Catalog

fermentation

• Affinage — The managed aging of cheese, in which moisture, enzymes, and surface or interior microbes finish texture and flavor under air, humidity, and time.
• Bulk fermentation — The first rise of mixed dough, when yeast and bacteria produce gas, acid, and flavor before the loaf is shaped.
• Cheese — Milk concentrated and transformed by acidification, coagulation, whey removal, salt, and time into a food whose texture and flavor keep changing.
• Cheese cultures — Selected lactic bacteria, and sometimes molds or adjuncts, added to milk to acidify it and to set the flavor path of a cheese.
• Desired dough temperature — The target temperature of dough at the end of mixing, used so fermentation and the bakery schedule stay inside a planned window.
• Fermentation — Microbial transformation of food, producing gas, acid, alcohol, and flavor in bread, cheese, wine, and beyond.
• Final proof — The last rise of a shaped loaf, when the dough relaxes and gains the gas it will carry into the oven.
• Lactic acid bacteria — Bacteria that produce lactic acid (and often acetic acid) in sourdough, cheese, and other fermented foods.
• Levain — A preferment built from starter, flour, and water for a particular dough, mixed and fermented on a schedule.
• San Francisco sourdough — A civic bread story, a commercial bakery style, and a laboratory isolation — three layers that are easy to mash into one myth.
• Sourdough — Bread leavened by a culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria rather than commercial baker’s yeast.
• Sourdough starter — A maintained culture of flour and water that hosts wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria for leavening bread.
• Sourdough troubleshooting — A map from common loaf faults — dense crumb, weak rise, harsh sourness — back to starter, fermentation, strength, and heat.
• Wild yeast — Yeasts captured from flour, air, and fruit that leaven sourdough and other spontaneously fermented foods.
• Wine — A fermented drink from grapes, whose structure is alcohol, acid, tannin, and aroma shaped by vineyard, yeast, and time.