I still love the flavor of my first attempt at making a sourdough starter on the island. No matter how I try to coax it, though, it just won’t produce enough CO2 to give the dough a nice rise, resulting in a loaf that’s still edible, but more dense and heavy than I like.
I tried using my favorite recipe but putting a teaspoon of active dry yeast in the dough, and I got a loaf that rose nicely and still had that wonderfully sour tang of my new starter. Things have been pretty disrupted here with the house rewiring and all the other little and big projects. Making a new starter is a week-long process that isn’t guaranteed to succeed. I’m sure there are sourdough purists who are currently unsubscribing from my feed with extreme prejudice, but I’m getting bread I really like and will have time to create new starter in the future.
For my next loaf, I’ve tried adding ¼ tsp of baking yeast and a teaspoon of sugar to the starter before I devided it. I’m hoping that the yeast and the sour elements (usually a combination of wild yeast and bacteria) will both propagate. Often they won’t — the bacterial fermentation products will suppress the yeast growth. So far, though, it looks good.
I don’t think adding commercial yeast is a mortal sin — after all, it’s all about the bread.
—2p