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What is leaven BREAD SQUARE, OR RYE SQUARE - a leaven based on lactic acid bacteria. Yeast and bread leaven (based on lactic acid bacteria) are used for the sourdough culture of flour products.
Historically, in everyday life, rye sourdough was prepared from the remnants of rye dough.
Fresh starter culture can be prepared either using cultures of various lactic acid bacteria, or by natural fermentation of rye flour in warm water with access to air (in which a certain amount of lactic acid bacteria is always present).
The sour taste of sourdough and bread based on it does not come from yeast, but from lactic acid bacteria with which yeast lives in symbiosis. Lactic acid bacteria feed on by-products of yeast fermentation and, in turn, make the culture more acidic by releasing lactic acid, which prevents the ferment from spoiling (since most microbes cannot survive in an acidic environment).
Initially, all bread was made with sourdough, and the fermentation process remained incomprehensible until the 19th century, when, using a microscope, scientists were able to detect microbes that make the dough rise. Since then, the selection and cultivation of yeast has been carried out in order to increase the reliability and speed of fermentation. Billions of these cells were then packaged and marketed as "Baker's Yeast." Bread made on the basis of such yeast is not sour, since it does not contain lactic acid bacteria. Bakers around the world quickly adopted this yeast as it made bread making easier and the bakery more flexible. In addition, the baking process became faster, allowing bakeries to bake fresh bread three times a day. While bakeries in Europe continued to bake sourdough bread, yeast was widely used in the United States to replace sourdough.
LACTIC BACTERIA - a group of microaerophilic gram-positive microorganisms that ferment carbohydrates with the formation of lactic acid as one of the main products. Lactic acid fermentation became known to people at the dawn of the development of civilization. Since then, it has been used at home and in the food industry to process and preserve food and beverages. Traditionally, lactic acid bacteria include immobile, non-spore-forming coccoid or rod-shaped representatives of the order Lactobacillales (for example, Lactococcus lactis or Lactobacillus acidophilus). This group includes bacteria that are used in the fermentation of dairy products, vegetables and meat (in sausage production). Lactic acid bacteria play an important role in the preparation of dough, wine, coffee, cocoa and silage. Despite their close relationship, pathogenic members of the order Lactobacillales (for example, Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumococci) are usually excluded from the group of lactic acid bacteria.
On the other hand, the distant relatives of Lactobacillales from the class of actinobacteria, bifidobacteria, are often considered in the same group with lactic acid bacteria. Some members of the aerobic spore-forming genera Bacillus (eg, Bacillus coagulans) and Sporolactobacillus (eg, Sporolactobacillus inulinus) are sometimes included in the lactic acid bacteria group due to their similarities in carbohydrate metabolism and their role in the food industry.
In nature, lactic acid bacteria are found on the surface of plants (for example, on leaves, fruits, vegetables, grains), in milk, external and internal epithelial integuments of humans, animals, birds, fish (for example, in the intestines, vagina, on the skin, in the mouth, nose and eyes).Thus, in addition to their role in the production of food and feed, lactic acid bacteria play an important role in wildlife, agriculture and normal human life. The impact of the accelerated industrialization of lactic acid bacteria production, based on a small number of plant-adapted strains, on the natural diversity of these bacteria and human health remains unexplored.
VIEWSOne of the most common types of lactic acid bacteria is Streptococcus lactis. This is a mobile stick that does not form spores, is well stained with aniline dyes and according to Gram, in a young form it has the form of a streptococcus. On meat-peptone agar, it gives dotted round colonies, in the thickness of the agar - lenticular. S. Lactis decomposes sugar without the formation of gases into two molecules of lactic acid. The most favorable temperature for development is + 30-35 ° С.
Lactic acid streptococcus is constantly found in spontaneously sour milk. This bacterium tends to clot milk within the first 24 hours. When the lactic acid content reaches 6-7 g per liter, sugar fermentation stops, since higher acidity has a detrimental effect on streptococcus lactic acid.
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🔗Bread_leaven
The use of sourdough in the production of bread improves the quality of bread made from rye flour: the volumetric yield of bread increases, the dimensional stability of hearth products increases, the structure of porosity is improved, the stickiness and crumbling of the crumb of rye flour is reduced, and the stale process slows down.
It is important to use the highest quality products for both the leaven and the bread itself. Wheat flour should be 100% whole grain, organically grown wheat, cold milled. The absence of chemicals in wheat and milling without heating ensures that all the necessary enzymes remain in the flour.
Flour should not be placed in the freezer as this destroys the enzymes it contains. In addition, this does not in any way eliminate the need to sift flour - it must still be sieved, even if there are no pests in it, because sifting enriches the flour with oxygen. In addition, both when making sourdough and when kneading bread, flour and water should be warm, slightly warmer than room temperature. The water should be neither chlorinated nor fluorinated.
Bread made with natural sourdough should be quite heavy and slightly sour, it should not be too airy or too sour - if so, then the amount of sourdough and fermentation time should be reduced. Too sour bread is harmful, it contains too much acetic acid. The crust of good bread is usually quite hard, and the smell is strong - pleasant and fragrant.
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🔗 Starter - culinary designation of various fermentation stimulants used to prepare raw food products for further culinary processing. Starter cultures are used to ferment milk in order to obtain a variety of fermented milk products from yogurt to cheese, to speed up the rise of dough (for bread, pies, bakery products), in the production of drinks (kvass, beer, kumiss) and real jelly (oat, rye, pea) and some flour soups (zhur).
A variety of organic substances containing fungi or enzymes are used as starter cultures.
In a narrower sense, a leaven is any organic substance, the introduction of which into the food environment causes the fermentation process. In this sense, in culinary practice, wine vinegar, dry sour grape wine, beer used for a quick but fragile and short-term effect on the food environment, a separate dish are also referred to as leavens.
For fermentation of flour products are used:
1) yeast;
2) malt (maltose);
3) self-souring rye sourdough from the dough remnants in a fermentor, which has stood for a day;
4) sapwood (inner tender part) of the bark of some trees - willow, alder.
Bakers in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean baked sourdough bread thousands of years before yeast was produced industrially.
Previously, bread was made with dough - from flour, water and a small amount of sugar, which makes it rise faster. This mixture absorbed the wild yeast naturally present in the air, and after a few days began to ferment. It was thanks to this fermentation that the characteristic sour taste appeared in the bread.
In baking, the leaven can be the dough left over from the previous bread preparation. If instead of yeast, you take a piece of such a leaven and put the dough on it, then the bread turns out to be more sour than with yeast.
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