The Sourdough Mystique
After mixing up some dough and letting it rise, you could go ahead and bake it. But that addictive yeasty flavor will be more pronounced if you whip up an initial yeast batter, or starter. Hard-core sourdough fans prefer to cultivate a wild starter by mixing organic flour with water and waiting for the airborne yeast to come feed; the good bacteria created by the aging culture produce the distinctive tang. But the problem with wild starters is that the flour-water-sugar trap left out for the yeast is often taken over by bad bacteria before the yeast is able to set up house. This can often result in a nasty-tasting and dangerous bread brew.
Proto-dough to the Rescue
I've created a commercial-wild yeast hybrid that achieves the best of both worlds: good flavor without the bad bacteria. The commercial yeast immediately dominates the culture and starts producing acid that isn't friendly to potentially harmful bacteria. Then it is safe to go wild by continuing to feed the batter, or proto-dough, with water and flour. In time, you'll have what is essentially a sourdough starter. My own proto-dough has been going for about eight months, and the breads I make with it are tasting better and better. I've found that by keeping a quart of proto-dough around, I can make sourdough-tasting bread in half the time. Not only does the yeast in the proto-dough serve as a microbial rapid deployment unit, but the goo it lives in is packed with flavor. Which means your bre
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