Nature: The Original Conservationist

Ecological Balance in a Closed Loop System

There I was walking down the sidewalk on a hot summer day and I saw these ants working feverishly on what was left of somebody’s ice cream lying on the sidewalk.  Regardless of the fact that the consumer did not care to properly discard of the container, there were still all of these ants.  Of the earth’s entire surface only about 29% of it is land , which totals about 149 million square kilometers (Coffey); and of that only about 2% is inhabited.  Now statistically taking all of the available inhabited land mass on earth, and divide that into about 100 square meter blocks (or probably a rough guess for the distance an ant colony would forage) and it leaves you with a 1 in 1,490,000 chance that the ice cream container would land in the foraging area of those ants—random chance or design?

At this point, we cannot call it merely a coin toss.  Rather, looking at the fact that this was a crowded East Coast suburban area means that the probability is much higher than in an outlying corner of an abandoned rural lot.  Moving past the probability leaves us with the fact that the natural order has “closed loop” systems, in other words it is very hard to find an example in nature where things are wasted.  Take this guerilla compost pile that I started a long time ago on a forested lot—the insects are making quick work of what was once “waste.” 

 Of course if you have been reading this blog, you know that we strongly encourage composting because it is harvesting otherwise discarded inputs.  The best of someone else’s farm exported to your house can be reclaimed by you in your compost heap/bin.  Whereas free radicals wreak havoc on living things, they are absolutely critical in the decaying process.  “Decay is a free radical mediated process returning matter back to its simplest inorganic form” (Reams, 1978).

“Nature does not move carbon around very much” (Joel Salatin), and this is true, but in the natural order we find many clever rearrangements of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.  That list pretty much chemically sums up the major constituencies of any living thing or a compost pile (formerly living things).  The cycling of carbon on a homestead or farm is a sure sign that the land’s true value is being realized.  To that end, there is no better expression of self-sufficiency than the harmony between perennials and herbivores.  In all reality, any other method is (in the true sense of the word) unsustainable and not being totally honest with oneself. 

Take for instance the precious gift of soil that we have in the Great Plains.  I have heard some credit that wonderful soil to centuries of being “pulsed” by bison (herbivores) eating the prairie grasses (perennials).  I always think of this beautiful relationship when I drive down through Wyoming and see the ruminants eating grass (not corn).  Yet the grass growing there is not a waste product and the cows are not scavengers.  It is hard to see the grazing cattle as anything else other than opportunistically eating what was growing there.  Yet the cows eating the grass and leaving cow patties is what makes the grass grow back healthier still all the while providing rich nutrients to the cow’s meat, namely Vitamin B12. 

Living grass will continue to thrive whether or not something eats it (it is resilient stuff, overall). What about something that is truly wasted?  I immediately thought of that when I saw this picture of a Ruddy Turnstone eating a dead crab.  This small shoreline wading bird is making the best of a bad situation.  Not that the crab has any say in the matter, but we see that in the natural order nothing is wasted.  We are reminded of this in Montana, where the deer outnumber people.  It is not uncommon to see extremely large populations of scavengers (of which only the eagles are beautiful) having a roadside feast.  Throw an apple core into the wood line and some chipmunk or deer will eat it for sure.  Hopefully, the seeds will be either buried and forgotten about (read: planted) or deposited in a scat pile somewhere thus bringing about a new apple tree (assuming that those were not hybrid apples). 

The next time you see pesky autumn leaves around the base of a hardwood tree, note that those leaves are not wasted—the tree self-mulches!  That is the tree protecting itself and in some sense recycling all that carbon, nitrogen and oxygen again for next year.  And in the natural order, carbon (e.g. the leaves) does not move around a whole lot—unless your neighbor did not rake up his/her leaves and they are now in your yard.    

Did you ever hear of Mao’s Four Pests Campaign in China?  Bizaare piece of history.  Basically, he sent the people on a mission to kill sparrows, mosquitos, flies, and rats.  The ecological balance was so disrupted that the campaign is credited by almost every scholar on the subject as the primary cause for the massive starvation resulting in the death of millions of people.  Along with the near-extinction of sparrows and the subsequently unchecked population of crop-eating insects,  compost-waste was piling up for lack of natural consumers!  You see, even the pests serve a purpose in the closed loop.

We do not like certain obnoxious creatures—scavenger birds, ants marching one-by-one, or even those annoying flies—but remember that they have a very important role to play in the cycle that ultimately provides us with fertile soil, lush fields, and food for the table. 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

Works Cited:

Coffey, J. (18 February 2009). Retrieved from http://www.universetoday.com/25756/surface-area-of-the-earth/

Hadley, D. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/a/10-cool-facts-about-ants.htm   

Reams, C. (1978). (p. 8). Spencer: Nutritional Counselors of America Holistic Wholesalers, LLC.

Photo Credits:

Ruddy Turnstone by Rob Graff

All other photos by Pantry Paratus

For Further Reading:

Nauta, P. (2012). Building soils naturally. Austin: Acres, USA.

Proviso:

Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice.  You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes.  Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.

www.Hypersmash.com

Pre-ferments: How They Work

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a yeast by any other name 

The eyes in swiss cheese and the pockets in French Bread are both caused by trapped gasses—however the first is caused by bacteria (Monera Kingdom) and the second is from yeast (Fungi Kingdom).  In bread, it is possible to leverage both through the use of pre-ferments. 

If you read our other blogs on pre-ferments you are likely sold on them and you are already on your way to making great bread.  I just wanted to fill you in on a bit of the “how it works” behind the scenes with the smallest parts of nature doing all the heavy lifting.  Enzymes do so much for us and eventually to us.  Need to make cheese?  Enzymes can help you do that.  After I am put in the ground one day to make compost, it will be enzymes doing the hard part of converting me to soil.  Hand-in-hand with enzymes, are bacteria recycling everything in nature.

Enzymes typically end in “-ase” and are named for the sugar that they consume which typically ends in “-ose.”  For example, amylase is the enzyme that converts the sugar in a bruised or freshly cut apple to the brown color we observe.  The amylase enzyme is acting on the amylose sugars in the apple, of which fructose is one kind of amylose.  “Enzymes are complex proteins that act as catalysts in almost every biochemical process that takes place in the body.  Their activity depends on the presence of adequate vitamins and minerals, particularly magnesium” (Fallon & Enig, p. 46).  Great, but what does that have to do with bread? 

An enzyme is what nature uses to break stuff down, whether they are working in your saliva or in huge vats in a Cargill plant in Blair, Nebraska turning long chain corn sugar into short chain high fructose corn syrup—enzymes reduce things.  Typically we would not want to leverage this if it were fruit salad, so we counteract enzymes with acids.  However, in creating a great pre-ferment we are cheering the enzyme process as it is the first step in releasing the grain’s full potential. 

Here is an experiment that you can try at home: take a pinch of flour and put it on your tongue—it likely does not taste palatable at all, why is that?  “Flour tastes like sawdust because its sugar components are too complex to differentiate on the tongue” (Reinhart, p. 59).  The tongue is not set up to taste let along fully appreciate the wheat berry or its flour in its raw state because the sugar chains are way too long.  This is why sprouted bread has markedly higher nutrition, because the enzymes have already done so much of the work to make the nutrients available.

So the bread baker will either use the natural enzymes present in the dough plus time or he/she may wish to add a small percentage (usually .5-1% by weight) of an enzyme such as malted barley to the dough.  The enzyme process will break down the wheat sugars, this much you know, but the follow on processes are what makes bread truly extraordinary.  According to Reinhart, amylase and distase break down the wheat sugars to impart three subsequent effects: color (called “carmelization” by bakers) for the crust and crumb, flavor (the whole reason we are doing this!) and food for the yeast.

There are enough enzymes naturally occurring in flour that it is not always necessary to add them in the form of malted barley, as long as you are able to stretch time long enough to allow them to do their job.  This is, in a nutshell, why pre-ferments create superior bread: they are a way to manipulate time, to stretch it, so that the wondrous chemical activity going on at the cellular level can fulfill its mission (Reinhart, p. 64). 

Hmmmmm, food for the yeast?  I thought that is why we added enrichments to the bread?  You certainly can do that, but in Europe luxuries such as sweeteners were not always available, so pre-ferments were leveraged to embody flavor and develop structure in the bread.  Yeast is a simple organism, a fungus, an eukaryotic microorganism to be exact, and it eats simple sugars like glucose. 

But not all yeast is the same, nor does it have the same efficacy.  Reinhart, who prefers instant yeast, gives the following equivalency chart for substituting yeast (p. 60):

100% fresh yeast = 40-50% active dry yeast = 33% instant yeast

Typically all yeast that we buy will be the commercial yeast known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae otherwise known as baker’s yeast or brewer’s yeast—it is the same thing.  Breaking the word down we get from Latin: Saccaro, meaning “sugar,” myces, meaning “fungus,” and cerevisiae, meaning “beer.”  We can otherwise say that as: “sweet fungus of beer” (Volk & Galbraith). This yeast is produced to be reliable and predictable for baking—two things that you definitely want.  Pre-ferments using this kind of yeast are easy to work with and have reproducible results. 

The other kind of yeast you really do not need to buy, because it is everywhere.  It is the white powdery residue on the wheat berry, a grape or even a plum—yes, we are talking about wild yeast or Saccharomyces exiguus.  This is typically used in sourdough breads, and the wild yeast works in conjunction with bacteria, notably our old friend Lactobacillus. 

The complex sour flavor is not created by the wild yeast [alone].  Other bacterial organisms, specifically lactobacillus [sic] and acetobacillus [sic], create lactic and acetic acids as they feed off the enzyme-released sugars in the dough, and these are responsible for the sour flavor (Reinhart, 65).

Remember that we are leveraging time in this process as well, so here is where the road splits off the direct doughs from the indirect doughs (using pre-ferments).  I have friends that are beer brewers and they say that everything has to be spotlessly clean because any bacteria will ruin a batch of beer.  “If bacterial activity creates too much acid, this type of yeast will die and make the bread taste funny, with an ammonia like aftertaste and a weakened gluten structure caused by the glutathione released by the yeast.  Most regular Saccharomyces cerevisiae leavened breads have a pH level of 5.0 to 5.5” (Reinhart, 66).

On the decidedly more acidic end of the pH scale is Saccharomyces exiguus which works best in a pH level of 3.5 to 4.0 “and therefore thrives when the bacteria does its work creating lactic and acetic acids.  Since it takes twice as long for the bacteria to create flavor as it takes for the yeast to leaven the dough, it requires a hearty strain of yeast to endure” (Reinhart, 65).  This chart should sum up everything we talked about so far:

If you have a recipe, tip or trick for using a pre-ferment—please leave a comment and share it with us.  Also, if you are a US resident, and you are over 18 and you have entered a valid e-mail address—I have a small prize for the first person who posts what a “barm” is in the comment section below (without doing an internet search, please). 

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

Works Cited:

Fallon, S., & Enig, M. (2005). Nourishing traditions. (Deluxe Edition ed., p. 4). Washington DC: NewTrends Publishing.

Reinhart, P. (2002). The bread baker’s apprentice, mastering the art of extraordinary bread. (p. 27). Ten Speed Pr.

Volk, T., & Galbraith, A. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/dec2002.html

Photo Credits:

Saccharomyces cerevisiae by photo credit: Rising Damp via photopin cc

Yeast and saccharomyces exiguus are taken from the Public Domain

All other photos and graphic by Pantry Paratus and may be used with permission with proper attribution–thanks.  

Proviso:

Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice.  You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes.  Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.

www.Hypersmash.com

Pre-ferments, the key to unlocking really great bread 

Leveraging time, enzymes and yeast

“Fermentation is the key to world-class bread, assuming that the flour and other ingredients are good” (Reinhart, p. 11).

I used to not believe that quote above, but then again I used to think that flour only came in a paper bag.  Which now that I think about it, should have tipped me off because the bag always leaked and why would an agricultural society (& one that cares about “if seal is broken”) put up with that?  Sure, yeast will eat sugar.   I have tasted beer and watched bread rise to know that is true.  However, before I was married to a bread baker I was unaware that there is so much more than the mechanical pressure of carbon dioxide going on in the bread baking cycle.  The difference between bread by the academic definition and extraordinary bread is fermentation; and if you want to go up a notch from there—pre-ferments make the difference. 

We will metaphorically follow the bread baker’s axiom that the best loaves are made by building dough in stages . . .  Eighty percent of the quality of the finished bread will be determined during the primary fermentation stage (Stage Three) and the other twenty percent primarily will be determined during the baking, or oven stage (Stage Ten) (Reinhart, p. 48-49).

Reinhart goes on to identify twelve stages of baking bread, but that is for a different day.  If you recall from our blogpost on the Classifications of Bread, the use of a pre-ferment (or not) is what makes the dough a straight or direct dough as opposed to an indirect or sponge dough.  I still consider myself to be still catching on to this, but a real bread baker utilizes millennia of wisdom.  Dough that is mixed directly can still use yeast as the fermenting agent, but will not have the benefit of unlocking all the sugars of the grain which make the bread truly delicious.   That happens only with grain and yeast and time. 

What does “pre-fermentation” mean?

A fermentation process allows time to capitalize on the bacteria naturally present in a food item to digest the difficult enzymes that our bodies might not like (things like phytic acid), releases gases, and gives all of the flavors present an atmosphere to mingle, smooze, and make connections. If you make bread using yeast instead of sourdough, you are taking a shortcut (and you know it—but hey—I’m not judging) to the end result of bread without allowing a true fermentation to take place. 

A “pre-ferment” is when you do give the flour a fighting chance for flavor by the gift of time.  You are hydrating the flour ahead of time.  You can use any measure of the flour you will use in the end recipe and an equal part water, stir, and let it sit out at room temperature for a few hours or even overnight (we will get into the details of this in our next blog).  It is called a “pre-ferment” instead of “ferment”, because you are not fermenting the entirety of your bread, you are not utilizing a sourdough starter (with the proper strains of bacteria to raise the bread) and you did it ahead of time from the actual act of “making bread”.  In other words, you aren’t adding the rest of the ingredients yet, you aren’t getting flour in your hair, and you have not even invested enough time into this process to require a “bread baking music” selection.   You are not adding the ingredients yet.  Just flour, just water (and sometimes a smidgen of yeast).  This can still be yeast bread and not a sourdough with a sourdough bread starter, but you will mimic many of the flavors and increase the health benefits of a pre-digested wheat kernel through that gift of time. 

Is this just academic? When will I ever use this, anyway?

French or Italian breads can only be properly made with a pre-ferment because the ingredient list is so simple: Flour, Water, Yeast and Salt (in a 60-2-2 baking math formula).  The difference between bland and awesome is “the quality of the wheat, coupled with the baker’s ability to draw out flavor through fermentation and baking technique” (Reinhart, p. 31). Since the wheat berry is such a compact form of energy, it is best to coax the maximum value out of it slowly over time; which as a corollary has everything to do with the gluten content. 

Take this analogy of a gallon of gasoline.  If poured into a metal pan and ignited on fire, it will not do much work at all—rather it will likely put out a lot of black smoke and prompt your neighbors to call the fire department.  Take that same gallon of gasoline and meter it out slowly in a fuel efficient internal combustion engine and you can get twenty or thirty miles down the road on that same unit of energy.  Wheat works the same way, in that it responds better to slow release of flavor.

The use of pre-ferments is a simple and inexpensive way to improve bread quality.  Each preferment generates different aromas depending on its characteristics.  Aromas and final bread flavors are influenced by the pre-ferments’ liquid or stiff consistency, fermentation temperature, salt including or exclusion and the use of commercial yeast or wild yeast (Rossada).

So have I left you hanging?  In the next blog we pick this conversation right back up.  We will discuss the different types of pre-ferments and the considerations to make when choosing one.

Wilson

Pro Deo et Patria

Works Cited:

Reinhart, P. (2002). The bread baker’s apprentice, mastering the art of extraordinary bread. (p. 27). Ten Speed Pr.

Rossada, D. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bakerconnection.com/artisanbaker/article_04.htm

Photos by Pantry Paratus.  Feel free to re-pin or share them, but maintain proper attribution and link.  Thank you.

 
 Proviso:

Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice.  You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes.  Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.

www.Hypersmash.com