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| Foregoing Practicing to Post Minor Deity  |
Do you have one of these near you? There are several in NYC and many around the country. The cakes and pastries are SO GOOD. Probably not so great for the waistline though. They are run by a South Korean company! Wouldn’t have expected that. Give ‘em a try. Paris Baguette
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Minor Deity |
Yes, know of a couple within an hour’s drive. Another South Korean-run French bakery chain is Tous Les Jours. My impression so far is that French Baguette is little more expensive than Tous Les Jours. Saw both side-by-side inside a Korean supermarket/grocery store complex, actually. I believe it’s the H-Mart in Edison NJ, if you ever head that way.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Send them to Colorado. Not what I need, but what I like.
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| Serial origamist Has Achieved Nirvana  |
There is a Tous les Jours attached to the H-Mart a mile from my house. There are a handful more around Seattle.
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Beatification Candidate |
One just opened a few months ago about a block away. Yummy!
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
No Paris Baguette near me, but I did discover an all-sourdough bread baker called Levain near downtown. I love a really sour San Francisco sourdough and it’s hard to find here. Alas, that’s not what Levain makes. Their bread may be yeast-free but it’s not sour. 
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Wow, how did I miss Paris Baguette? Several near me (one 10 minutes away). Some of them associated with HMart stores. I could be in trouble....
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Sourdough bread isn’t yeast free. Sourdough starter is comprised of wild yeast (that comes mostly from the flour you add) and acid producing bacteria (like Lactobacillus) which is what acidifies the starter and keeps all the bad bacteria from spoiling it. There are ways to make your dough more (or less) sour, adding more rye flour, keeping the “hooch” (the liquid that forms as your sourdough starter goes past it’s peak (I usually pour it off), the temp you proof it at, etc. Here’s a good link with a better explanation: https://www.busbysbakery.com/m...h-starter-more-sour/
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Jodi| Has Achieved Nirvana |
My starter is hungry and needs to be fed. The liquid that you can see near the bottom edge of the jar is the “hooch”. I don’t like sourdough bread very sour, so if there is a lot of it, I pour some off and just add more water (and flour). 
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I've been baking sourdough bread for the last six months or so. Have tried a basic white recipe, a rye, a whole wheat, and waffles (to use up what starter would otherwise be discarded). The only one of the recipes I tried that I wasn't super thrilled with was the whole wheat. We absolutely love all the rest. That link is really helpful. I didn't realize that the hooch makes the bread more sour. Have been pouring it off. jodi, do you refrigerate your starter, or keep it on the counter?
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I refrigerate it. I keep a lot of starter, and I never discard it - it’s a big glass jar with a loose fitting lid. I just check on it occasionally, and feed it if it looks like it is hungry. I don’t measure or weigh anything, I just add water and mix, then add flour til the consistency looks good. If you have to be gone for over a week, you can just add a bunch of extra flour so the starter is almost dry and it will last for at least 3 weeks. I have not managed to kill mine yet, I’ve had it going since the beginning of last year. I rarely make bread, but I made bagels and a LOT of pizza dough. It truly makes the best crust ever, going out for pizza just isn’t worth it any more. I often make a big batch and freeze half, if you put it in your oven with the light on, (or if you have a proofing setting on your oven) you can make it in the morning and it’s ready to go by dinner. I think the crust is slightly better when you don’t freeze the dough, but even after it’s frozen and thawed, it still makes better crust than anything you can buy around here.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Haven't tried pizza dough yet. Will put it on my list! I refrigerate my starter, too. I do weigh the starter, water, and flour, equal parts of each. I've gone two to three weeks between feedings and haven't killed it yet. When I'm going to bake, I mix up the dough early on the day before I'm actually going to bake. I let it autolyze for an hour, then do two sessions of stretching and folding, spaced at one hour intervals. I let it rise till evening, then form my loaf and put it in a proofing basket, cover it, and stick it in the refrigerator overnight. Loaf comes straight out of the frig and into a cold baker for the white bread. Preheat the clay baker for rye. I thought making bread using starter was going to be really fidgety, but it's actually less work than the bread recipes I used to make. The stretch and fold is much easier than kneading. And it's been foolproof so far. The whole grain breads (rye and whole wheat) have been a bit harder to work with because they're stickier. The rye is worth the hassle but the whole wheat is not. Did you grow your own starter from scratch or get some from a friend? I ordered some from someone on Etsy. It's supposed to be from a 200+ year old starter from France but I wouldn't put money on the provenance. 
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Minor Deity |
We have a Paris Bahn Mi which is very good. https://parisbanhmiohio.com/
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I grew my own. It was pretty easy - it took a couple of weeks - doing it with rye flour is the key, rye apparently has the highest concentration of wild yeast. If you think about it - you are fairly quickly going to get a starter comprised of whatever yeast/acid producing bacteria comes in the flour you use, as well as from your specific environment. It won’t at all resemble the starter they were using 200 years ago in France. (But it’s a great marketing ploy!) I dried some of mine last year - and keep meaning to do a test with it, water and flour, and just water and flour to see if it makes a starter faster. I follow the recipe when I make bagels, but I now wing both pizza dough and bread. I don’t weigh, but both are about 1 part starter and no less than 2 parts flour, and enough water to make the dough feel right (I start with a cup) plus between 1 - 2 teaspoons salt - the pizza dough also gets a tablespoon or two or three of olive oil. If I’m adding some rye or whole wheat flour (only about half the total flour) I usually add a tablespoon of honey. My friend who worked in a bakery always weighs - he says that’s the way you get the most consistent loaves, but I love to go by feel, it’s how I cook most things anyway. So if one loaf is a little flatter than the next, no big deal to me. There is something really cool about this living thing in a jar in my fridge. (I swear, you could build a house with it, it’s incredibly difficult to clean off of stuff when you let it dry out!)
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I'm going to try feeding my starter with rye to see how it changes the flavor. Normally I use King Arthur AP flour to feed, and their bread flour to bake. I use equal parts of starter, water, and flour to feed. To try out the rye effect, should I just do all rye or a blend of rye and either AP or bread flour? jodi, what are you feeding your starter with? Got any suggestions for how to incorporate rye into the feeding process?
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