(37:23):
wait for it to peek, knockit down again, feed it again.
You do that three or four times, and basically it rebounces. It lets
the yeast catch up to the lacticacid bacteria. And I've even tested this
with the pH meters and show shownhow you can do that. And you
can like massively knock down the acidityof your starter with three or four kind
(37:43):
of rapid feedings. So you saidyou feed yours a few, you know,
for a few days before you're goingto use it, but you don't
do big discarding. I do.I discard about twenty five percent on Monday
or Tuesday. Yeah, it shouldbe mondays. I discard twenty Yeah,
and then I if I have thebig bakes coming up, I add a
(38:06):
third giant canister to start building upenough starter, yeah, to use for
my weekend bake. Yes, you'redoing a type of that. He would
he would do more aggressive discarding really, yeah, And I do that as
well. Like if my starter isacidic, I'll discard ninety percent. I
mean, I'll get it down toalmost nothing. My my starter like right
(38:30):
now. It is because, tobe honest with you, I'm a very
slow because I'm in between things.Yeah, but if I'm bake in every
week, it doesn't I don't thinkit has that much of an opportunity to
get Yeah, and you acidic becauseyou keep yourself the refrigerator. Oh yeah,
yeah so so yeah that so immediatelyafter feeding I put it in.
I don't even wait an hour.So so for me, where I keep
(38:52):
it on my countertop, like oneday in my kitchen is like one week
in your kitchen. Yeah. Soyeah, refrigerator for duration helps everything.
Yeah. Yeah, my wife doesn'tlike it. She keeps wanting I wanted
in the main area. Yeah,so I don't have to go far okay.
(39:14):
And then one last book which whichI wanted to bring up, which
is related to something you told meon the last time we talked. Is
this other book I recently read isfrom an author Michael Collante. He's a
he's a baker and a teacher anda bakery consultant in San Francisco, and
he wrote a book called How toBake More Bread in twenty sixteen. It's
(39:35):
relatively old book, but nobody neverheard anybody talk about this book. I
mean, at least among the bakersthat I kind of run with. And
this book is spectacular because when youthink back to, uh, you know,
Chad Robertson wrote Tartine in twenty ten, and that kind of just everybody,
all the home bakers like gravitated towardsTartein, myself included. I mean,
(39:58):
I love that book. It's spectacular. But every other book that's been
written since then, it's kind ofa derivation of Tartein. I mean it's
the stretching folds and the shaping methods. I mean, some of them are
just like a total rip off ofChad Robinson's techniques, but almost every book
is related to that. Then Ifind this book in twenty sixteen from Michael
(40:21):
Callanti. It's like he lived ina universe where Tartein didn't exist. He
studied read baking in France, andthen he took kind of the French techniques
to commercial bakeries and he just hasa very different way of making sour dough,
which is very similar to what you'redoing. Keep your starter in the
refrigerator but the real breakthrough things.He does this thing called two stage bulk
(40:43):
fermentation, which I think is whatyou do. He mixes the dough at
a warm temperature for like three hours, lets it start to ferment, then
puts it in the refrigerator for twentyfour hours, and you finish bulk fermentation
in the fridge twenty four hours later. And this is what a lot of
commercial bakeries do, but but nohome bakers used that method. It is
what I do. Yeah, Andwhen you told me you did that a
(41:04):
year ago, I'm like, that'scrazy that work. And then I tried
it, and I'm like, ohmy god, this is fantastic. Not
only because it makes great tasting breadbecause of the long the longer cold fermentation
time, but it just frees upyour schedule. I mean, it just
gives you unbelievable schedule flexibility because you'renot standing around watching the dough rise.
I mean, you just get itstarted and put it in the fridge.
(41:25):
And if he says take it outin twenty four hours, once it's in
the refrigerator, there's not a bigdifference between twelve hours, eighteen hours,
twenty four hours, maybe thirty twohours. I mean, you got a
huge window. So for busy peoplewho are working, you know, busy
jobs, and they're trying to makesour dough. This has just opened up
a huge opportunity for people because youcan do it at night after work.
(41:50):
You can get home from work,you know, mix the dough, get
it into the refrigerator by say tenand ten eleven o'clock at night. Then
you forget about it till the nextnight. You get back home the next
night eight o'clock the next night,take it out, you shape it,
put it back in the fridge.Then you bake it any time in the
next day or two. I don'tknow. I don't even do it that
way. I should write a bookon my method, which is similar but
different and I think even easier forthe home baker. But before I get
(42:13):
to that, let me ask you, because I seem to remember you telling
me that his initial three hour bulkfor men is at eighty degrees. It
is very warm. Yeah, ifyou want to do it in three hours,
you have to have to be warm. I'd say seventy eight to eighty
two degrees. I usually do itat eighty. But how does an average
(42:34):
person without a lot of equipment havea facility to bulk for men. See
that's why I do it at seventydegrees for six hours. Yeah, well,
most home bakers are doing you know, one to four loaves at a
time, and that's where you canuse these countertop warm proofers, like there's
that broad and tailor proofer. That'swhat I use. Or you can use
(42:54):
your oven with the light on.That's what I did for years. Just
turn on the light and your oven. They will throw off the feet.
It'll get up to eighty five degreesin there. So there are some people
or you could you could do whatI do, which is just double the
time. Yeah it goes six hours. Yeah, but but I can't do
that after work. You know.That's that's the difference where I look at
(43:15):
it as a scheduling thing, whereit's like I want that initial time before
I get the dough into bulk fermentationto be as short as possible. So
you know that it just to mea lot of these different techniques that I
look at now are not so muchabout what's the best way to make sour
dough. It's how do you makemore sour tough when when you're busy,
(43:37):
you know, figure out the timingaspect of it. It's funny because I
work the other things I do tomake money. I work out of home
right now, and I've recently beenasked if I was interested in going back
on sets, and I said no, And it could be because, like
(43:58):
I kind of don't want to giveup the control all over the bread stuff,
and I want to be able todo the bread stuff during the day
and bounce around to phone calls yep, and not be absent for long periods
of time. Yeah, yeah,And that's you know. I think I
talked about this on the last podcast. Was the thing that I'm really focused
on now is trying to get allthe millions of people who learned how to
(44:22):
bake sour dough during the pandemic toget them back into making sour dough because
they all quit when they had togo back to work. And I mean,
just so many people who I knew, who all loved making sour dough,
they just put it away and theydon't do it anymore, and it
makes, you know, makes themsad, It makes me sad. I
mean, there's millions of people outthere. So I've over the last year
(44:45):
I've been working on this thing calledthe post Pandemic Sourdough Method, which I
mean I've I've done hundreds of testson this thing. We're basically and I
published it a couple of months ago. I have a video on it,
and I have a fifty page paperon it. If you want to read
about how to do it, youdon't have to read all fifty pages.
But basically, I looked at sourdough baking like as if I was an
(45:08):
industrial engineer doing like a time andmotion study, and said, like,
how can I take as much wastedtime out of the process. So I
have this method down where let's sayyou you make dinner, you clean your
kitchen, your kitchen's completely clean.You go in the living room, and
you know, at seven o'clock andwheel of Fortunes on, and I say,
(45:30):
I'm gonna go make sour dough.I go in the kitchen and I
have the steps down. Take outthe flour, measure the ingredients, mix
it in a bowl. I usethe slap and fold method, which I
know you use as well. Youdo it to James Brown, and I
do it to Janet Jackson. It'slike twelve minutes of mixing. But then
(45:51):
you gotta wash the dishes, yougotta put everything away, and I prepare
all the materials for the next day. What am I going to need for
shaping, What am I going toneed for baking. I do that whole
thing in five minutes. So I'mback in the living room for the jeopardy
for the final quiz on Wheel ofFortune. And I'm ready for Jeopardy at
seven thirty and my wife's like,I thought you were making sour dough.
I'm like, I just did.I mean, it's twenty five minutes,
(46:13):
literally, So that process is partof the method. But then the other
thing I did was I ran onehundred experiments last summer and fall where I
tested the rising time using different amountsof starter and different temperatures. And I
created these bulk fermentation timetables. Sonow I can say I mixed my dough
(46:37):
at seven o'clock. I gotta leavefor work the next morning by eight o'clock,
so I need a thirteen hour orlet's say, a twelve and a
half hour rise time. You goto these fermentation tables, I haven't broken
down to half hour increments, andit says to get a twelve and a
half hour rise. You got tobe at seventy one degrees and use twenty
percent starter. You mix that up. And then what I use is we
(47:00):
talked about these warmproofers. I havethese little warm and cold proofers. Now
it's like a little mini fridge whereyou can dial in the thermometer the temperature,
and I say, I set itto seventy one degrees. I mixed
the dough, I put it inthe little mini fridge. I go to
sleep. I wake up the nextmorning. It's perfectly bulk fermented. At
seven thirty, I shape it,appreciate benchrest, final shape, put it
(47:22):
in the fridge. I'm out thedoor at eight o'clock. It works every
time. So then then I bakeit anytime, bake it twelve hours later,
twenty four hours later, thirty sixhours later. Once it's in the
fridge, I'm mean I've left himin there for three days. But the
breakthrough is that time control the timing. Because when you control the time by
(47:43):
controlling the temperature, it makes hourto fit into your schedule, and you
can you can fit any schedule.You can do it on a twenty four
hour schedule, eighteen hour schedule,eight hours, twelve hours, I mean,
and it's all it's all math andscience. You just look it up
on the table the dough. Butyou have to have the ability to control
the temperature. But these these littleminiproofers are so inexpensive. Now I think
(48:07):
it's it's the biggest thing. It'sit's a revolution in home soured o' baking
in my opinion, to get theselittle miniproofers that are warm and cool with
the fermentation tables, because then youcontrol time. So where do we get
access to this table? It's onmy website. It's it's under the tools
section. It's called bulk fermentation timetables. And right now I have them set
(48:31):
up between sixty four degrees and seventyfour degrees with all the increments in between,
and then I'm running the test nowto get it up to probably eighty
degrees and then down to as lowas fifty degrees, so it'll you'll have
it a complete, you know window. Either if you say I want to
do it at my room temperature,what's the percentage of starter that I need
(48:52):
to use? You could look itup that way, or you could say
if I mixed twenty percent of mystarter and I want it done the next
number of hours? What temperature doI need to set it to? So
let's control either of those variables.That's amazing, that's really helpful. I'm
going to go check that out.I think I could use that if you
know, it does all come downto science. Some of us like and
(49:15):
I'm being serious, I'm not tryingto make a joke. Some of us
just don't have the aptitude to sitthere and figure out the science. And
you've figured it out for us exactly, you know, trying to do Yep.
I love I love doing the research. I love doing the experiments,
and then I like teaching people.You know, so it's it's a great,
(49:35):
great fit for me. Well listen, it's been a pleasure hanging out
with you. I learned a lottoday and I look forward to having you
on for a third time. Butmore importantly, I look forward to creating
this band. If there are otherSour doughe Bakers that thing will play an
instrument and want to join the ProteusEnzymes, please reach out to Tom or
(49:59):
myself and we can start over.Zoom. Okay, all right, Tom,
good to hang Thanks Jim. Thisepisode of Bread for the People was
brought to you by Side Hustle Bread, Long Island's handcrafted, artisanal bread company.
Side Hustle Bread is a family runbusiness that's bringing the neighborhood field back
(50:20):
to Long Island, one loaf ata time. If you like what you're
hearing, don't forget to head onover tie iTunes and rate and review this
episode. Reviewing and rating is themost effective way to help us grow our
audience. This episode was produced byMilestone TV and Film. I'm your host
Jim Serpico. Less it be thebread, Everyone,
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