Bread. Yeast. The staff of life.

Sure leavening and yeast are two different things. Baking powder biscuits are leavened (risen) but don't have yeast -- three leavening agents are steam, air, and carbon dioxide... Whipping air into a mixture, heating water trapped in a mixture and causing carbon dioxide bubbles in a mixture (this is what yeast does) are the basic means of leavening.

And I thought sourdough was yeast -- wild yeast, from the air, cultured and preserved... that's why sourdough bread from different sources tastes different -- different yeast strains.

And baking powder and/or soda is ancient, sold in African markets (and elsewhere) since God-knows-when. Just a salt, after all. Can scrape it out of the bottom of some riverbeds...

Wy, most sourdoughs are produced using the method I described above. First you have to capture the yeasts, thus, you create a sponge of water and flour. Soaking the organic raisins is a way of jumpstarting this process, since they tend to be covered in wild yeasty beasties.

got it, cjhsa. I was objecting to bzgootch, who seemed to think that yeast and sourdough were two different things...

I think Nancy Silverton (La Brea Bakery) uses grapes...

cjhsa, you make want to start making bread again...

Love the La Brea breads. Mmmm. Q: how do they end up out here? Are they franchised, or do they ship dough that gets baked locally? There's no way the stuff I get from the store is baked in California and shipped out.

I dunno, Patio, I didn't realize they went past Los Angeles, though N. Silverton has written a successful book - can't remember if it is on pastry or breads, think breads.

Don't you have any local bakeries anymore?

Here, even the biggest "baking factories" have regional factories and bake rolls, smaller breads etc fresh in the shops.

(Small bakeries - range from one to to couple of shops - are becoming less, but in our town (70,000 inhabitants), we still have 12 different.)

Nancy Silverton bread book, amazon link via a2k

Nancy Silverton is a local pastry chef/bread baker in Los Angeles; her breads became justly famous locally, and apparently the bread distribution has grown.

pretty well all the supermarkets in ontario have their own "in-store bakeries"; the problem is that the dough is shipped in (frozen), so there is no one at the store who makes the dough. (the baker's sweat is supposed to give bread from a real bakery it's particular taste.) luckily we have some local bakeries in town that still do the whole baking process from beginning to end. the best one is CHEZ PIGGY - it was started by a member of the LOVING SPOONFULLS; sadly he passed away recently, but his wife and staff carry on the business. they bake at least 30-40 different breads and buns every day - kimmel, french levain, pumpernickel ... . when i walk into the bakery i start salivating ... drool ! hbg

Yeah, but my taste in bread was formed in California, and it's hard to get a good loaf of sourdough anywhere else. When I saw the La Brea loaf on the store here, I grabbed it. When I felt the crust I grinned. When I got it home, tore off a chunk, and ate it, I was dancing.

Have you been to Sophia's bakery yet, on Johnson, just south of Paterson? Breads but all sorts of things. Sunday breakfast/ brunch is fantastic. (Went there with an old friend on the recent Madison trip, so know it's still going strong.)

Patio, one of my friends in LA followed all N. Silverton's directions for breadmaking (fairly daunting to start, then gets easy) and has done most of them. Gads they're good. Course she could go to the store and get them, four blocks away, but she is the type of cook that really masters a cookbook, with all the thinking behind it.

Not to knock Sophia's, since of course I haven't been there, but La Brea's are top of the line..

No, havnae. Breakfasting, when it's been paid for, has been done largely at Willaby's and the Dairy Bar (good coffee cake and cinnamon rolls).

Willalby's! Yeah, they're cool. Sophia's is tiny, kind of a neighborhood secret, really good stuff. Sophia herself is from some Olde European country (I forget which) and actually cooks/ bakes everything herself, with the help of her adult daughters.

Yesterday I went to a little restaurant called Moonbeams in Kensington Market....Lunch consisted of a Californian flat bread wrapped around
crisp vegetables and hummus....

That, and a steaming glass of oolong tea, delicious and healthy.......

Here, in Germany, you can still find in several regoins villages with so-called "backing houses": public backing ovens, where the villagers (can) bake their bread (cakes, pizza and sucking pig as well :wink: ).

Some pics from different regions






An interesting aside: friends live in a village (in Hessia), where they changed the bake-house in the 50's in "deep freeze" house.
Nowadays, just a few bring very seldom their food for deep freezing there.
So, they decided last weekend, to re-built this house - in the hope, to get a (new) tourist attraction :wink:

Wonderful, Walter.....thanks for posting the photos....

Lufthansa is the best airline I have ever
flown> Hopefully one day it will bring me again to
Germany where I can partake of bread from
a bake house in person......then onto Namibia.......

Hey, Walter -- while you're here, there's something that just popped into my head I want to ask you.

Do these lines ring a bell at all?


Naturally the original is in German, and some liberties have probably been taken with structure to make the translation work...

I'm saving your pictures. I think that is a good small business idea, myself. Well, what do I know about business. But I do know a bit about bread..